There have been two questions about the year's most eventful trip to Japan from the start. Did Pol Lt Gen Kamronwit Thoopkrachang know he was carrying? Did the Suvarnabhumi airport security staff fail to find a gun that was about to carried aboard a Thai International Airways flight to Japan?
Stalemate. The investigation cannot be closed before these questions are answered. Neither of them can be answered.
Only one person in the world knows if the retired, three-star policeman and BFF of Lord Voldemort na Dubai packed his gat for the trip, or forgot it was in his bag. If internet chat, media columns and letters to the editor mean anything, everyone in Thailand knows whether "Paladin" (Have Gun, Will Travel; young people can look it up) was honest or lied, but really, only he knows.
Suvarnabhumi's security team, based on a continuing and never publicly reviewed contract with Loxley, has never won an international award for excellence in catching bad people. Airports of Thailand (AoT) and the Suvarnabhumi managers defended the airport's security operations amidst last week's shenanigans. The reason we should believe them is because those are the same managers who discarded all video of the incident.
Apparently those managers think that hard drives and cloud storage are so rare and expensive that they have to rapidly recycle surveillance results. In 2004, it turns out, the decision to buy CTX scanners involved moving the spiffy, new airport into an entirely new era — the 20th century. With the crack security apparatus unable to explain credibly anything it did, that leaves Thailand's Paladin and anecdotes to try to come to a rational conclusion.
A key fact: Accidentally attempting to board flights with guns and other banned, lethal weapons is not rare. It happens in virtually every country. As you might expect from its gun laws, the United States sees more such cases than anywhere. In the first half of last year, the last period for which figures are available, airport security caught more than 900 guns at security checkpoints.
The vast majority of these weapons were simply forgotten by their owners when they picked up their bags for the airport. (The small number of the rest were mostly citizens who didn't know it was against the law. Really.) So while you're entitled to believe Pol Lt Gen Kamronwit was trying to smuggle a gun on his Japan trip, it is not a provable fact. Here's a more difficult pill to swallow. Airport security fails all the time, all around the world. Consider the low-paid, semi-respected staff one sees at Suvarnabhumi. At this airport, a phuyai can walk past security merely by slapping one of the staff. With impunity.
And then, those scanners. Those with long memories will recall there was quite a scandal over the "inadequate, ill-suited, overpriced" CTX-9000 scanners a few years back. They were purchased for about three times their listed value and delivered about half or less the promised performance.
In 2005, the Democrats led a non-confidence motion against The Evil One's government. They enlarged on that revealing debate with a book by then-MP Korbsak Sabhavasu, Krai Wa Khon Ruay Mai Kong: CTX 9000 (Who Says the Rich Don't Cheat? CTX 9000). Three years later, senior Foreign Ministry official Virachai Plasai got a lightning transfer order to an inactive post for refusing to hand over classified documents on the CTX purchase to the military-appointed Assets Scrutiny Committee trying to pin the corruption on Lord Voldemort and 20 of his closest friends and aides.
Scanners, like security staff, don't always work well. And the combination is a constant, lethal threat to airport security, in Bangkok and worldwide. In the US last month, "tiger team" testers got 90% of their weapons past security and aboard aircraft, including guns, knives, explosives and actual bombs.
Suvarnabhumi managers never have released the results of such tests, if there are any. But letting Pol Lt Gen Kamronwit onto the Japan flight with a gun — if that happened — is not unusual by world standards.
Pol Lt Gen Kamronwit packs a .22-calibre Magnum Mini-Revolver, made by North American Arms of Provo, Utah. Technically it is "part number NAA-22MS", a five-shot revolver, 4-5/8 inches (11.75cm) long overall, including a barrel that is only 1-1/8th inches (2.86cm). The company lists a price of US$219, about 7,400 baht in real money.
The reviewer for the American Rifleman magazine loved it, and after handling the revolver for his column, bought one for himself. "The stainless-steel construction is ideal for concealed carry," he concluded. And who would argue with that? Not Thailand's own Paladin, except he says the gun concealed itself.