HEADLINE:
DOZENS OF AIRPORTS TO MISS SCREENING DEADLINE; SENATOR SAYS EFFORTS TO IMPROVE RAIL, PORT PROTECTION HAVE FAILED
BYLINE: BEN FINLEY, KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY: As the government put the nation on a higher
alert for possible terrorist attacks, the head of the Transportation Security
Administration told a Senate panel yesterday that dozens of U.S. airports will
miss the Dec. 31 deadline for screening passengers' checked baggage for
explosives.
In addition, federal transportation
security authorities have "flunked" in their efforts to improve terrorism
protection for U.S. ports and railways, said Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, D-S.C.,
chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
Among airports expected to miss the deadline are Kansas
City International, Dallas-Fort Worth International and McCarran International
in Las Vegas. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said airports she'd visited in
Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco also would need more time. A fourth, Los
Angeles International, will make it, Boxer reported.
Retired Coast Guard Adm. John Loy, acting head of the Transportation
Security Agency, said more than 90 percent of U.S. airports would have
inspection gear and counterterrorism procedures in place by the congressionally
imposed deadline. He said legitimate engineering and financial challenges were
slowing the remainder, roughly 35 other airports.
Congress cut the TSA's appropriation from $4.4 billion to $3.85
billion. In addition, many airport managers have said their facilities lack the
room for large inspection machines, or, as in McCarran's case, must install new
generators to power the devices.
Loy assured lawmakers
that the TSA, which he took over seven weeks ago, will meet a November deadline
for hiring some 33,000 airport baggage screeners. The new federal work force
takes over from a private contractor system that had proved ineffective.
Recent tests by CBS News and the New York Daily News of
the enhanced -- and more expensive -- new federal screening system showed that
its operators, like their predecessors, often missed weapons smuggled in
carry-on baggage. Loy said he was "very concerned" about those failures. He told
lawmakers that one TSA supervisor, who had hand-searched a carry-on bag but
failed to find a pistol hidden in it, had been fired.
Lawmakers also voiced concern about unchecked cargo in smaller planes.
According to Loy, the TSA does not always screen freight for explosives when
it's going on a plane smaller than a Boeing 727.
"If we
spend billions of dollars and we inconvenience passengers, which they have been
very patient about being, the idea that we wouldn't have some increase in cargo
security in the belly of that airplane is outrageous," said Sen. Kay Bailey
Hutchison, R-Texas.
Loy said his agency was weighing
the use of bomb-sniffing dogs and special profiling for smaller planes.
Inspecting their freight cargo is not required under the Aviation and
Transportation Security Act passed last November.
Hollings, citing the delivery by sea of explosives used in the 1998
U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, expressed concern that terrorists
could penetrate U.S. ports and plant bombs on liquid natural-gas tankers or in
tank fields. Only 2 percent of the 14 million cargo containers that enter U.S.
ports each year are inspected.
"We haven't done
anything," said Hollings, the sponsor of rail and port security measures
currently hung up in a House-Senate conference. "We flunked the course on port
security. We flunked the course on rail security."
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