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Feb 21, 2008 6:00 am US/Pacific
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U.S. Airport Security Questions Persist
DENVER, Co.
The images of the 9/11 hijackers passing through airport security remain etched in our national conscience.
After the tragic events of that day, the federal government took over the job of passenger inspection. Each and every hand-carried bag is examined by trained workers hired by the Transportation Security Administration.
But, using a hidden camera, CBS4 found that hundreds of people who work at Denver International Airport are passing through a checkpoint into the airport's secure area every day without being examined, and the TSA's rules allow it.
A man CBS4 interviewed who wished to remain anonymous is among these workers whose bags aren't checked.
"You could be carrying a gun?" CBS4 investigator Rick Sallinger asked him.
"I could pretty much be carrying anything I wanted to through there," he said.
At the employee entrances to DIA's so-called "sterile area" each person must show their ID badge and apply their finger to a biometric print reader that allows them to pass through a turnstile.
Each worker is given a background check and security assessment before being issued a DIA identification badge.
There is a guard hired by the city (not a TSA trained worker) at the checkpoint. Though the guard could easily inspect the workers, in CBS4's undercover video the two times the hidden camera passed through, that person doesn't even look up.
There are X-ray machines and metal detectors there, but they were roped off during CBS4's investigation. The employees and their bags were going right around them without inspection.
"It's pretty scary to think what I could get through, and getting a badge was not that hard," the worker told CBS4.
After departing from the checkpoint, the workers and their uninspected bags are carried onto a bus for transport to the concourses. The employees then are let off on the airport tarmac, within a matter of feet from planes and baggage carts. No guards are visible.
The route then takes the workers through a code-locked door and into the airport terminal, up the escalators and onto the concourse.
The importance of tight security is made painfully obvious by the collection at DIA of items that people have tried to pass through passenger TSA checkpoints and which were confiscated. They include knives of every shape and size.
But at one employee entrance the airport says checks are only done randomly, as required by TSA regulations.
TSA administrator Kip Hawley was in Denver this week, and even he had to be inspected at passenger checkpoints. Sallinger asked him if it "makes sense that hundreds of bags and individuals pass through employee screening every day without being inspected."
"Yes, I think it does," Hawley told CBS4. "I think you have to look at a layered system of security and you could say let's stop everybody who works at this airport and go through their lunch box and look for dangerous objects."
He says that would take resources away from the passenger checkpoints and divert efforts to where workers have had background checks.
Plus, you may not seem them, but the TSA has roving patrols that can stop airport employees and others at random for security checks.
The question remains, is that good enough? Apparently Congress isn't sure. It has mandated that tests for tighter screening of employees take place at seven airports. DIA is one of them.
One Congresswoman called the failure to screen all employees like installing an "expensive home security system and leaving the back door wide open."
In the tests, DIA will use behavior awareness training, biometrics and portable screening equipment.