"U.S. Defends Small-Airport Security Plan"

Wednesday, April 3, 2002

U.S. Defends Small-Airport Plan
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
The Washington (DC) Post


The Transportation Department yesterday defended its decision to use
different methods to inspect luggage for explosives at small airports and
large hubs, saying its plan for smaller airports is not a "second-class
system."

Last week, Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary of the agency, said that not
all luggage will be screened by the same kind of technology at every
airport. Small airports will not get the bulky bomb-sniffing machines that
use sophisticated X-ray technology to check luggage for explosives, he said.

Instead, screeners at small airports will swab the luggage with cotton gauze
and then check the gauze for residue of explosives using a different kind of
machine, known as a trace-detection device. Larger airports will get either
the bulky X-ray technology or a combination of the X-ray and trace-detection
machines.

By the end of the year, all airline-passenger luggage must be screened for
explosives by a machine, as directed by a law passed after the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks. The legislation, approved by Congress in November,
created the Transportation Security Administration, a unit of the
Transportation Department, to carry out the directives.

Some members of Congress and security experts criticized the trace-detection
approach as being insufficient because it merely inspects the outside of
bags.

But yesterday, a Transportation Department spokesman said the security
agency's personnel will swab the inside of bags. "With better training, we
are confident" about this technology, said the spokesman, Chet Lunner. "It
is not a second-class system."

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, the ranking Republican on the Senate
Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee's aviation subcommittee,
proposed that bags that passed through small airports could be rescreened at
larger airports on connecting flights with the more sophisticated
technology, produced by two companies, InVision Technologies Inc. and L-3
Communications Holdings Inc.

Lunner, however, said luggage will be scanned once. "Our position is, once
it's done with an open bag, it doesn't need a detector a second time," he
said.

Separately, InVision Technologies announced yesterday that it has received a
$148.6 million order from the Transportation Security Administration for 300
bomb-scanning machines to be built from parts the agency ordered in March,
as well as for parts for 100 more machines.

In March, the TSA placed a $169.8 million order for 100 machines, which are
scheduled for delivery in June. The 300 machines are scheduled for delivery
in September.

 Do you have an opinion about this story?
Share it with other readers in our CAA Discussion Forums

http://www.californiaaviation.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?conf=DCConfID8

*****************************************