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CNN Live At Daybreak
House Passes Aviation Security Bill Preferred by President
Aired November 02, 2001 - 05:29 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.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: President Bush is urging party leaders to work out a compromise on airport security. And as CNN's National Correspondent Kate Snow reports, it all boils down to who will hire and fire security screeners.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On this vote, the ayes are 214; the nays are 218. The amendment is not agreed to.
KATE SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): By just four votes, the House rejected the democratic version of the airport security bill, instead delivering the president what he wanted -- federal oversight of airport security screening with the option of using private companies to do the job.
REP. JOHN THUNE (R), SOUTH DAKOTA: The bottom line is public safety. The president of the United States has asked for the authority to decide whether or not at various airports that end, public safety is better achieved by the use of federal employees or by the use of private contractors.
SNOW: But winning that argument was a struggle. Democrats railed against the Republican approach and pushed hard to make security screeners at the nation's largest airports federal employees.
REP. PETER DEFAZIO (D), OREGON: They're going to take the private security employees, the same ones that are failing us today, some of them are even convicted felons, some are illegal aliens, but they're going to put federal uniforms on them -- they're even going to deputize them, but guess what, they're not going to be federal law enforcement. They're trying to fool the American public.
SNOW: They nearly won, but six Democrats sided with the president and Republican leaders put enormous pressure on their own, according to one congressman, offering favors, money for projects back home in exchange for votes. At the White House the president made a personal appeal to the undecided.
REP. SHERWOOD BOEHLERT (R), NEW YORK: I'll tell you who's right in this case.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The president.
BOEHLERT: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did he say to you?
BOEHLERT: Well, he -- he told us how important it is to deal with this issue in a timely manner.
SNOW: The bill calls for stronger cockpit doors, air marshals on flights, screening for checked baggage, background checks for non Americans seeking flight training at aviation schools and to pay for security enhancements, passengers would pay a fee, $2.50 per one-way trip.
(on camera): Most of those safety measures are also in a bill already passed by the Senate, but the key difference goes back to who does security screening. The Senate version calls for federal employees. The House version does not. Congress will have to work on a compromise before sending a bill to the president.
Kate Snow, CNN, Capitol Hill.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, so what is best for the aviation industry and how much is all of this going to cost and who's going to pay for it?
Well, joining us this morning from our London bureau is Aviation Industry Consultant Daniel Solon. Good morning Mr. Solon, good to see you. Thank you for coming in and talking with us this morning.
DANIEL SOLON, AVIATION INDUSTRY CONSULTANT: Good morning to you and nice to be here.
HARRIS: What do you make, then, of this debate from your position overseas, watching it from the outside? And what do you make of the debate that we've been watching happen between the Senate version and the House version that passed and how it all hinged upon whether or not these checkers at the airports are going to be federal employees or not.
SOLON: Well I find it a little bizarre that since obviously everybody's main concern is that security should be absolutely as tight as possible, that we get into some sort of argument about in effect how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, whether this ought to be done through the private sector or as federal employees.
I think the one thing that's got to be absolutely rigidly controlled is the quality of the personnel that are hired. We do not necessarily want to create an additional bureaucracy and that's the hazard of having people on -- directly on the federal payroll.
At the same time, it's very clear that tight as possible standards have got to be imposed, if it's going to be done through the private sector because there's no doubt that they've had serious lapses up until now. HARRIS: Well that's part of the problem, and one of the reasons why there is something of a crisis in confidence in having private contractors handle it because they were handling it before, and there were so many lapses in the past. How is it that you -- are you confident -- would you be confident that you could guarantee standards through private contractors even though they wouldn't necessarily be federal employees in these cases?
SOLON: Well I think the analogy is possibly the fact that you have private contractors manufacturing what's safe for the Defense Department. Not everybody who's making weapons -- in fact very few people who are making weapons are in fact are on the federal payroll. I realize the analogy limps a little bit because obviously this is a situation where you're going to have a lot of screeners. They're probably going to have to be trained or retrained in the case of people who are already doing it to make sure that they meet very, very exacting standards.
And certainly by comparison with the level of security that's usually available at European airports, I think United States has been historically pretty lax before the 11th of September.
HARRIS: Yes, well, and that's what's been talked about quite a bit of late here -- the comparisons to the systems overseas and Europe and in Israel, in particular, where we have seen how tight security is there. What keeps -- I guess -- what keeps it from turning into a poisonous situation in European airports, where companies who actually are subcontracting are not necessarily falling prey to the normal company incentives to make money by keeping costs low and hiring the lowest qualified workers to do these sorts of jobs -- what keeps that from happening in Europe?
SOLON: Well one of the issues over here is that it is typically a situation in which people view the security screening as an entry level job in a career pattern that will take them on up the ladder. In other words, this is not simply an alternative to being hired by McDonald's or some other fast-food low-cost let's say a supermarket checkout job.
These are people who start in as screeners at airports and may move on up through the ranks of the airport management, or may find themselves managing security for not just airports, but factories and other areas. So it is really seen in effect, it's like joining the army as a private, but the prospect is that you can move on up through the ranks and eventually be a captain or a major or a colonel.
HARRIS: What about the European traveling public? Do you see them reacting the same way you see the American traveling public reacting and demanding, as far as security goes, do you see the same sorts of pushes and pulls there?
SOLON: Well I think first of all because in a number of European countries you've already had security problems of one kind or another. Here in the U.K. there's the IRA problem. In Spain they've had the ETA terrorism. So that it's not unusual and the public are inclined to be used to the idea that they see police or security officers with some machine guns on patrol -- this kind of thing, which is a little unu -- well more than a little unusual -- in the United States prior to the September 11th atrocity).
And I think also that there is the further element that air travel within at least continental Europe is much more an option than it is in the United States. The distances are smaller. There is a very effective and reasonably priced -- although taxpayer financed -- rail system with very, very fast trains in at least some of the more advanced countries. So that having to get on an airplane in order to travel let's say six or 700 miles is not necessarily the only option that exist for Europeans. So they're more accustomed to alternatives.
HARRIS: Yes, different options there. Finally this morning, let me ask you this Mr. Solon, who pays for the security in systems there in Europe? I mean we're talking here about maybe a surcharge of 2.50 per ticket, which I guess one congressman is less than a latte, but there is somebody, at some point, who's going to have to pay for this. How does that work out over in Europe?
SOLON: Well it varies per country. I think usually it's financed through some form of taxation because many of the European airport authorities are in fact government-owned. Others like BAA, here in the U.K. are private company -- shareholder owned companies -- and in most cases, there will be a subcontracting, two-way specialist security firm. There are airport departure charges, which generally are not specifically allocated precisely X amount of security, X amount to other issues. But it's taken out of some kind of common pool, if you will.
I think it's entirely reasonable though that the people who use the system for whom the security is most important do, in fact, pay -- i.e., the passengers, ultimately in this case. They may not see it necessarily separately within their ticket price.
HARRIS: Alright, there you have it. Daniel Solon, thank you very much for your insight this morning, joining us from London.
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