Last
month, an airline baggage handler at Orlando International Airport in Florida
used his airport identification card and employee uniform to bypass airport
security screeners and deposit a duffel bag in a restricted area.
The next morning, Thomas Anthony Munoz, 22, an employee of Comair,
retrieved the duffel bag and boarded a flight for Puerto Rico. With the help of
an anonymous tip, police arrested Munoz as he stepped off the plane in San Juan.
The duffel bag contained 13 handguns, an assault rifle and eight pounds of
marijuana.
Comair fired Munoz and another employee who aided him. Both
have been charged in Puerto Rico with smuggling.
In the wake of the
security breach, Congress, the Transportation Security Administration and
airline industry security analysts are debating whether airline and airport
employees -- like airline passengers -- should be subject to screening at
security checkpoints.
"Nobody should be permitted to have access to the
airplane, to baggage, to supplies or to cargo without going through the same
screening that you or I go through," said Charles Slepian, security analyst at
the Foreseeable Risk Analysis Center in New York.
Rep. Nita Lowey,
D-N.Y., has introduced a bill in Congress that would require airport
employees to be screened.
However, some airport officials believe requiring security
screening of airport and airline employees, who must pass criminal background
checks before they are employed, would be burdensome and time-consuming.
Tim Anderson, deputy executive operations director at Minneapolis-St.
Paul International Airport, told USA Today that Lowey's proposal is "an
unworkable idea that could create gridlock."
Today, only two U.S.
commercial airports -- Miami International Airport and Orlando International
Airport -- screen all employees who have access to secure areas.
"Every
airport is a little different," said Jeff Mulder, Tulsa airports director. "We
have good security procedures in place. All employees with access to the
airfield have FBI background checks and are subject to screening at random at
any point."
Mulder said a TSA requirement to screen airport and airline
employees before they could enter secure areas would be "a significant
undertaking."
Robert W. Poole Jr., director of transportation studies at
the Reason Foundation in Los Angeles, agrees that screening of employees could
be disruptive.
"At most airports, the secure area begins just behind the
ticket counter, and agents go back and forth between secure and non-secure areas
a dozen or more times a day," Poole writes in the foundation's "Airport Policy
News."
"At smaller airports, the same people who work the ticket
counters often do double-duty as gate agents and may even load and unload
baggage. To be meaningful, the 100 percent screening policy would have to screen
these people every time they went back into the secure area, all day long.
"And what about mechanics and carpenters and electricians, bringing
tools to work? None of those tools could get through passenger checkpoints, but
people can't work without their tools."
Poole said not screening airport
and airline employees is "clearly a security gap."
"The cost of 100
percent screening is very high," Poole said in a telephone interview. "Would it
cause gridlock? That's an exaggeration. Clearly, it hasn't caused gridlock in
Miami. Maybe it would if you put employees through passenger screening
checkpoints."
Poole suggests a better way would be to create special
screening checkpoints for employees with different rules and procedures.
Since TSA froze its passenger and baggage screening work force at 43,000
three years ago, airports would have to hire private security firms to screen
employees, Poole said.
"But two other steps would further reduce risk,"
Poole writes. "At one smaller airport I know of, the background check
requirement goes beyond what TSA mandates. Having a criminal record of any sort
disqualifies one from working anywhere on the airport, even if the job is
outside the secure area.
"Second, we need better employee badges. They
should be biometrically encoded so that only the person who was cleared can use
the badge to get into secure areas. And companies with on-airport employees
should be required (with severe penalties) to promptly turn in the badges of
anyone whose job at the airport terminates.
"These kinds of measures . .
. would meaningfully beef up access control without totally disrupting the
functioning of airports."
