Only 3 U.S. Airports Require Employee Security Checks

Less than a month after a news outfit reported that dozens of airport employees around the country have potential ties to terrorists, officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) admit that only three airports in the United States require workers to undergo security checks. The astounding admission, delivered this week before Congress, comes on the heels of a number of cases involving gun and drug-smuggling schemes operated by airline employees at major airports, including those located in Atlanta, New York and San Francisco. In all of the cases, airport workers used their security badges to access secured areas of their respective facilities without having to undergo any sort of check. As if this weren’t bad enough, last month government records obtained by the media revealed that 73 employees at nearly 40 airports across the nation were flagged for ties to terror in a June 2015 report from the DHS Inspector General’s Office. The files identified two of them working at Logan International Airport in Boston, four at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and six at Seattle-Tacoma International in Washington State. Here’s the government’s explanation for letting the potential terrorists slip by; the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) didn’t have access to the terrorism-related database during the vetting process for those employees. You can’t make this stuff up. Now we learn that only three of the nation’s 300 airports—Atlanta, Miami and Orlando—require employees to undergo security checks before work, even though there’s an epidemic of illicit activity among this demographic. The unbelievable stat was delivered by DHS officials testifying at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing this week. In the aftermath of the Belgium terrorist attacks, the hearing was scheduled to address efforts in this country to prevent attacks on passenger and freight targets that could lead to mass casualties. The head of TSA, Robert Neffenger, told lawmakers that the agency has increased the inspection of employees five-fold in the last five months but admitted improvements must be made and the nation’s airports will provide a report by the end of the month assessing their vulnerabilities. That still doesn’t’ explain why only three of the country’s airports require employees to undergo security checks a decade and a half after the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Apparently DHS can’t afford it and doesn’t really need it. At least that’s what a little-known entity called the Aviation Security Advisory Committee determined last spring. Composed of individuals representing private-sector organizations affected by aviation security requirements, the committee typically meets four times a year and advises the TSA on aviation security matters. The panel was established in 1989 after a terrorist attack on Pan Am flight 103 and members include representatives from various trade groups such as the Cargo Airline Association, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, the U.S. Travel Association and the Airport Consultants Council. These are the folks that are deciding crucial issues associated with airport security.

In a 2015 report the committee wrote that most airports can’t afford daily employee screening and, even if they could, it wouldn’t do much good. That’s because full screening wouldn’t “appreciably increase the overall system-wide protection,” according to the committee’s findings and “no single measure can provide broad-spectrum protection against risks or adversaries.” Furthermore, this group of aviation advisors concluded that daily screening of airport workers “is incapable of determining a person’s motivations, attitudes and capabilities to cause harm, among other limitations.” Under that ridiculous argument, airport security would be eliminated altogether for everyone.

All of the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee should be removed immediately. The April 8, 2015, report, "Final Report of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee Working Group on Airport Access Control," gives little more than aid and comfort to the enemy, for example, this tapdancing on pp. 8-9:

A significant challenge in addressing this issue is that the WG could not find an example of 100 percent employee screening in the United States that would be equivalent to passenger screening. In several examples labeled "100 percent airport employee screening," the WG found that not all employee populations are screened to passenger standards. Numerous exceptions are allowed in screening eligibility, continuity and practices, and physical barriers to separate screened and un-screened employees did not exist. The WG also looked outside the U.S. for examples of “100 percent screening” and similarly found that due to nearly identical factors, none would qualify as 100 percent screening of 100 percent of all airport employees to passenger screening standards.

Certainly, physical screening is a fundamental security methodology and is a means, but not the only means or necessarily the best means, for deterring acts of criminality or terrorism within a defined space....

Passenger screening is well recognized as a fundamental element of passenger scrutiny, but there are significant differences between the screening of passengers and employees. For example, employees are not necessarily screened/inspected at one fixed location. Employees are subject to screening/inspection in their work environment and must wear and/or carry with them metal objects, tools with sharp edges, and items that are on the TSA prohibited items list in order to perform their jobs. Therefore, what is known about an individual employee—that is to say, the trust that is given to a person on the basis of their employment status and identifiable character traits—is of greater importance than the types of objects that he or she may carry into an airport’s secured area. Law enforcement officers, as just one example of this principle, are authorized to carry lethal weapons into airport secured areas on the basis of their job requirements and demonstrated integrity.

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