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CNN Live At Daybreak
America's New War: Security Still Needs to Tighten at Airports
Aired September 20, 2001 - 07:50 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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, though, it's time to talk a little business. The airlines have to worry about simply staying in business right now. Last Tuesday's attacks have hit the airlines very hard. United Airlines says the cutback in the flight schedules will force them to layoff some 20,000 employees. American Airlines will also cut at least 20,000 jobs. The layoffs will include management and support staff at American, American Eagle and TWA.
And the problems are not limited to just U.S. airlines. Europe's biggest airline, British Airways, announced this morning that it will cut 7,000 jobs.
Security at the nation's airports is visibly tighter after last week's terrorist attacks. But at Boston's Logan Airport, where two of the planes involved in last Tuesday's attacks took off, some workers say security is still dangerously lax.
Bill Delaney explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At airports around the country, as at Boston's Logan Airport, security in a country now hungry for it.
(on camera): Many who work here at Logan say sure, security is tighter now than in years, maybe tighter than ever before. But they say there are still dangerous gaps new FAA guidelines have not closed.
(voice-over): Several Logan employees say there's still remarkable access to jet ways, runways, aircraft. Access codes established to open sensitive doors at Logan were for days penciled in on the wall beside security keypads until finally painted over, says this long time employee.
UNIDENTIFIED AIRPORT EMPLOYEE: They changed the majority of the codes on the doors to get into the jet ways, to get into different security areas. Now they were changed two days ago, three days ago and there's already a couple of spots where the new numbers have been written beside the keypunch area.
DELANEY (on camera): What does that allow you access to?
UNIDENTIFIED AIRPORT EMPLOYEE: The aircraft, from an already secured area into an aircraft.
DELANEY (voice-over): Among several conversations with Logan employees deeply concerned about security at the airport, most feared for their jobs if they spoke out on camera. One, though, disguised, said it would still not be difficult to get something dangerous like an explosive device onto an airplane.
(on camera): How much has changed at Logan Airport?
UNIDENTIFIED AIRPORT EMPLOYEE: The presence of security, the presence of armed marshals and state police and bomb dogs is incredible. But I believe it's a false sense of security. If somebody wants to bring down an aircraft, they can. Nothing has changed to stop that.
DELANEY: Employees at the airport with no training in security say they've now been given unprecedented responsibility. Cleaners of jets parked overnight for the first time must fill out this aircraft search list and it is the cleaners or other low level personnel who determine whether anything suspicious is on board.
UNIDENTIFIED AIRPORT EMPLOYEE: They want them to look inside the magazine racks, inside every compartment that we normally wouldn't and they're being asked to sign off a security check sheet that says that that plane is secure, that nothing was found.
DELANEY (on camera): Cleaners?
UNIDENTIFIED AIRPORT EMPLOYEE: Cleaners. Some of the airlines, they have their land personnel do that, the guys who do the baggage. Some personnel, some of the airlines they're having the gate agents do that.
DELANEY: But not security personnel signing off security checklists?
UNIDENTIFIED AIRPORT EMPLOYEE: No security personnel.
DELANEY (voice-over): And even in the wake of the hijackings, not all domestic nor international baggage, employees at the airport say, is scanned. FAA and Logan officials declined repeated requests to comment on the security situation there except to say they are going beyond new FAA guidelines. But at the airport where the jets that hit the World Trade Center lifted off, some employees say not enough has changed.
Bill Delaney, CNN, Boston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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