WASHINGTON -- The arrest of a former airport worker in an alleged plot to attack New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport could prompt greater scrutiny of the 1 million people who work in secure airport areas, congressional aides and aviation officials said Monday.
A House committee is expected today to approve a pilot program that would require employees at seven airports to be screened for weapons as they come to work, said Debby McElroy, lobbyist for the Airports Council International, an airport trade group.
A successful six-month test could lead to widespread screening of workers at airports -- a notion some security experts call essential but which airport officials have said could create massive lines at security checkpoints.
Airport workers face background checks and random searches by roving patrols of screeners. Those searches have increased in the last year amid growing concern about insider threats.
The alleged plot to blow up JFK terminals, jet-fuel tanks and a fuel pipeline shows the "significant security vulnerability" posed by workers, said Rep. David Price, D-N.C. One of the four suspects, Russell Defreitas was a baggage handler at Kennedy with Evergreen International Aviation until 1995, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Saturday.
Defreitas used videos he shot in January and his knowledge of airport operations from his prior employment to identify targets, the FBI said.
The alleged plot is significantly different than the kinds of threats that Congressional leaders seek to halt with the pilot program, which mainly seeks to stop current workers from smuggling weapons into airports.
Still, it "underscores the need to closely supervise and monitor access to sensitive areas in our airports," said Price, chairman of the subcommittee that sets homeland security spending.
The House Appropriations Committee will vote on the pilot today as part of a measure setting homeland security spending next year. The full House will consider the measure next week, and approval is likely, McElroy said.
The Senate also must approve any pilot program to screen airport workers, and that approval is more likely after the arrests, said Dena Graziano, spokeswoman for the House Homeland Security Committee. "It would send a really bad message after JFK if the pilot (program) was stripped out," Graziano said.
A coalition of nine aviation groups is lobbying Congress for a different type of pilot program that would test a variety of methods for improving scrutiny of airport workers. "This is a more robust program," said McElroy of the Airports Council, which is joined by the Air Transport Association, a major airline trade group.
The coalition suggests toughening background checks, using more technology such as security cameras at employee entrances, and training more airport workers to observe suspicious behavior.
Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley endorsed such an approach on Capitol Hill in April, calling it "more rigorous" than screening all workers because it is less predictable.
With random searches of airport workers, "no employee can say with certainty they will not be searched on any given day," TSA spokesman Christopher White said Monday.
Airport-security consultant Rich Roth questioned the wisdom of screening all airport workers, and said that would not have prevented the alleged terror plot at Kennedy. "There's nothing in Defreitas' background that would have pointed to any problem," Roth said.
Roth said screening all airport workers could irritate them and make them less inclined to report trouble.
Aviation-security consultant Douglas Laird called screening all airport workers a "long overdue" way of closing "a terrible vulnerability."
