It’s been more than a year since watchdogs warned Capitol Hill that our massive homeland security bureaucracy was neglecting these areas of our airports. Grandmas, babies and war heroes are routinely groped, manhandled and humiliated in the name of transportation safety. But untold numbers of ground personnel still have easy, breezy access to airplanes and luggage.
In August, seven baggage handlers at Kennedy Airport were arrested after being videotaped stealing jewelry, cash, watches and computers from passenger luggage. In June, a baggage handler at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport was arrested after using his credentials to bypass airport security and carry backpacks containing what he believed were drugs and guns onto commercial flights.
By the feds’ own admission, legions of workers who were grandfathered into the system may yet be traipsing around restricted areas of our nation’s airports — doing God knows what. TSA does not keep systematic records on airport security breaches reported. “I’m going to tell you right now that the next incident is going to come from the ground,” Rep. Chip Cravaack, R-Minn., testified last spring. “It’s going to come from the shadow of the aircraft, not from the terminal. I’m telling you that.”
Rest assured, however, that we are as vulnerable as ever to the old tried-and-true scheme of sending hijackers aboard planes to take them down. The U.S. Airline Pilots Association spelled it all out in a memo obtained by WTSP Tampa Bay reporter Mike Deeson last week.
“Bringing down an airliner continues to be the Gold Standard of terrorism,” the document warned U.S. Airways pilots. “If anyone thinks that our enemies have ‘been there, done that’ and are not targeting commercial aviation — think again. There have been several cases recently throughout the industry of what appear to be probes, or dry runs, to test our procedures and reaction to an inflight threat.”
The assessment bluntly described “a group of Middle-Eastern males” who boarded a flight at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., for Orlando, Fla., on Sept. 2. Onboard, the men made “a scene”: running toward the flight deck door, loudly opening and shutting overhead bins, and making what appeared to be a coordinated attempt to distract flight attendants. Federal air marshals were concerned enough about the behavior to “make their presence known.” The memo notes that a security search found “evidence of tampering” on the plane.
It’s just the latest suspected dry run since the 9/11 attacks.
Feckless feds keep admonishing the rest of us to “say something” if we “see something.” But what good will it do if they’re asleep at the wheel, blind to corruption and deaf to jihad?
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