The watchdog function of the media is not what it used to be, but every once in awhile, they do something commendable. Less than a week after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Sixty Minutes aired a shocking expose of how the Federal Aviation Administration, FAA, has been deceiving the public about the quality of security at the airports under its control. They interviewed Steve Elson, who worked for three years, up until 1999, testing airport security as a member of a secret FAA unit called the Red Team.

      He and four others traveled from airport to airport checking the effectiveness of their security systems. They found that the safeguards, human and technical, now in place could not prevent determined hijackers from boarding airliners with weapons and bombs. The effectiveness of the system has been tested by other FAA teams, but Steve Elson said that those tests were useless. The announced results only give the public a false sense of security.

      He said, “The FAA does a lot of testing. These are basically designed for the airports and the airlines to pass, so the results look good.” He said airport and airline security people are frequently informed of the tests in advance. They are even told what they should be looking for ? test objects appproved by the FAA. Elson claimed that devices “have been developed by the FAA, to test different stations in a screening checkpoint, to check the metal detectors.” Under those conditions the objects are detected over ninety percent of the time.

      Elson said the results of his team were just the opposite. They got prohibited items past the guards over ninety percent of the time. He said the official tests were a joke. As an example, he cited a bomb test in which the bomb was a couple of sticks of dynamite wired to a big clock and carried in an empty bag. He said he asked FAA headquarters “Do we have a memorandum of agreement with the terrorists that they promise to use a big bomb, very obvious in an empty bag?”

      He said he had experimented with a “sophisticated, difficult-to-detect explosive device that was much more representative of something a terrorist might use.” It was detected only once in fifty or more tests, and even then, he said, “I was able to talk my way out of it and get away, without being caught.” Other tests have confirmed Elson’s findings. At one major airport the FAA found that in 450 tests the testers were caught only four times. They got into ramp areas and aircraft holds. They were able to plant fake explosives in suitcases, carry-on luggage, and catering carts.

      Dan Boelsch, who ran the private security operation at Dulles Airport until last February, told Sixty Minutes that ninety percent of his employees were foreigners. Some had been in this country less than a year, not long enough for background checks to be of much value. The company he worked for had been charged with supplying job applicants with phony diplomas, falsifying test scores and lying about background checks. If Steve Elson is as good as he claims to be, he ought to be in charge of revamping security at the FAA.

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