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American Morning

Do Airports Have Tools They Need to Keep Passengers and Planes Safe?

Aired December 28, 2001 - 07:16   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Many U.S. airports remain on high alert and the case of the accused shoe bomber has emphasized that need. But do airports have the tools they need to keep passengers and planes safe?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Random x-rays of airline passengers' shoes, it was the aviation industry's first response to the new threat that passengers could carry explosives not in luggage, but on their bodies. Travelers immediately saw shortcomings.

UNIDENTIFIED TRAVELER: I just hope that nobody hides them in their pants the next time.

KOCH: Closing this security loophole won't be easy. Technology to detect explosives on passengers is still in the testing phase. One controversial method is an electronic strip search called body scanning. It uses low intensity x-rays to see through clothing and is now used at major airports by the U.S. Customs Service to search potential smugglers.

Another technology, walk through detectors that puff air onto a passenger and can dislodge trace amounts of explosives, trapping them for chemical analysis. Developers say it is 99 percent accurate.

BROOK MILLER, BARRINGER INSTRUMENTS: I think that the nature of the technology that's used in these machines is such that it would be extremely difficult to sort of get around it.

KOCH: For now the FAA says it has 180 bomb sniffing dogs deployed at 39 airports that can check passengers. That, along with handheld detection units now used to scan luggage. But there is concern those assets will be needed more elsewhere, screening checked luggage for explosives. The Aviation Security Act requires that but doesn't mandate that passengers themselves be better screened for bombs.

LARRY JOHNSON, COUNTER TERRORISM ANALYST: It's still a piecemeal approach, in my view. You've got to have this comprehensive design from the ground up, standard procedures across-the-board, no assumptions and we're going to be a couple of years getting there. KOCH: The head of the international security firm that flagged Richard Reid to French authorities says such high risk passengers should be more carefully searched.

LIOR ZOUKER, CEO, ICTS SECURITY: No hidden place. Not on his body, not on his belongings, not on his shoes should be there and not discovered, not found out.

KOCH (on camera): But passengers have already complained about intrusive pat downs so airlines will have to address the new threat with what they have on hand, perhaps leaving travelers vulnerable until the new technology is ready.

Kathleen Koch, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Authorities have retraced Richard Reid's steps back to a mosque in London, but Muslim leaders there say they've been warning authorities for years about actions of some extremists inside their community.

CNN's Matthew Chance with more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): British Muslims at prayer in a London mosque. With the links to Richard Reid, the man accused of trying to blow up a flight to the United States, has come concern and self-scrutiny. Muslim leaders and academics here say their schools and mosques are being targeted as recruitment grounds by Islamic extremists.

MUSTAFA ALANI, ROYAL UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE: They have no control over every Muslim here but they have a control of a very small minority of young people who are actually, now they have the ideas of revolutionaries ideas, the ideas of a jihad. And this is really, on the long-term it is really very, the Muslim community really have a justifiable concern of the young generation in the United Kingdom.

CHANCE: Its moderate leader, who says he's been warning police of Islamic militants for years, blames not a rise in just hard line teachings, but also a failure by British authorities to keep tags on those most susceptible to recruitment into militant groups.

ABDUL HAQQ BAKER, LEADER, BRIXTON MOSQUE: There is no infrastructure that is in place in the society for individuals that just fall out of the loop or out of a community and to trace where they're going. And it's very easy for extremists to latch hold of such individuals in their classes and study circles to propagate their views.

CHANCE: Concerns have been raised over some single faith schools in Britain and community leaders say militant Islamic groups have been running after school classes to teach younger children a radical brand of Islam. All this a threat, they say, to the public at large and to the image of Islam in Britain in particular.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHANCE: Well, Miles, you join me here at the Brixton mosque in south London, the mosque, of course, where Richard Reid is known to have attended. It's also known that Zacarias Moussaoui on occasion attended this mosque, too. Those links, though, despite those links, the leaders of this mosque say that the overwhelming number of the people who come to worship here are very moderate in their views and there has been outrage expressed here not just about the rise of Islamic militancy in Britain, but generally, and the leaders of this mosque say they're helping police with their inquiries to try and track down those who have been inciting, planning or even carrying out terrorist acts -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Matthew, do you have any sense of how big a group that is?

CHANCE: Well, certainly Abdul Haqq Baker, the leader of this Brixton mosque, said that he knows of about possibly as many as a thousand individuals that could be closely linked with the very few mosques in the country that have been preaching a radical brand of Islam, perhaps inciting the followers towards violence and really creating an atmosphere of militancy. He said he's been informing the authorities and the police for several years now about the activities of these militant elements within British Islam.

He said he's been very disappointed, though, that more action hasn't been taken. His hope and certainly the hope of many moderate Muslims in Britain now is that the police will pay more attention to this kind of information -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Matthew Chance in London, thank you very much.

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