[joesnuffy]

Having thousands of armed pilots in airports would mean thousands of weapons that could fall into the wrong hands, Magaw said at the time. "We just don't want to subject the transportation system to additional firearms," he said.

ya wouldnt want anything falling into the wrong hands...... Feds loose laptops and hundreds of weapons http://theregister.co.uk/content/7/20453.html

[joesnuffy]

FBI 'loses' hundreds of laptops and guns
By John Leyden
Posted: 18/07/2001 at 10:35 GMT

An audit on the FBI has revealed it is missing hundreds of laptop computers,
many of which are believed to have been stolen from under the nose of the
agency.

Ashen-faced FBI officials have been forced to admit 184 computers are
unaccounted for and that three of these machines are believed have
sensitive material on their hard disks, and one is known to hold classified
data. Of the missing machines 13 are believed to have been nicked.

To make matters worse 449 weapons - including some sub-machine guns
among the cache of handguns- are missing from the Bureau's armoury, of
which 265 were lost and 184 stolen, according to officials.

The frankly quite alarming losses came to light during the course of
comprehensive audit of the agency carried out on behalf of the US
Department of Justice.

FBI officials said that the bureau has roughly 50,000 guns and 13,000
computers, or at least they did last time they looked.

Last year the State Department admitted that it had "misplaced" a laptop
containing highly classified information and agents of Britains security
services have been known to leave laptops in Tapas bar after a night on the
razz, so the phenomenon of spooks not taking care of PCs is hardly unknown.
However the extent of the FBI's loss will be extremely hard for the agency,
which is trusted with America's domestic security, to explain away.

The losses reportedly took place over the course of 11 years and are
attributed a variety of causes including retiring agents keeping hold of
weapons and the loss of laptops as they were been transferred around the
different offices that shared them. This doesn't go anywhere near getting
the FBI off the hook on the issue or restoring public trust in the organisation,
which has suffered a series of setbacks in recent months.

Chief among these is the arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, after his
admission that he spied for the Russians for the best part of two decades,
selling closely guarded secrets to the Soviet Union. The Bureau is also
accused of screwing up an investigation into a scientist who is accused of
stealing secrets from the Los Alamos nuclear research facility.

Attorney-General John Ashcroft is expected to make a statement on the
missing equipment and the issue is sure the crop up when two senior FBI
officials appear before the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee today. ®