"Since Pan Am 103, a 'facade of security'"

February 19, 2001 issue

Since Pan Am 103, a 'facade of security'
Screening devices improve, but flaws persist
By Jim Morris
US News and World Report


A serrated hunting knife tucked in his pants, Steve Elson strolled through a
screening station at New Orleans International Airport without setting off
the alarm. He cleared checkpoints on two other concourses, drawing nary a
glance. Had he held a ticket, the former Federal Aviation Administration
special agent could have boarded any flight armed with a deadly weapon.
Dressed, in his words, "like a dirt bag," Elson later went snooping behind
counters in the Delta Air Lines gate area in plain view of passengers and
employees. He was searching for unused baggage tags, which he sends to
members of Congress to make a point: that a terrorist could easily grab such
a tag and attach it to a suitcase rigged with a bomb. Left near a jetway
door, the bag would likely be loaded onto an aircraft.

The offbeat airport tour, conducted on a slow weekday morning, illuminated
what Elson calls the "facade of security" within the U.S. aviation system.
After the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland–for
which a Libyan intelligence agent received a life sentence last month–the
FAA promised to overhaul its security network by requiring computer-coded ID
cards for airport workers, installing new X-ray equipment, and matching
passengers to their bags. But Elson and other experts maintain that there
has been little, if any, real improvement in public safety since that time.
"Virtually anyone can put bombs on planes at any major airport, with minimal
chances of being caught," says the 55-year-old former Navy SEAL.

FAA officials disagree. Since 1997, when a White House commission made a
number of security-related recommendations to the FAA, the agency has spent
$100 million a year on hardware alone–notably, sophisticated devices, in
place at 130 airports and destined for some 270 more, that scan checked and
carry-on baggage for explosives. In May, the FAA will gain direct authority
over screeners–poorly paid, largely transient contract workers now
supervised by the airlines. Screeners at some airports soon will be using
X-ray machines that produce images of fake bombs, guns, and knives in
passengers' carry-on luggage. The screeners' ability to detect these images
will be measured, and contractors with too high a failure rate can lose FAA
certification. Although the agency won't regulate screeners' pay and
benefits, the hope is that companies will feel compelled to hire and retain
good people. "If you look at the changes we've made in the last several
years, you will see we have a much stronger security regime, both for
domestic and international flights," says Michael Canavan, the FAA's
associate administrator for civil aviation security.

Human failure. Still, recent audits of the FAA's security program have not
been reassuring. In December, the Department of Transportation's inspector
general reported that too many airport employees of unknown or questionable
backgrounds are given access to secure areas. Randomly pulling workers'
files at six airports, investigators determined that 16 percent had
undergone incomplete background checks, and 19 percent no checks at all. An
upcoming IG's audit is expected to say that explosive-detection devices are
being underutilized. And a senior FAA special agent tells U.S. News that the
security apparatus is more show than substance. During headquarters-ordered
testing at major airports in 1998 and 1999, he says, field agents gained
access to secure areas more than 95 percent of the time, breaching
computer-controlled doors and gates. "Rarely did anyone respond to the
alarms," the agent says. "Even when they did, it was so long after the fact
it was irrelevant."

The human element may prove troublesome for Canavan, who became the FAA's
security chief in December after retiring as a lieutenant general in the
Army. Last fall, congressional investigators concluded that there was
"unnecessary tension between FAA and airport security officials in some
locations and lack of management attention and corrective action after field
tests." Meanwhile, the prospect of terrorism looms large, with Saudi radical
Osama bin Laden–identified by CIA Director George Tenet last week as "the
most immediate and serious threat" to the United States–on the loose, and
Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi raging over the Pan Am 103 conviction. Robert
Spence, a former FAA headquarters official who performed covert surveillance
at airports around the country, worries that too much attention has been
paid to gadgetry, and not enough to rapid screener turnover, inattentive
airline employees, and similar issues. "They're about as high as they can go
in terms of technology," says Spence, now a private security contractor for
the federal government. "It's the people problem they need to deal with."

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