"Hijacking scare at LAX turns out to be false alarm"

Thursday, May 6, 2004

Agencies Criticize LAX Handling of Hijack Alert
FBI and LAPD say airport police exceeded their authority by storming the
Singapore Airlines jet.
By Jennifer Oldham, Greg Krikorian and Andrew Blankstein
The Los Angeles (CA) Times


The decision to allow a SWAT team to storm a Singapore Airlines jet
Monday after it had transmitted a computerized hijack alert sparked a
debate Wednesday among law enforcement officials in Los Angeles on
whether the action had violated protocol and jeopardized the safety of
those on board. 

Several law enforcement sources, including some from the Los Angeles
Police Department, complained that Los Angles International Airport
police had overstepped their authority by sending SWAT officers onto the
plane after it landed at the airport Monday afternoon. The hijack alert
turned out to be false.

But airport officials said it was necessary to board the plane right
away because they weren't certain whether a hijacking was underway.

The quarrel underscores the jurisdictional complexities that involve
protecting the airport, aircraft and passengers at what the state has
ranked as California's No. 1 terrorist target. At least six agencies are
charged with security at the airport. Among them are the FBI,
Transportation Security Administration, LAPD and the independent airport
Police Department.

"Every addition to the alphabet soup of agencies at the airport
potentially adds to confusion in times of crisis," Councilman Jack Weiss
said. 

Questions about the ground response followed a revelation Tuesday that
several federal agencies had known that the flight's transponder was
malfunctioning for at least four hours, but had failed to notify airport
officials and local law enforcement about the problem. The communication
breakdown left local law enforcement agencies scrambling to deal with
the plane just minutes before it landed. 

The FAA's Oakland center received the hijack alert about 12:30 p.m., but
officials from the airport, FBI, the local TSA and LAPD weren't notified
until 4:48 p.m. 

The transportation security agency, which provides security at the
nation's airports, said Wednesday that it didn't notify agency officials
in Los Angeles about Flight 20 because officials in Washington, D.C.,
had been told by the FAA that the jet's transponder was malfunctioning,
said Nico Melendez, an agency spokesman. As a result, the TSA was not
required to call the L.A. office, he said. 

But the agency is changing that policy as a result of Monday's incident
and will notify its local offices when such an event occurs, he said.

On Wednesday, Mayor James K. Hahn sent a two-page letter to
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, calling on the FAA to work with
the TSA and other agencies to determine why local officials had not been
alerted about Flight 20. 

"Given the events of Sept. 11, the close coordination between agencies
and existence and use of a tight notification process is critical," Hahn
wrote. "Monday's events were a very poor example of that."

Airport officials said the lack of information about the flight's status
ultimately led an armed airport police SWAT team to board the jet, a
move that LAPD and federal officials called an overreaction. 

"It was a very dangerous move," said one official versed in
counterterrorism, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "What was the
urgency? I can understand taking action if there's an immediate threat .
but the fact is, the plane was on the ground." 

Another official, the FBI's on-scene commander, was more diplomatic.

"It was evident to me along with LAPD personnel that protocols were
violated," said Herb Brown, assistant special agent in charge of the
FBI's crisis management, which includes the FBI's SWAT team. "Our
ultimate concern was the boarding of the plane, and I will leave it at
that. But we are going to take a careful look at the [procedures] that
were not followed and make sure it does not happen again.''

The turf war led the agencies to call a 2 1/2-hour, closed-door meeting
at the airport Tuesday, where officials squabbled about which agency
ultimately had the authority to call the shots at Monday's incident,
sources said. Another closed-door session is scheduled for next week. 

Agents and officers from the FBI, LAPD, TSA, U.S. Customs and airport
police responded to a remote gate near the sand dunes after the flight
had taxied there about 5:35 p.m.

Federal officials and the LAPD said airport police should have waited
for more FBI personnel before storming the aircraft. Under federal law,
the FBI is charged with taking control of aviation incidents on the
ground that may involve terrorism.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Bosley said agents were told that the hijacking
was a false alarm shortly after the FBI had been notified of the problem
about 4:50 p.m. Still, Bosley and others said, FBI procedures required
that the FBI's SWAT team verify that there was no threat.

When the FBI SWAT team arrived at LAX, according to one source who asked
not to be named, its agents were "incensed" that airport police had
stormed the plane. 

Airport officials disagreed that they had violated procedures. "There's
a whole protocol for how this should work and [airport police] went
right down the checklist," said Paul Haney, an airport spokesman. 

They also said, and the TSA agreed, that the possibility that there
might have been an emergency situation required immediate action.

"No one objected to the airport police's special response team going
down to handle the airplane," said Larry Fetters, the TSA's federal
security director at the airport. "It was something they couldn't avoid
because of the short notice on this incident. There wasn't a whole lot
of time to wait for someone to show up."

Airport police had "the only sufficient manpower to deal with the
incident" immediately after the flight arrived, Haney said. Airport
police were unsure whether the hijacking alert was false. They said that
the FAA had diverted Flight 20 over the ocean from its coastal flight
pattern and that the military had scrambled two F-16s to shadow the jet.


The confusion about the response by law enforcement agencies prompted
lawmakers to call a renewal of the decade-old debate about combining the
airport police and the LAPD.

The issue reemerged most recently in the summer of 2002 after a deadly
Fourth of July shooting at LAX. Several public safety officials argued
that merging the LAPD and the airport police would eliminate
communication problems and costly duplication of resources.

Said Councilman Weiss: "We saw questions of command and control in the
wake of the El Al terrorist shooting, and the fact that questions are
being raised here only underscores a recurring fundamental question:
Should we even have an airport police department independent of the
LAPD?"


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