"Undercover Agents Discover Lapses by Airport Screeners"

Friday, September 12, 2003

Undercover Agents Discover Lapses by Airport Screeners
By STEPHEN POWER 
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


WASHINGTON -- Undercover agents were able to sneak box cutters past
screeners at about half a dozen airports over the summer, prompting an
inquiry into airport-security lapses by the chairman of a House aviation
panel.

Inspectors from the General Accounting Office, Congress's investigative arm,
evaded detection by airport screeners after concealing box cutters among
their belongings, according to a person familiar with the results. The
person declined to identify the airports but said they ranged in size. At no
time, this person said, were the inspectors stopped by airport screeners,
some working directly for the federal government and others for private
contractors.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress mandated the hiring of
federal screeners at more than 400 U.S. commercial airports. It also
authorized a two-year pilot program in which security duties at a small
number of commercial airports would be handled by private companies, with
close federal supervision and training. The five airports chosen for that
program are in San Francisco; Kansas City, Mo.; Rochester, N.Y.; Jackson
Hole, Wyo.; and Tupelo, Miss.

The GAO used box cutters in its tests because those were the weapons used by
the Sept. 11 hijackers to take over four airliners that they crashed into
the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a rural Pennsylvania field. The
tests were conducted by the GAO's Office of Special Investigations in
response to a request in April by House Aviation Subcommittee Chairman John
Mica (R., Fla.). Mr. Mica was one of many Republicans who argued against
creating an all-federal airport security work force after Sept. 11 and
instead advocated keeping those duties in the hands of private-sector firms
but with closer government oversight and stricter standards.

A spokesman for Mr. Mica said Thursday that the congressman plans to hold a
hearing on the GAO findings within two weeks. A person familiar with Mr.
Mica's thinking said the results fall "within [Mr. Mica's] expectations that
the federal screeners aren't doing much better than the private screeners."

GAO spokesman Jeff Nelligan declined any comment. A spokesman for the
Transportation Security Administration, Brian Turmail, declined to discuss
the GAO's findings, but said his agency was "cooperating very closely" with
the GAO. Mr. Turmail added that undercover TSA workers routinely test
airport screeners. Such inspections are designed to "break the system," Mr.
Turmail said, "because if we don't break it first, the bad guys will."

"Part of building a healthy security system is having the maturity to
understand you're always going to need to find the weaknesses and fix them,"
Mr. Turmail said. He added that the TSA has taken many steps to improve air
security since the Sept. 11 attacks, such as hiring thousands of air
marshals, screening all checked bags and reinforcing cockpit doors. "You are
ultimately never going to get 100% certainty with any single layer. That's
why we've built a multilayered approach."


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