NEWS CLIPS 

Attacks to trigger tighter airport security

By Ken Kaye
Sun-Sentinel

September 11, 2001, 9:31 PM EDT

Boarding with a weapon probably wasn’t that hard. Breaking into the cockpits and overpowering the crews likely was accomplished with relative ease.

In short, the sophisticated terrorists who executed Tuesday’s suicide attack on the United States had no problem overcoming aircraft and airport security measures.

Now, federal authorities will severely tighten security at the nation’s airports, making the process of parking, checking in and boarding more tedious and time-consuming for passengers.

Under what is essentially a wartime posture, at the busiest airports’ curbside parking and check-in will be forbidden and guards will be assigned to inspect vehicles before they enter parking garages.

Many passengers would prefer to see heightened security, even if it does make air travel more of a hassle, said Nate Vallier, a travel agent with Carlson Wagonlit Travel in Fort Lauderdale.

“Everyone’s nervous,” he said. “They are going to want answers. I don’t think the security measures are enough.”

After the smoke clears, airline and government officials will review all aspects of air travel security, from initial screenings by skycaps at curbside to whether cockpit doors need to be made as strong as bank vaults to prevent hijackings. The federal sky marshal program, placing armed agents on certain flights, may even be reinstituted.

But even with the crackdown, there are no guarantees the same thing couldn’t happen again, said Marvin Badler of Boca Raton, an aviation security consultant whose clients have included El Al, the highly secured Israeli airline.

Badler said he has sneaked past security checkpoints with weapons in his possession numerous times. He thinks Tuesday’s perpetrators probably did the same.

“You can have all the security in the world, but nothing is 100 percent,” he said. “The answer is to stop these people before they get on the aircraft.”

Badler said suspicious people need to be stopped and questioned. Federal officials say they have been encouraging airlines to do so for more than 25 years under a “profiling” program.

The problem, Badler said, is that the people asking the questions aren’t trained and “don’t know what they’re doing.”

“I’ll check in and a red cap is asking the questions,” Badler said. “But he doesn’t care. He has no interest in who might be a terrorist. And he’s being paid minimum salary.”

Similarly, Badler said, airports and airlines have spent millions of dollars on highly sensitive metal and explosive detection machines, yet it is easy for terrorists to put bombs or weapons on airplanes without going through the security checkpoints.

“I’ve put suitcases on an aircraft without getting on the plane,” he said.

After a terrorist is on board a plane, if he has a weapon, he can get into the cockpit fairly easily just by threatening a flight attendant, said Robert Gandt, a retired airline pilot and aviation author.

“We may never know how they commandeered the planes,” he said. “But they probably killed the pilots and took over the cockpit is my guess.”

Investigators were sifting through the debris at the crash scenes Tuesday searching for the planes’ voice and flight data recorders, which may provide details on how they were hijacked.

Gandt and government officials think the perpetrators might have been skilled pilots as it would have been difficult for a novice to control a plane toward a target, let alone drive the nose directly into the World Trade Center’s side.

As one measure to prevent hijackings and air rage incidents, the airline industry considered making cockpit doors more secure.

In one instance, a 250-pound Missouri carpenter broke into the cockpit of an Alaska Airlines flight from Puerto Vallarta to San Francisco in March 2000. Passengers and other crew members subdued him.

But the high cost to install secure doors quashed the idea. Further, pilots feared that rigid doors might prevent them from escaping the cockpit in case of an emergency. On the other hand El Al employs heavily armored cockpit doors, Gandt said.

Airline and airport security had been relatively lax until the 1970s, when a spate of hijackings spurred the Federal Aviation Administration to establish stiff measures, including the screening of carry-on baggage for weapons.

The terrorist attack on Pan Am Flight 103, which blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, further reinforced the need for tighter airport security, notably explosive-seeking devices.

So did the July 1996 TWA 800 disaster, which initially was thought to be an act of terrorism but was determined to be a fuel tank explosion. In the aftermath, a White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security found airport security was insufficient.

As a result, Congress approved $144 million for advanced security and inspection technology at major U.S. airports.

But pilots have never felt secure, even with the heightened procedures in place.

“We’ve always thought that airport security systems are highly flawed,” Gandt said. “They’re basically just sort of an initial roadblock. But a really sophisticated terrorist would have no trouble getting through them, as we just found out.” 

 

 

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A trip to one of the hottest Spy Stores on the East Coast, and offers you a sampling of the world's most innovative surveillance equipment available. Avuncular, glowing with self confidence, and fitted with a neatly trimmed beard and tanned face, Marvin Badler stands in stark contrast to the stereotyped image of a bounty hunter a rugged back woodsman who stirs his coffee with an index finger. However, Badler was a bounty hunter (so well known, in fact, that he consulted with Robert DeNiro in Midnight Run"). In addition, chief investigator for the New York City Department of Correction. And Security Chief of EL AL Israel Airlines, and consultant to 60 Minutes' late Harry Reasoner. Not to mention his boyhood fascination with cops, which inspired him to join the Air Force's military police, and later work for  private detective bureaus, and an insurance company, and various department stores in New York investigating employee theft and fraud. Which makes him what he is a modern-day Mata Hari. "Anyone who inspired me? No, I do everything on my own. Whatever I have is mine. Whatever I did was on my own," grins Badler from behind a desk at The Spy Mart, the high tech spy store he opened in 1992 to provide the public and law enforcement with some of the world's most sophisticated surveillance equipment. Located in  NJ, and tucked away on the second floor nook of an industrial park building, The Spy Mart serves a very select consumer market, law enforcement personal and including attorneys. "We had an attorney come in the other day:' says Badler, referring to a lawyer who recently purchased a portable voice changer. "He said he is in his office, let us say, after 5 o'clock. And he is tired of picking up the telephone and talking to his clients. So he answers the telephone as a female. He has a female voice and he says, "Mr. So and so is not here."' At $149.95, the portable voice changer offers multiple distortion settings, and a "dog bark" to simulate a pet's Presence in the background. The dog bark sounds mechanical, but realistic. enough to use in conjunction with the voice changer. For about $870 Badler sells a pen transmitter that is slim and inconspicuous enough to fit a shirt pocket. With a receiver , the user can tape record a meeting or event legally, as long as he remains a party to the conversation. For about $300.00 a pinhead microphone is available that is 10 times more sensitive than an average microphone in a tape recorder. To demonstrate its sensitivity, Badler placed a recorder on a table at one side of office and walked across the room ding nearly 20 feet away and whispered a few sentences that were bare ly audible. His voice played back without distortion. Other popular items stocked at The Spy Mart include a FAX scrambler ($2,500.00 per unit, and you need two) a fax interceptor ($1,595) , a micro-cassette recorder that's so small you can place it in your sock, portable bug detectors that vibrate against your body if there's a room bug transmitter in a room you enter (or if someone you are meeting is bugged), infrared spotlights, low light video cameras that can be hidden in just about anything, X-ray letter spray originally designed to detect letter bombs, and much more. The Spy Mart is now on the internet – www.thespymart.com & www.implexsecurityproducts.com The public can purchase not all products.