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CNN Saturday Morning News

How Safe Are Our Airports?

Aired July 06, 2002 - 07:13   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MEADE: We're going to talk now about airport security and more on that. Talking to us now is CNN security analyst Kelly McCann. He is in Washington this morning.

Good morning to you, Kelly. Appreciate your time. Nice to see you.

KELLY MCCANN, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

MEADE: So let's talk about -- yes, how much security will people put up with, I guess, is the bottom line here.

MCCANN: True enough. I mean, anything is possible. If people want it to be an airtight package, it can certainly be done. However, there'll always be congregations of people. Years ago, you can remember when Mir Aimal Kansi conducted the shooting outside CIA headquarters, indicative of that.

If we push the perimeter to the curb, then there is a congregation of people waiting to get through that screening to get into the ticket counter, so that becomes a lucrative target area.

If you push it further to the ex -- the confines of the airport property, then people are lining up in queue with their vehicles while they're searched, et cetera, and you have lines of cars that are lucrative.

There has to be an acceptable risk. If you bounce it against the horrifying figures on convenience stores, for example, more people have been killed in convenience stores, and we haven't done anything there. So everyone again needs to push back for a second, take a breath, and understand the overwhelming amount of money that would be required to do this.

MEADE: You know, yes, money may be the bottom line there, right? And also, you know, the delays too, at the current check-in, is it needed? I mean, is it really doing anything in light of what we've seen there?

MCCANN: In my opinion, until you do behavioral screening, where questions are asked similar as they do in Ben Gurion Airport, where questions are asked specifically to make someone emote, it evokes a response, and that is looked at and analyzed, and then you're funneled through the system, no. The fact that you look at my license five times, it's the same license, it's not telling you anything different.

So we still have a ways to go on this.

MEADE: You know, you talked a little bit about it, about money being possibly part of this. How much is money a part of the security or the issues that we're seeing at airports?

MCCANN: It's always about money. And people have to understand that. It's a very naive thing to say, No, no, it's about human life. It comes out of the bottom line. The bottom line makes this world go around. It could cripple our government and our airlines right now. So, I mean, it has to do specifically with money. That's why efficiency over anything has to be the key objective.

MEADE: You know, I want to talk to you just a little bit about the breaking news that we've been talking about this morning regarding a deputy president in Afghanistan, was assassinated this morning, Abdul Qadir.

Being a security analyst yourself, what kind of security do you know would need to be in place for these folks who are leading this government in Afghanistan?

MCCANN: We run protection in very high-risk environments and have for many years. And I'll tell you right now that there had to be preoperational surveillance conducted on him in order to place him at a particular time.

In other words, the surveillants have already established a routine, they've put him at a particular place, they've considered what security is around him. They have thin combat capability, and they executed a successful assault.

So there were things that could have been picked up by surveillance detection run from the detail that were obviously not.

MEADE: You've been listening to Kelly McCann. Kelly, thanks for your time this morning. I know you're going to be spending a little bit more time with us.

And he was talking there about gunmen assassinating the Afghan vice president, Abdul Qadir, today.

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