Stowaways Found at Miami Airport Fuel Debate Over Cargo Security

Posted on Thu, Feb. 12, 2004 

Stowaways Found at Miami Airport Fuel Debate Over
Cargo Security
The Dallas Morning News, TX


WASHINGTON - (KRT) - The saga of the man who shipped
himself from New Jersey to Texas on a cargo airline
last September became a major embarrassment for the
Department of Homeland Security - and a touchstone for
critics of the nation's cargo-inspection system.

An equally brazen stunt, however, was carried out just
two weeks ago.

On Jan. 31, three men from the Dominican Republic were
caught in a warehouse at Miami International Airport.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the
men had stowed away on a cargo plane - of undetermined
ownership - from Santo Domingo by hiding in a
shrink-wrapped pallet. Customs spokesman Zachary Mann
declined to say how they got in; he would say only
that they had "breached security."

The stowaways did no harm and were sent home. But
their illicit journey, some say, shows that cargo
security is still lacking, even as the Transportation
Security Administration says that progress has been
made.

"So far, we have been lucky that these stowaways are
probably just tourists. The next time, they could be
terrorists," Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a senior member
of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security,
said Thursday. "Even the most rudimentary physical
screening of cargo would turn up human beings hiding
in boxes or pallets."

Markey is pushing legislation that would require
screening of all cargo carried aboard passenger
aircraft. The airlines oppose such a mandate, saying
it could disrupt time-sensitive shipments. They
endorse legislation by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison,
R-Texas, which takes a more selective approach: among
other things, it would require criminal background
checks for cargo handlers and direct the TSA to work
more closely with foreign countries to close security
loopholes.

The TSA is looking into the Miami incident, said
spokesman Darrin Kayser. The three Dominicans were
apprehended not quite five months after 25-year-old
Charles McKinley completed a two-day, 1,500-mile trip
to Texas aboard two Kitty Hawk Inc. cargo planes.
Ensconced in a crate, McKinley was placed on a plane
that went from Newark, N.J., to Buffalo, N.Y., to Fort
Wayne, Ind. There he was transferred to a second plane
bound for Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

McKinley was arrested at his parents' house in DeSoto
on Sept. 6. On Feb. 4, a federal judge in Fort Worth
sentenced him to 120 days of in-home confinement and
one year of probation, and fined him $1,500.

The TSA has spent the past two years trying to
fine-tune its methods of screening passengers and
their baggage. Lately, it has turned its attention to
cargo carried on both passenger and all-freight
aircraft. Earlier this month, the agency announced
that it would begin arming and training cargo pilots,
on a voluntary basis, to protect their cockpits. A
comparable program is under way for pilots of
passenger planes.

The TSA is evaluating proposals for equipment that can
scan break-bulk cargo - loose items not in containers
- for explosives, Kayser said. It will propose
additional security measures in the coming months, he
said, and is committed to improving the "known
shipper" program - which allows passenger aircraft to
accept freight only from familiar sources - by the end
of the year.

Two questions lie at the core of the cargo-screening
debate: Should every piece of freight on passenger
planes be examined, as Markey suggests, or only
"high-risk" cargo, as the TSA and the airlines
maintain? And should freight-only carriers, such as
FedEx, be subject to the same rules as passenger
carriers?

Jay Norelius, security chairman for the Coalition of
Airline Pilots Associations, argues that there should
be "one level of security" for both categories.

There is no question that a bomb in the cargo hold of
a passenger plane would kill more people in the air
than a bomb on a cargo plane, said Norelius, an
airline captain. However, he said, a Boeing 747
hijacked and used as a flying missile, as in the Sept.
11 attacks, could inflict enormous damage on the
ground, whether it carried a crew of two or a
passenger load of 300.

Nonetheless, Norelius said, cargo planes tend to
receive less scrutiny than passenger planes. They do
not, for example, have to abide by the known shipper
program.

Responded Steve Alterman, president of the Cargo
Airline Association, a trade group for all-freight
carriers: "This myth that there is no cargo security
is precisely that - a myth."

The technology does not exist to screen every piece of
cargo, Alterman said. Even if it did, he said, the
inspection of every item "would totally discombobulate
the world economy."

In the United States, about three-quarters of the
cargo shipped by air travels on all-freight airlines;
the rest goes on passenger planes.

Doug Wills, a spokesman for the passenger airlines'
trade group, the Air Transport Association, said that
"just-in-time" shipments of goods as diverse as fresh
flowers and auto parts could be disrupted if
100-percent screening were required. "We can certainly
do more and we're beginning to do more," he said. "It
takes time. More and better screening systems are
being developed and introduced every three months or
so."

For Glenn Johnson, the pace is still too slow.

Johnson, of Greensburg, Pa., sits on the TSA's
Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which produced a
list of cargo-related recommendations last year. His
interest in the issue is highly personal: His
21-year-old daughter, Beth, was killed in the 1988
bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland. The bomb
was concealed in a radio in the plane's belly; a
former Libyan intelligence agent was convicted of
planting it.

Johnson says he's seeking "perfection" in terms of
cargo security. The airlines say they want a program
that assures a high level of safety but won't impede
commerce.

"Somewhere between what we're after and what the
airlines are after is probably where we'll end up,"
Johnson said.

 

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