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CNN Live At Daybreak

America's New War: Airport Security

Aired September 26, 2001 - 07:06   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: On to what is going on in the Middle East, despite renewed violence, Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat report some progress today in talks aimed at reaching a lasting cease-fire. The two sides agreed to resume full security cooperation and to exert what a joint statement calls "a maximum effort to sustain the cease-fire."

The meeting had been canceled four times by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who charged that Arafat was not doing enough to honor a cease-fire. The U.S. had viewed the Peres-Arafat meeting as a crucial step in drawing Arab and Muslim states into its anti-terror alliance. Peres and Arafat met just hours after three Israeli soldiers were wounded in an explosion near the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza.

Across the nation today, airports have been taking steps to increase security.

Still, as CNN Boston bureau chief Bill Delaney reports, there are serious questions about just how effective the measures are at the airport where the two planes were hijacked September 11.

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BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Among questions now being raised in Congress and beyond about U.S. airports, the danger of what detective novels call ``an inside job.'' Could airport employees, insiders, help outsiders gain access to an airplane? No question about it, says this long time employee at Boston's Logan Airport, from which 10 hijackers flew.

UNIDENTIFIED AIRPORT WORKER: The people that are supposed to be on the airplanes, the caterers, the cleaners, the fuelers, the ramp baggage personnel, the flight attendants, the gate agents all have total access to these airplanes without any security people around.

DELANEY (on camera): None of that has changed since the new guidelines came out?

UNIDENTIFIED AIRPORT WORKER: None of that has changed.

DELANEY (voice-over): Aircraft particularly vulnerable when parked overnight.

(on camera): Who oversees all these people that are in and out of the airplane all night?

UNIDENTIFIED AIRPORT WORKER: Nobody. Nobody. Those planes sit at the gate and there's nobody there to oversee them. The security presence is all on the outside of security. What's going to stop somebody from packing a whole bag of dynamite or any sort of explosive or a time bomb and put it underneath to go off?

DELANEY (voice-over): Officials at Boston's airport say they're exceeding new FAA guidelines. In a statement, Logan Airport officials listed several new precautions, including more uniformed and plainclothes security personnel in all areas, and fewer access points to secure areas.

This employee, though, feels the new measures fail to address people with access now, already cleared, who could be lured by a bribe to leave something on a plane. An American Airlines official reflecting standards through the airline industry sat by the FAA, said extremely thorough background checks are conducted for all employees with access to planes.

(on camera): The backgrounds of all employees at U.S. airports, the American Airlines official continued, are now being re-examined by government mandate. The vast majority may be devoted to their work and to security, but questions persist about who should have access to airports and the planes that fly out of them.

Bill Delaney, CNN, Boston.

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