"U.S. fears inside job at airports"

Saturday, October 21, 2006

HOMELAND INSECURITY
U.S. fears inside job at airports
British bombers had Muslim plant at Heathrow to test security
WorldNetDaily.com 

 
U.S. authorities are stepping up security checks on airport personnel after
learning that one of the suspects in the transatlantic sky terror plot
helped terrorists case security at London's Heathrow airport as an airport
employee. 

Asmin Amin Tariq, a Muslim convert of Asian descent, was a security guard at
Heathrow, where the explosives allegedly were to have been carried onto
planes bound for the U.S. After Tariq's arrest, his employer, Jet Airways,
suspended him. Jet Airways is the leading private airline in India. 

He previously worked for G4S, earlier called Securicor, which provided
services to British Airways, Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways. 

Investigators say 23-year-old Tariq, who studied biochemistry, allegedly
provided information about airport security procedures to bombers in the
foiled plot. It's not clear if he also planned to hand off explosives
materials to them in the sterile area of the airport, or perhaps plant them
on board targeted aircraft. Tariq holds a British passport, investigators
say. 

"This is precisely why you don't want so many Muslims working in airports,"
says former FAA special agent Steve Elson, who tested airport security as a
member of the elite Red Team. 

For the first time, the Transportation Security Administration is now
subjecting U.S. airport workers - including ramp workers, baggage handlers,
gate agents, cleaning crews and retail workers - to random security searches
before they enter restricted and secure areas in the airports. 

Until now, only two of the nations 428 commercial airports screened ramp
workers for weapons and bombs, according to Charles G. Slepian, a former TWA
security analyst who now heads the Foreseeable Risk Analysis Center in New
York. 

With the exception of ramp workers at the major Miami and Denver airports,
"they don't go through any screening process," Slepian said. 

The vast majority of ramp workers - along with their lunch pails and
backpacks - have not been searched, he stresses. 

Airlines trust they aren't a threat because they've "passed" a 10-year
criminal background check, he says. 

Trouble is, ramp workers more often than not are issued a Security
Identification Display Area (SIDA) badge long before their fingerprints are
processed, Slepian points out. That SIDA badge, along with door security
access cards or pass codes, allow them to bypass the passenger screening
process at the front of the terminal and go through locked doors in the back
of the terminal - gaining largely unsupervised access to baggage, cargo and
planes. 

The background checks "can take months and months, so they're walking around
with a card" in the meantime, he said. "That's why so many of these airport
employees are arrested so long after the fact, and are continuing to be
arrested in sweeps by the Justice Department. When the information finally
does come back, they see they've got somebody out there (on the ramp) that
has a felony and lied on his application, or has a warrant out, or is in the
country illegally." 

Slepian says ramp workers actually warrant more security screening than
passengers. And he should know, having coordinated numerous undercover
stings on suspected criminals on the TWA ramp at JFK International Airport
in New York. 

"Take a group of ramp workers at random, and take a group of passengers at
random, and I bet you're going to find there's more reason to search those
workers after you look into their backgrounds than you would if you checked
the passengers' backgrounds," he said. 

"Yet when we talk about searching passengers, we say no exceptions - you can
be 90 years old and we are going to check you thoroughly," he added. "When
we talk about employees at the airport, however, we call them the 'trusted
worker program.'"

What's more, many airport workers are foreign nationals from the Middle
East, Africa and Pakistan. Some even work for security firms that contract
with TSA to check tickets and IDs of passengers before they enter official
TSA security screening checkpoints. 

"There is no requirement that you be a U.S. citizen to work in an airport,
unless you are a federal screener," Slepian said. 

Authorities recently cracked down on a number of illegal Arab and African
nationals working at Dulles International Airport in Washington, where the
plane that crashed into the Pentagon departed. Some had ties to terrorism
cases. 

Before 9/11, more than 80 percent of the checkpoint screeners at Dulles
airport were foreign nationals mostly from the Middle East, North Africa and
Pakistan. 

Many working even the TSA security checkpoints at San Francisco
International Airport - even now, under new federal rules - are not U.S.
citizens, Slepian contends. 

Fast-food and other retail workers also are not screened with passengers
before entering the sterile area of airports, according to Slepian. 

That badge you see Burger King and other airport food-court workers wearing
is the same SIDA badge worn by ramp workers. And any airport worker with a
SIDA badge gets to bypass screening, he says. 

Though food-service and shop workers enter the airport through security
checkpoints at the front of the terminal, they normally avoid screening.
Same goes for the belongings they bring with them to work. 

"The TSA security people just wave them through. They don't go through the
actual check," Slepian said. "You won't see them standing in line with you
when you're in an airport." Yet they could easily hand off explosives or
weapons to passengers once they enter the sterile area. 

Additionally, food-service and shop workers in airports are not subject to
the same 10-year FBI criminal background check as ramp workers. 

"Food chains are supposed to do a background check that goes back only five
years, which is really meaningless," Slepian said. "But there's no 10-year
FBI background check." 

Airline contractors and vendors, including food caterers, also avoid the
10-year FBI check, he notes. 

What's more, airline cleaning crews are not screened for weapons and bombs
like passengers. 

TSA has asked only that airlines make sure a supervisor does a final
walk-through of the plane after crews leave, checking for planted weapons or
bombs, Slepian says, adding he doubts any cleaning vendors would know how to
identify C-4 plastic explosives if they found them. 

He says flight attendants also are not trained to sweep the planes for such
items and focus instead on restocking pillows and blankets and safety
instructions in the cabin. 

Slepian points out that cleaning crews service planes between flights, not
just late at night. And he says there are almost too many places to hide a
bomb in the cabin alone to check for them after each cleaning. His solution:
Screen all workers and their supplies before they can get near the airplane.


Under existing security rules, "they can put a bomb on board the airplane in
a seat back, or in the lavatory in the overhead just by popping the tile and
putting it in the ceiling, or in any of the storage areas in the airplane,
preferably somewhere near the wing or the fuel tanks, and blow up the
airplane," he warned. 

Another ideal place: the empty pouch underneath your seat, where your life
vest is supposed to be stored, but usually isn't. Many of the vests have
been taken by workers for their kids to use at pools, he said. Al-Qaida
terrorist Ramzi Yousef hid a bomb this way aboard a Philippines Airlines
flight, killing an unlucky Japanese passenger who sat above it. 

Occasionally, bomb-sniffing dogs are brought on board planes to search for
bombs in the cabin. But such searches are usually done only on high-risk
international flights to the Middle East. 

Food caterers also have unfettered access to planes, allowing yet another
means for bombs to get on your flight, Slepian says. 

"There's still plenty of food that's being offered on airplanes,
particularly on international flights," he said. "And now, some carriers are
selling food on shorter flights." 

He says terrorists - who have brought explosives on board more than 100
flights around the world since the 1950s (including the shoe bomb of
al-Qaida agent Richard Reid) - have devised what's called the "hamburger
bomb," which is Semtex or C-4 in the shape of a burger or chicken patty. 

"They put it on meals, and at 30,000 feet it blows up the airplane," he
said. 

Short of food, they can sneak explosives on board with the beverage supply,
which also is catered. 

The largest airline food-and-beverage caterer is LSG Sky Chefs, which
employs numerous immigrants from the Middle East and in the recent past has
employed some suspected al-Qaida terrorists.

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