The polite word is "spin." The true word is lies. In times of war, all governments understand that words and images are weapons, and they manufacture them the way they manufacture fighter planes, guns and bullets. Months or years later, the lies are exposed. We call this history.

Today, our government is certainly lying about airline security. On Sept. 27, President Bush said: "Get on the airlines, get about the business of America ... get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed."

But as Daily News reporters Alison Gendar and Robert Ingrassia showed clearly more than a week ago, it is still possible to board airplanes with pepper spray, knives, razor blades and scissors. Such items were carried by our reporters through "security" at the same airports — Boston's Logan, Washington's Dulles and Newark — where killers boarded airplanes on Sept. 11.

Three days later, former Police Commissioner Howard Safir took a plane from Fort Lauderdale to JFK in New York. He had inadvertently carried a 3 1/2-inch pocketknife in his briefcase and saw that the pilot's door was open for the entire time the plane was on the ground. The truth is obvious and outrageous: Five weeks after more than 6,000 human beings were killed by airplanes turned into missiles, air travel is still not safe.

What are we being told by our various ministers? Don't worry. Take airplanes. In other words, keep supporting the airlines, because otherwise they will collapse, and the CEOs won't get their millions of dollars in salary and benefits, and all that money won't trickle down to the average citizen. Or words to that effect. If you stay home, or drive, or take a bus, then — in the words of the instant cliche — the Terrorists Will Win.

The trouble is that the feel-good rhetoric is so seldom supported by action.

A Role in Failure

Take the case of Michael Canavan. Last week, Canavan resigned — or was fired — from his job as security chief for the Federal Aviation Administration. By all accounts, Canavan possessed splendid credentials for the job, along with a tough, serious mind.

He spent 34 years in the U.S. Army, enlisting during Vietnam and serving much of his time with Special Forces. He worked on special operations in northern Iraq, Liberia and Bosnia, and when he retired, had risen to the rank of three-star general. He certainly brought to the FAA that special quality of urgency and concentration that comes from being shot at with live ammunition.

In his time on the job, Canavan, by most reports, struggled valiantly with the bureaucratic swamp of the FAA, which was to play its role — along with the FBI and CIA — in the colossal intelligence failure that permitted the events of Sept. 11. He quickly saw the porous quality of airline security and knew that the problem was simple: the airlines themselves.

The Goal Was Profit

In their quest for maximum profits, the airlines resisted all efforts to secure the perimeter. They bitterly fought the tough recommendations of the 1996 Gore Commission (which included sharing intelligence by the CIA, the FBI and the FAA) and were supported by too many congressmen (who took $2,470,000 in airline campaign contributions in 2000 alone).

The airlines continued to farm out security to companies like Argenbright Security Inc. of Atlanta, whose basic goal was profit. To ensure that profit, Argenbright kept salaries of its 6,000 employees (at 13 major airports, including Newark and LaGuardia) as low as possible, and waged a brutal two-year union-busting campaign at Los Angeles International Airport (it lost).

Most important, the company simply ignored background checks of security workers, or treated them in a cavalier way. In Philadelphia, Argenbright's 1,200 employees included a man who had been convicted of forgery, burglary and aggravated robbery. He shared his duties with former prostitutes, druggies and burglars.

At Dulles, according to one report, 80% of Argenbright's security hires went to noncitizens, despite of rules banning foreigners or those without green cards from working in secured areas of the airport. In Detroit, the company hired a man who had served four years in the Yemen Army. At Newark, only 57% of the firm's employees had their background information verified.

The pay was about $6 an hour, less than the pay at McDonald's, surely a factor in a turnover rate that ranges from 125% at some airports to 400% at others. Last October, Argenbright paid a total of $1.2 million in fines (and was placed on three years' probation) for its performance in Philadelphia. The company continued to provide its slovenly form of security at Newark and Dulles, and on Sept. 11 hijackers walked right through the barriers, armed with box cutters. Last week, Argenbright was charged in Federal Court with additional violations of the terms of its probation. Nothing much has changed.

Before Sept. 11, Canavan must have been appalled at the record in the FAA's own reports. In 1998, for example, FAA inspectors made 173 attempts to breach security at eight separate airports. They succeeded 117 times. Canavan saw a clear and present danger. But he had to deal with the timid souls of the FAA, who were leery of confronting the airlines they were supposed to be regulating. Those airlines, after all, had powerful bought-and-paid-for political friends.

"Generals don't do very well in the Civil Service," one aviation source told the Los Angeles Times. "People weren't doing what he wanted. [The security division] continually butted heads with the airlines."

Empty Spin

Then came Sept. 11, and Canavan had to deal with one urgent short-term problem: There were only about 100 sky marshals to place on 22,000 domestic flights a day. The President and other voices of his administration spoke soothingly about sky marshals (among many other things). But Canavan knew that this was empty spin. He drew up his own priorities, deciding with his staff about those flights that might tempt terrorists. They would have the pathetically few sky marshals onboard.

On Sept. 28, the Bush administration staged a propaganda stunt. That day, nine members of the Bush cabinet — and former President George Bush — took commercial flights to prove that airlines were safe. What they didn't say at the time was that sky marshals had been ordered to board those flights, too, and were taken off flights that Canavan believed were more vulnerable to terrorist acts.

Canavan was furious. He hasn't spoken publicly yet about this episode. But it clearly had one assumption built into it: The lives of cabinet members are more important than the lives of ordinary citizens. Big shots get sky marshals. The spin continues, but meanwhile, all the rest of us must know that when we decide to take an airplane, we are still buying a lottery ticket.