Posted on 12/18/2001 9:39:33 PM PST by JohnHuang2
WASHINGTON – A former Federal Aviation Administration agent accuses key U.S. senators of failing to act on a 1998 memo that detailed security breaches at a major Western airport that he thinks were so alarming they should have triggered hearings and nationwide security fixes, such as those passed into law only after the Sept. 11 hijackings.
The agent says he personally handed the two-page memo to Sen. John McCain last year, when the Arizona Republican headed a Senate panel overseeing commercial aviation.
WorldNetDaily has obtained a copy of the Oct. 1, 1998, internal document (page 1 and page 2), which details the findings of an FAA security sting operation that turned up shocking violations at an international airport west of Texas. The agent redacted the name of the airport for security reasons.
In the undercover sting, the team of FAA agents managed to:
- Break through different airport security points 446 times out of 450 tries, meaning the "bad guys" were successful 99.1 percent of the time.
- Access the ramp 19 times by slipping behind airline staff, who opened gate doors with their security cards.
- Walk around "unmanned, unguarded" planes, look inside aircraft holds and engines, and even sit in plane seats without being stopped, demonstrating the ease with which bombs or weapons could be placed on board.
- Climb inside the back of Sky Chefs' catering trucks and "place anything they liked" inside food carts.
- Plant bombs inside passenger luggage at the airline loading docks.
- Get past checkpoint screeners seven times with a gun sealed under a belt-buckle.
- Get past screeners with a Mac2 machine gun strapped behind an agent's back and concealed under his jacket.
- Slip past screeners a bomb hidden inside a laptop computer.
- Plant bombs in passengers' handbags left unattended at terminal lounges located beyond security checkpoints.
The FAA rated the airport "highly vulnerable to terrorism and bombings in all security areas," the memo said. "On domestic flights, [the] score was even higher than on international" flights.
Steve Elson, the former FAA airport-security inspector who showed the findings to McCain and others on the Hill, says another major airport failed a similar sting by the team. He says security vulnerabilities at the two airports are emblematic of most major airports across the country.
Though he admits such intruders would not go so unchallenged today, recent security fixes don't cover the ramp, where jetliners are still left unguarded overnight.
He says the memo "absolutely floored me" when he intercepted it at an FAA field office in 1998.
Elson, who starting in 1992 conducted stings for the FAA's so-called Red Team, left the FAA in 1999 in frustration over what he says was a disregard in Washington for security warnings from the field.
In March 2000, he says he sent the memo to a top aide of McCain, who at the time chaired the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. The panel oversees the FAA and the airlines.
Along with the memo, Elson says he gave Martha Albright, the then-committee general counsel, more than 300 pages of other documents, including internal FAA memos, in a large binder that he calls "the big, blue book of death," because he thinks the Sept. 11 hijackings could have been prevented if airport security warnings had been heeded.
After getting no response, and seeing no action in Washington, he personally handed McCain a copy of the 1998 memo at a September 2000 book-signing event just outside of New Orleans.
He says McCain never acted on it.
"I thought if I showed these people this memo, they'd jump up and go berserk," Elson said. "Not only did they not jump up, they just plain didn't give a [expletive]."
"Nothing ever happened," he added. "Yet that one document alone should have changed aviation security nationwide."
A McCain spokesman on the committee says the senator "has no recollection" of receiving the memo. He adds that Albright, who no longer works for the committee, can't recall it, either.
"I'm not denying it could have happened," said spokesman Mark Buse. "We just have no recollection of it."
He says McCain was on a 30-day book tour in Sept. 2000 and was swamped with all sorts of requests from people.
"You have to understand, the senator is a very popular public figure and is handed hundreds of things," Buse said.
Asked what he would have done with the memo if he had received it, Buse said he would have given it to a staffer who, in turn, "would have forwarded it to the FAA, and let it take the appropriate steps to remedy the problems."
He says the former chairman would not have held hearings on the matter until after the problems were corrected, and only then to investigate why the problems had occurred in the first place.
Elson says the memo was sent out to airline personnel by teletype or cable. It details a meeting at the airport with an airline security manager and an FAA official from Washington.
For security reasons, Elson blacked-out the names of the meeting's participants, as well as the name of the airport.
"You don't tell bad guys where the bad airports are," he explained.
But he did say that it is a major international airport – "one of the biggest airports in the country" – and is located "west of Texas." He says security at the airport, though it was not recently built, "looks good on the outside" and even includes biometric eye- and fingerprint-scanning technology.
The same airport was one of five cited in 1993 for security problems by auditors working for the Transportation Department's inspector general, he says.
The violations were videotaped by undercover agents. The FAA planned to use the tapes in security instruction at airports.
"But the violations are so bad," Elson claimed, "they buried the videos in a safe at [FAA] headquarters" in Washington.
FAA spokeswoman Alison Duquette declined to comment on the memo, the videos or Elson, although she said she was "aware of him," having seen him recently on CBS' "60 Minutes."
Elson maintains that, particularly before Sept. 11, the FAA has been pressured by Congress to go easy on airlines and airports for security lapses, because Congress itself is pressured by lobbyists representing airlines focused on getting planes in the air to turn bigger profits. Tighter security delays flights, he says, and planes stuck on the tarmac are like money burning.
In hearings, McCain and other lawmakers have focused on airline delays, missed flights and lost baggage, and have largely overlooked security problems, Elson complained.
He says FAA agents and flight attendants have for years clamored for a ban on knives of all sizes and types and reinforced cockpit doors, as well as other security improvements, which were implemented only after the Sept. 11 tragedy.
Here's a more recent memo: the hijackers of 9/11 didn't breach airport security.
"You have to understand, the senator is a very popular public figure and is handed hundreds of things," Buse said.
A book tour is not part of McCain's job description. He might as well have been loafing around because he sure as heck wasn't doing his job.
Earlier today we had Hillary feigning compassion to save the children while blaming the collapse of the twin towers on poor structural design.
If this happened in the business world on any level, that person would be somehow removed from that job. A federal employee cannot be fired and a senator simply walks away with no one challenging him or her for not acting on very important information regarding the nation.
These prima donnas of the political world are treated like rock stars by the press and other media, not like the elected political servants they are. That McCain did not do his job, pandered to special interest is unfortunately the norm for our elected and should surprise no one. The rules have got to change and only we voters can do that. Please send this story to your local papers, your elected and to the airline of your choice and the White House. Put everyone on notice that this is the beginning of the end for special interest; the interest of the nation and her people must be first and foremost. From the airlines to bee keepers to farmers, the subsidies must stop - you either make it in business or you drop out/fail, it is not up to the American taxpayer to keep you afloat.
Senator McCain is typical of the egregious misrepresentations coming out of Washington and President Bush should deal with all of these self-seeking congressmen and senators and deal with them harshly.
How to contact the Senator via phone, fax or e-mail, the latter will simply get you a programmed response but try.
Phone # (202) 224-2235
Fax # (202) 228-2862
TDD # (202) 224-7132
E-mail address: John_McCain@McCain.senate.gov
Send this to Bill O'Reilly at Fox, Rush and take a moment to thank Paul Sperry.
"SIGH" I am on your side brother. Where do we begin?
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