Doubts Linger on Airport Security

WASHINGTON —  The airport security legislation that President Bush plans to sign Monday has the potential to plug holes in today’s porous air transportation system, but many of its deadlines and other provisions are grossly unrealistic, security experts say.

And while the hastily drafted legislation, which received final congressional action Friday, provides a blueprint for reform, it leaves some decisions on how reform will be carried out in the hands of a federal agency that does not yet exist.

“It’s certainly going to be a step forward from where we are now,” said Gerry Kauvar, staff director of a recent presidential commission on airline security and an analyst at the Rand Corp. “But performance is the issue.”

In the coming months, the switch from private security firms to a federal work force could prove chaotic. And the law’s longer-term goals--carefully screening carry-on luggage, scanning checked bags for explosives and developing an array of higher safety standards--could take years to meet.

If public attention wanders, as it has in the past, this reform could go the way of others--a victim of bureaucratic inertia and special-interest lobbying. Airport security laws enacted in 1997 and 1998 have been all but ignored.

And some worry that by authorizing millions of dollars for screening passengers and baggage, the new law glides over other areas of vulnerability to terrorism, including air cargo, mail and the security of airports and planes on the ground.

While good as far as it goes, this law covers “only part of what needs to be done,” Kauvar said. “If you devote all your attention to one area, you’re sure making it easy for the bad guys.”

Meanwhile, during a transition period that coincides with the busiest air travel season of the year, federal officials and the airlines may face a painful choice: temporarily setting aside the new security measures or accepting long, costly delays in processing passengers and baggage.

“Doing security right is, by definition, going to impact adversely on airline schedules,” said Raymond Kelly, the newly appointed police commissioner of New York and a longtime security specialist.

“I see this as being a vastly confusing transition,” said Douglas Laird, a former security chief at Northwest Airlines who works at BGI International, an aviation consultant.

Public attention has focused on the screeners who monitor passengers and their carry-on baggage. The new legislation calls for higher personnel selection standards, more training and closer supervision, as well as better pay and benefits.

Few of today’s 28,000 screeners are expected to meet the new standards. Recruiting new screeners, completing the required background checks, training them and putting the new system in place add up to a daunting task.

“Where is the personnel going to come from?” asked Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn, head of the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ task force on airport security. “How is that going to happen?”

Some experts think the government will end up grandfathering in many of today’s screeners just to keep the system operating day to day.

But the private companies being replaced by the federal government may not go quietly: They are preparing to demand about $400 million in compensation.

“Essentially, I’ve been nationalized,” said William Vassell, chairman and founder of New York-based Command Security, a publicly traded company that provides security at Los Angeles International Airport and others.

“I started this business when I was 21,” he said. “All of my worth is in this business. So, yes, we are studying reparations.”

The law’s goals as well as its means could also pose problems.

For example, it requires that within 60 days every piece of checked baggage be examined for explosives. Since no major airport is equipped to do that now, federal officials are empowered to improvise, using such things as sniffer dogs and hand searches by military personnel.

That, experts say, is a prescription for near-paralysis at airports. With hundreds of thousands of checked bags passing through each major airport every day, finding enough human searchers and sniffer dogs to keep the carousels turning would be difficult.

Similarly, the law requires that within one year all checked luggage be examined by explosives-detecting machines. Airports have nowhere near enough machines to do that now, and manufacturers say they cannot produce enough machines to meet such a deadline. It is estimated that it will take about 2,000 machines--at about $1 million each--to screen every checked bag in the United States.

A recent assessment of a major airport equipped with state-of-the-art technology found that the machines could examine no more than 60 to 100 bags an hour, partly because they were not well integrated into the baggage-handling system and time was lost getting bags to the machines.

Nationwide, U.S. airports handle about 2 million pieces of checked baggage a day.

Another major airport uses a particular model of bomb-detecting machine that has proved so trouble-prone that it requires as much as six hours of maintenance a day. As a result, the machines have frequently not been used at all.

Under the best circumstances, some specialists believe, it will be 2005 or later before all checked baggage can be screened, not 2002 as the law specifies.

Not everyone views the future with apprehension.

“Overall, I’m more optimistic about this legislation than some of the critics,” former Transportation Secretary Federico Pena said Friday.

“If the legislation gives the security czar lots of flexibility in terms of establishing salary levels, benefits, moving people around, attracting people to the busiest locations and paying them appropriately, I think this will be easier than some people have suggested,” he said.

Even Pena, however, said the devil is in the details.

For instance, he sees a potential bottleneck on the background checks required for screeners.

“Historically the government has not had enough FBI agents to do the work,” he said.

“The administration is going to have to beef up their FBI security clearance personnel and make a real commitment to make sure that when 10,000 names are submitted for security clearance, that that can be done very quickly.”

Some members of Congress also expressed optimism.

“We are going to beat the terrorists,” said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas). “We are closing this loophole in our homeland security.”

And Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), who fought hard for screening checked baggage, said, “I’m just happy as a clam at high tide that this got done.”

Beyond the specific problems, many experts say the fundamental challenge will be finding ways to create a work force that maintains its focus against a threat that is potentially catastrophic but seldom materializes.

Some security specialists are not encouraged by the fact that the task has been entrusted to the Department of Transportation.

The law calls for establishing a new Transportation Security Administration inside the department. But critics say the Federal Aviation Administration’s record of tolerating chronic problems does not augur well for the new agency.

Under the Transportation Department, the FAA has been slow to make security decisions in the past. A case in point, Rand’s Kauvar said, is what has happened with a new high-tech system called “threat image projection,” which offered better ways to test the effectiveness of airport screeners.

The device attaches to existing X-ray machines. As a bag passes through the regular scanner, the system can project the image of a knife or gun or some other piece of contraband onto the security checker’s viewing screen so that the item appears to be inside the bag.

Threat image projection can be used to spot inattentive screeners and to identify and reward those who are watching carefully. It has been approved by the FAA but not deployed, apparently because it would have raised costs for private screening companies.

Even if the monitoring of screeners is expanded, much will depend on how rigorous the new procedures are.

At present, the FAA sends bags through the system containing things that should trigger action by screeners. But critics say the tests make the suspicious items too easy to spot: “a Big Ben alarm clock wired to a piece of broom handle, or a big metal gun,” as one security specialist described them.

To deliver what the new law promises will require a new culture, critics say. Patrick V. Murphy, former head of police departments in New York and Washington, said the new system needs to focus on ways to enhance security workers’ motivation and job satisfaction.

“It’s important to try to make the jobs more interesting, try to be creative and make it where the security people can interact with other agencies or the public,” he said.

Police departments face similar problems of boredom and deadening routine, he added, and many now try to be “more sensitive to the fact that some people are more cut out for some jobs than others are. . . . You can get better quality people if you let them know the job can be a stepping stone to something more interesting and rewarding.”

The U.S. Customs Service offers such a career track. And it uses a variety of personal rewards to keep agents sharp in monotonous jobs, said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the agency.

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Times staff writers Megan Garvey, Matea Gold, Jack Nelson and Edmund Sanders contributed to this report.

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