"9/11 probers study Logan security efforts"

Saturday, August 23, 2003

9/11 probers study Logan security efforts
By Mac Daniel and Shelley Murphy
The Boston (MA) Globe


Two staff members from an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks were in Boston earlier this week scrutinizing
security at Logan International Airport, where hijackers seized control of
two flights and crashed them into New York's World Trade Center towers.

''They went because Boston was an area of some activity and they're trying
to look at the state of security as it was then and as it is now,'' said Al
Felzenberg, a spokesman for the 10-member bipartisan panel established last
year by President Bush.

The 9/11 Commission is chaired by Thomas Kean, president of Drew University
and former Republican governor of New Jersey.

The commission, which has held hearings in Washington and New York, will
focus on security lapses that led to the attacks, subsequent upgrades in
security, and recommendations to protect the nation against another attack,
Felzenberg said.

''Obviously we're interested in anything we can glean about 9/11, what
happend that day at the airport . . . changes made since 9/11,'' Felzenberg
said. ''We have to minimize the possiblity of it ever happening again.''

Jose Juves, spokesman for Massachusetts Port Authority, said the two staff
members spent about two hours Tuesday at Logan, where they met Massport
officials, including director of aviation Thomas J. Kinton Jr., before
touring the airport.

The two investigators were charged with focusing on the events of Sept. 11,
2001, and subsequent security upgrades at Logan and the Portland
International Jetport in Maine, where one of the flights began before flying
to Boston.

They looked into ''initiatives that we put in place at Logan and how that
could be applied nationally,'' Juves said.

After the attacks, Massport officials installed an in-line baggage screening
system that scans all checked luggage for explosives at Logan, the first
airport to do so.

Logan was the only airport to have the system in place to meet a
congressional deadline.

The airport has been one of a few federal testing grounds for new
airport-security technology, including facial scanners and bomb-sniffing
equipment. Some State Police officers at Logan were recently armed with
high-powered machine guns rarely seen in US airports.

Juves said he was certain the two 9/11 Commission staffers will return but
did not know when. ''We hope so,'' he said. ''A lot of the things that we've
done here we feel should be done at every airport.''

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