Focus 580; Aviation Security Post September 11th

Good morning and welcome to focus 580 This is our morning talk program. My name's David Inge. Glad to have you with us in this first hour of the show today will be talking about aviation security homeland security officials continue to say that commercial aviation is a prime target for terrorists since the attacks of 9/11 passenger screening certainly has been stepped up however Security experts say that we are perhaps concentrating too much on methods that were used by the terrorist in the last attack. And that leaves the system vulnerable. This morning on focus 580 in this hour we will review some of the changes in air security that have been put into place since 9/11 and our guest for this hour of the program is Mary Schiavo. She has worked in government and also is an attorney and she is a member now of the American Bar Association and works for the firm of Motley Rice LLC which is a firm that specializes in dealing with aircraft. People who have been harmed or killed in air crashes. She's a

graduate of a New York University got her law degree there. She had several post in government. She was assistant secretary of the US Department of Labor. She also served as the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation. That's between 1990 and one thousand ninety six. She then went into higher education and was Professor of aviation at Ohio State University and also a professor of public partly she was a professor of public policy at Ohio State she was Professor of aviation at also Ohio State. She is in addition to all of that a licensed private pilot and author of a book that was published a number of years ago about the air industry titled Flying Blind Flying Safe. She is joining us this morning by telephone as we talk. Question certainly are welcome. The number here in Champaign-Urbana is 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 we do also have a toll free line and that means that if it would be a long distance call for you you can use the toll free line and we'll pay for the call. So if you're listening around Illinois Indiana or if you might be

happening to be listening over the internet as long as you're in the United States you can use that toll free line as well. Eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5 3 3 3 WRAL and toll free 800 1:58 W while those are the numbers are. We have just a small technical glitch here. We will have to I think reconnect with our guest. We will do that in a moment and give you the opportunity to call in again ask questions and make comments just maybe I'll take the opportunity very quickly to mention again in the second part of the program we'll be talking about the economic policies of the Bush administration and our guest there will be Daniel Altman. He has both an economist and journalist works for The New York Times or contributing there is a columnist also with Business 2.0. He is the author of a new book which is titled A New Economy George Bush's revolutionary gamble with America's future. And it takes a look at some of the basic economic ideas of the administration probably his number one

priority when he was running for office was a tax cut. And they had in mind putting in that tax cut so they could foster savings. We'll talk about more what that will mean for the American economy. That will be an hour number two. I know we'll be talking with our guest where this part of focus 580 Mary Schiavo thank you for talking with us. Thank you my pleasure. As I mentioned we just fairly recently I think there was a hearing in Congress security. Experts were there and they were talking about this and this is the first time this whole issue of airline security I think had been really discussed since the 9/11 Commission released its recommendations and basically what these people were saying is that we have we responded to the last attack and we have been looking particularly at things like trying to make sure that passengers can't carry things on the plane that can be used as weapons. But and that and I'm sure that everybody would say that's good. However what they're saying is that we're making that off made mistake that what we're doing is we're we're we're fighting the

last war. We're not looking ahead to what the next one will be. And there are still gaps in the system places that that potential jackers terrorists could take advantage of you think that's that's an accurate statement of where we are. And accurate statement of where we are now is also an accurate statement of how we have done things literally over the last 40 years. And if you look at our safety and security regulations what you find we do is we respond to the last attack or the last tragedy if it's an accident as opposed to a terrorist attack. And that's literally how we have made our laws and regulations but unfortunately we have tied ourselves up in this in this problem in this conundrum because our federal regulatory standards require a cost benefit analysis. They require a certain cost in life for injuries or tragedy before the government and acts in a lot of that was a fallout in terms of government expenditures or what they call unfunded mandates and so it was a vicious circle. Governor was trying to say we are going to

make people spend money but the way that that comes about including local governments and state governments but the problem with that is that also means that you have to have a loss before you act which is which makes our government you know totally ineffective and also looks truly ridiculous and very vulnerable to terrorists. But that's what we did after Pan Am 103 which is the one that exploded over Lockerbie. We were focused on bombs in checked bags. Even though statistically we could see and this has been well-documented since 9/11 of course that statistically it was shown that there were still hijackings and when they occurred they were very deadly no longer was it take me to Cuba and let everybody off the plane. But it had focused on the Middle East. And it was and it was hijackers who are trying to make a statement. So that's a big problem. We have no course we don't want to leave the door open for a repeat attack or for copycat attacks. I don't want to cover all bases. Let's just look at that for a moment. The issue of people trying to carry either intentionally or accidently carrying things on planes

that either are weapons or can be used as weapons since 9/11 there's been a lot more passenger screening and there are a lot more careful about what they let on the plane at the same time though when you look at the the list of things that are allowed here and there there are things that you just shake your head at and think well isn't that a problem for example knitting needles. Maybe it's not but how well just if we look at that particular issue how well are we doing as it seems you get a lot of anecdotal evidence stories from people here and there around the country about how. How the the regulations as they exist are not being uniformly enforced. That's right that things are being uniformly enforced and of course the screeners. The screeners performance levels at least as checked by the General Accounting Office and the Office of Inspector General are not vastly greater than the screeners performance levels before. Which tells us that we're doing the same old things in the same old ways all we're looking

for now is we're looking for box cutters and pepper spray. Well before we let those things get on the plane the planes who were doing the same old thing and when we look at other countries models for example El Al they have a rotation people don't stare at the screen for hours on end they do 20 minute stints and then they rotate the jobs and so they do the job differently. And it's important for us to do obviously you have to screen to get items off people but we lost our focus because part of what was going on in 9/11 is we thought we had this. Sort of the magic profiling program on passenger screening which would highlight those who were risk. For example half of the hijackers got profiled under the passenger screening program then in place and of course it didn't work because they were looking for bombs and they and that was only one of the threats they were to look for. What would that some of the same mistakes going on now we had kept to which is the computer assisted passenger screening program that just got dumped just at the time of the congressional hearings you mentioned we dumped the new program and then we're starting over again. So

you know we do have to improve and do things differently but in force I was falling back into some of the same old traps. Well let's talk about that in the past just going for a moment because we did. We have now had a couple of different systems for trying to identify by some kind of profile people who we might want to then give further scrutiny to. And we did have the system it was called computer assisted passenger prescreening caps and then there was going to be an up. Graded of the system with they were going to call caps too. And now they've changed the name I don't know if they've actually changed what they were going to do now we're calling this the Secure Flight system but the idea basically is the same thing is that what you're is that you know that maybe you can't completely screen every single individual that might get on a plane in this country because there are so many but you might say OK are there some characteristics of an individual that would give us some reason to be suspicious of them. And from that then we might want to say well let's these of all the people getting on the plane here's five people or 10 people or whatever they were going to they were really going to take a closer

look at. And is is that something that that can work and we just have have not been very good at implementing it or is there something about the basic concept that's that's not quite right. You know it can work and that's it but we have to be prepared to do it in its fullest extent for example the the cap notion of the passenger screening looking at the people in as opposed to the objects. That's the whole basis of the El Al security. And in fact U.S. carriers operating in Europe for example use a form of the El Al security where they question individuals and they look at the individual traveler. But that's very time consuming which is why in this country we're looking to have the short cut in the short cut is that you will agree to give the airlines and the TSA for example your credit records and things like that. Again we're getting slightly misguided because the hijackers on 9/11 had credit records they had frequent flyer accounts etc.. The problem that we run

into is which is a problem that simply doesn't exist for the loud because they use some of these these screening points. But the problem that we have is is our constitutional sensitivity over things such as national origin and religion. And obviously the one of the two things you would have wanted to be able to look at on 9/11 were sort of religious Muslim extremists. Who came from the Middle East and those kinds of hot buttons. Some people say no I don't think so I think you can. You can make a difference based on the fact whether someone's a citizen or not. But the those particular points to do extra examinations of someone will under some definitions run afoul of the Constitution and it is you know in light of 9/11 it it seems fairly obvious that those things I'll be looked at but there is a very strong legal reason also why people might argue you can't look at them. Well there I think also perhaps people who work in the field of terrorism would also suggest

that if you develop that kind of a profile of the individual that you're concerned with terrorist groups will be well aware of what the profile is and that what they'll do is they'll find someone who doesn't fit the profile. And so then you have to ask the question well you know how do you cast a wider net. Well that's right and I think we've already seen that in Russia they're using you know was all it was thought that that it was always men you know you know younger middle eastern men and then they'd been using women to carry it out but of course even before 9/11 it was well documented that there had been when women terrorists and women hijackers but we saw the last two aviation attacks at least allegedly at this point they don't know for sure but it appears it was carried out by women which would certainly use the. You be the profile although curiously women often fit the profile particularly women traveling alone. Did some of the profiles even before 9/11 appear to be for drug drug carriers or drug

mules. Let me quickly reintroduce our guest for anyone who has just tuned in we're talking with Mary Schiavo. She's a former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation and also has taught public policy and was Professor of aviation at Ohio State and she's been interested in these issues for some time she is an attorney with the firm Motley Rice LLC and is also the author of a book published a number of years back titled Flying Blind Flying Safe based on some of the things that she saw during the time that she was with the Department Transportation we're talking about airline security and aviation security if you have questions you can give us a call 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5 just just pick up on one more issue and. In an issue that has I think now perhaps in a number of people's minds that has to do with these two planes these two Russian planes that went down in August. The thinking is apparently that these planes were brought down by suicide bombers who carried explosives with them perhaps on their

persons onto the plane and detonated them as a result. The two planes went down and this is I think one of these things right now that security experts point to as a very important gap in the system we have of screening passengers we're screening him for things like knives and guns. But we don't have really had anything in place to screen people for explosives carry our checked bags are screened for explosives but passengers aren't. And there are now some experiments getting people to go through detectors that would check to see if people were wearing explosives but most most passengers certainly are not. Do you consider this to be a serious problem. Well it is a serious problem and it is also one that was thought about before 9/11 there were devices that were at least in experimental phases it was almost like a sort of a sniffer device almost like a phone booth where someone would go in and would be sent for explosive just as the bags are now in the

CTX machines where they would send that right now of course if if if someone managed to put the explosives on someone in such a way that the person going through security checkpoint did not touch them because once they touched the bag if the bag was screened for explosive now we don't do 100 percent bag screening either of the carry ons for explosives. But if they touched it then you should be able to pick that up on the bag if it was on their hands. But if it was loaded in such a way that they did not contaminate anything that they touch then theoretically that's right the bags supposed to be screened for explosives even though we all know carry ons aren't. But. And then of course checked bag is supposed to be 100 percent screened at this point. But that would be certainly be a loophole now in the you know in Russia and it's kind of hit or miss. I mean some places have you know very western like conditions and security of the Moscow airport is similar to a Western

airport. But there are a lot of problems and loopholes there so you know assuming that they had to get it through on their person the some of the screening equipment is antiquated there why they had CTX machines to screen for explosives for all passengers going through. I mean that's a great unknown but certainly that would be one of the loopholes right now in this country. Well do you I guess that as I mentioned there are no in a handful of airports they're testing these sniffer machines that people walk through kind of like we now have to walk through the metal detectors. They had the problems with these machines are one they're very expensive so it could cost. I think one figure I saw something getting close to 300 million dollars to put them everywhere and then it also there's an issue that it slows down the process of getting people checked in and getting them on the plane so it's expensive. It's another delay. Do you anticipate that sometime in the future though all airports will have these machines

and either everybody or some percentage of passengers will have to go through the. Well at some point you it would hope that we have machines like that at the airport what I probably fear is the expense is so great again it will fall victim to the cost benefit analysis in other words unless and until we actually suffer this kind of a tragedy. There are federal regulations say that it may not be worth the cost which is really absurd because we've already seen this happening in our brain tells us this is a real risk and we do have to defend our country against it. But the way that the laws are made in Washington don't always make sense. So I think that we should have them and we should be building toward that system right now. Realistically it often takes another tragedy before we actually make that large of an investment and it will be a large investment. It can't let me ask you one further question and we have some callers here. It can it can be a very difficult and annoying thing to these days to travel by air.

And now it takes longer than it did before. They want you there sooner. It may take longer to get through security and so forth and it may indeed be that we're talking about things now that should be put into place that would make that process even more complicated and more difficult and I guess I wonder as people who think about airline security think about it is if is there some kind of point that they start bumping up against. That has to do with passenger resistance to things that are going to make it more complicated and more difficult and take longer to get checked in and eventually to get on the plane so you can go where to go. No I think what happened is the market starts to stratify itself and we've already seen that people who can't afford to get out of the system and obviously now are to an aviation we're talking about extremely wealthy individuals who can simply buy private jet transportation or can timeshare in a jet and we have seen a boom in that industry and in fact that in some ways is actually developed. It is encourage the

development of smaller cheaper lighter jet aircraft so more people can afford personal air transportation what we call it now we don't even call it general aviation anymore. And so there's a big move afoot for personal jet transportation which means that the market will get stratified and then of course the people you know who have to take and pay the regular commercial airline system which is MIA most of this. What we'll really just have to put up with what it takes because of the you know the very real problem which was brought to light on 9/11 which is you're just not putting the airplane and the people on the plane at risk which our regulations were content to do before 9/11. You're putting literally anything in this country or virtually the world at risk with each flight that you take off. So I think that realistically there aren't any limits as long as the threat is there for new and and more horrific kinds of terrorism. Passengers will will literally be subjected to whatever methodology is we have to try to address that whether it works extremely well and efficiently or not and the passengers are going to be subjected to

it. Are more airlines offering something for the frequent flyers that will for them speed them through the system. Well they are they're not it's very sporadic. For example some airports have put in Express first class lines where he had first class ticket are you there or else of course for the crew of course. So if you have first class ticket or business class ticket you can speed through the checkpoint I think the computerized check in is very efficient and helps tremendously. But there are some places you just plain get bogged down for example the TSA security lines or the checking in the bags them I was in L.A. L.A. a few days ago and the lines were just very very long regardless of the airline's efforts. So. There are some things it's not for frequent flyers it's for the cost of the ticket largely. But some airports have tried to do that their couple let me think where I've been recently where they had big express lines at Portland had express lines for first class Portland Oregon. Several places have a first class express line but it is still kind of

hit or miss. We are just about at a bit point here and I have a call and again I apologize for making the person wait one thing that we have to do though is this test because it is the first Tuesday of the month. This is a test of the Emergency Alert System. This message was instituted by the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. This station is participating in a required monthly path of the Illinois Emergency Alert System. This is the most developed to provide information to the public during emergencies. There was a path. And you listening to AM 580 while our balance is focused on a video our morning top

program my name is David Enge. Glad to have you with us and again our guest in this part of focus 580 is Mary Schiavo former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation someone who has been following airline issues particularly airline safety and security issues for quite a while. She has been professor of public policy at Ohio State as well as professor of aviation in the department of aerospace engineering and aviation in the College of Engineering also at Ohio State and she's now an attorney in the private practice questions welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5 here we have a caller in Champagne County. Thank you for being patient go ahead. Sure. Well I think there's more to talk about in the frequent flyer in this and I thought there was a program I mean we're insisting that Europeans have biometrics and that. Frequent flyers and I think a lot of people are but use planes for people that use them a lot and if they were expedited then the people that don't fly very often like me I've been flying

flown since two weeks after nine one one. Right. But so I don't have any personal experience on how things are going in the lines but I do listen to Harry sure satire and he has a feature called Tales of airport security and there are some absolutely surreal examples on and off you use that for the the French things but that people report going through with all sorts of things it's amazing but then I would actually prompted me to call was. When you said the problem is our Constitution I mean I realize I'm taking that out of context but. I think it is irreducibly part of it. And they went on to say that we can't you know we shouldn't we shouldn't we should be able to profile as it were in certain ways. And my it my answer to all this is that we had a you know a breakdown of the intelligence about these folks they have been

identified. You don't need to profile Middle Easterns you should follow people that you know have had flight training and etc. and there is this idea that there was some kind of long standing rule that. That the Massai laptop couldn't couldn't have been passed around and slinks couldn't have been found. I mean the FBI had six people on it. A hooker case and in New Orleans at the time and they were pursuing an anti corporate globalization people around the country and Newsnight and BBC have documented that that the U.S. was was pulling back on bothering the Saudis with questions before not on one. And so there is a law. Lot of stuff that could have been done and you don't have to for what I see of the failure is now being allowed to be an excuse for

very draconian things to happen in our country and that's actually resonates I don't open to different levels. Oh I ask you to respond. You're absolutely right. You know starting for example with the FBI and the new Sally laptop where that broke down as exactly as Haller said the the agency in Minneapolis knew exactly that they had a problem when they applied for something called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act request which is kind of like a search warrant except it's applied against foreign nationals who are in this country. And we do that all the time before I worked for the Department Transportation I was in the Department of Justice in for example did those and we routinely used those to follow people for example from the old Soviet Union and cetera. But on that particular issue that's exactly right. They they simply did not do it and there was really no reason that they couldn't do it you don't need the same kind of standards to get those warrants that you do or warrant like documents that you do for example for

doing a wiretap in this country and just simply wasn't done and there are lots of draconian things that people are considering which it which I don't necessarily agree with it at all but. The problem is and I think you said this in your very first line. We don't have in this country a good way to identify that people are who they say they are in this country we seem to be just absolutely opposed to identifying who is an American and who is not identifying people by fingerprints or bio metrics. And so if you change your name and if someone from a foreign country changes his or her identity we have no power to discern that with our screening system right now which is why this trusted traveler thing doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense. Either you can get a pretty good credit record you know without ever being who you say you are or you can steal someone's identities talk to someone who somebody has tried to swipe their their credit identity and you will find that out. So I certainly agree with you about the need for some kind of a

biometric so you can figure out who everyone really is. But that also that yeah I mean there are a lot of a lot of bad things taking place in this in this country in the name of security that really won't bring us lasting security. I agree but on the point. The biometrics it seems to me that if this trust is travelers the people who are first question fly all the time as business people which is a lot of the trade in their lines if they were to agree to that it would expedite things and then as they say the people that don't fly very often would have to go through when they're grown enough and if you opt out of it then you would be you know standing in a longer line. But the point about Massai in. You know Colleen Riley was the whistle blower of the year on the cover of Time magazine and while I understand she's pretty much got a thread of her she's pretty much by the FBI gag and she has been demoted. Yes she. She said that she was busted down a rank or

two or somehow was it was you know did not have a supervisory position that she used to have and yes some of her she not able to speak out freely although she does speak out she does write some articles for example she got an article out this week. But there are things that she cannot talk about in particular. She cannot talk about any of these matters related to the Saudi case and related to the actual prosecution of misalliance things directly on point on 9/11 which is which is very unfortunate but the same thing that happened for example to see Bill Edmonds The translator at the FBI. Even even where she hails from has now been declared to be a secret. Where do it was Colleen Rowley featured in any of the Nine one one commissioned I don't remember that I know so well Edwards at least got to testify but this seems to be a huge cover up in plain sight To my mind and like I say I just think it's outrageous that we're not examining that more and then we're being told that we have to willingly accept profiling on and on

you know just you know there are only such a large category it doesn't even help much if you can actually get a hard piece of evidence like flight training or something like that. That's much more important and relevant to our safety. Thank you. CONAN Let's go on to we have a caller in Belgium. Our line number for our toll free line. Hello there on the line for. Well perhaps he changed his mind other people who are listening are certainly welcome to call 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. We talking a little bit ago about what we're doing in terms of trying to screen people as they get on the plane so that they can't take weapons on. We've been talking about this issue of explosives the fact that we check the checked bags. But that we're not checking people to make sure they're not carrying them on their person and some carry ons are screened but not all.

I know also people who are concerned with security say that there is another big gap here and that is cargo that is shipped on the plane you know just loaded in to the cargo hold and that we're not is it. Am I correct that we're not checking any cargo now for explosives. By and large we are not. The cardinal rules are you know your shipper or know your shipment. So people who routinely ship for example your computer manufacture and every you know every Tuesday you ship you know 300 custom made computers. The rules say that you know they have done business and this is a known shipper and the shipper has met the tour of the ship or has been checked out and routinely shipped. So business in the country can go forward but you're supposed to otherwise know you're you know inspect each shipment. The problem is like everything is requiring people to actually open up all the boxes when they take them. You know when they take them in for shipment

is something that just doesn't happen and we don't have the kinds of equipment that make that reasonable now for aircraft with passengers. They are supposed to go through the same CTX screening machine they are supposed to do that unless ISS is palletized and that is not supposed to be going onto passenger aircraft so they are supposed to receive the sort of the rudimentary CTX screening it's going on with people. We still have the mail the mail goes on the planes again and we still have some of that the the bigger worry that a lot of people the Express are on cargo planes now that cargo pilots have been allowed to go through the same training as passenger pilots in other words they become deputy air marshals and they are licensed to carry weapons they have received federal. PSA training so they have tried to give those pilots at least some measure of protection. But obviously it doesn't take a you know doesn't take a terrorist to think of the fact that if you have a

huge cargo plane you can get cargo on that plane and then you can take the plane over. Obviously that's a real issue and then of course the other thing that no one quite knows what to do with in Congress fairly fairly mentions this but it's statistically it's a very large risk in that the surface to air shoulder fired missiles very very huge problem we've seen strikes on that attempted strikes in Africa on Israeli planes and in other parts in the Middle East. And statistically I think that there were actually more attempts to take out planes of surface to air shoulder fired missiles. Then there were with bombs. So that's a that's also a big issue which I think it's really beyond Congress's power of the even Mehra even their screens right now. Well several callers I think were going to try and get that caller from Belgium on the line for the low. Good morning. Under Clinton for this prohibition repeatedly what ma'am. But it's. Answer to our problems being screamed right and

say So everything in the power seems to appear that our government in various places around the world formants feelings for other people to do this. If we change our foreign policy and look at different cultures and different ways more sympathetic we might very well solve her own problems before they even get started. Well that's kind of a different topic but I suppose you can't exactly argue with what the caller has to say you want to comment on that mosquito. No I say I'm kind of a nuts and bolts kind of person who worked in aviation safety and security you know sort of those bigger issues over at the State Department. But yeah I mean certainly speaking for myself I mean I have a difficult time understanding some of the cultural issues and I you know I'm sure we could all make a all make much greater effort to do that I will say in Washington D.C. Having served in you know three different departments and appointee level.

Quite frankly a lot of our policy is based on what's on the front page of The Washington Post in The New York Times every day and it's a very reactive government. So right now we're you know obviously reacting to these you know to a lot of issues and a lot of other countries and I you know I think everybody in Washington is in a learning curve. But frankly they're reacting to the news in the papers and around the world. So I think various messages are getting through. Well again I think the caller for the comment let's go to Champagne next and that would be line one. Well I just a quick comment on that last caller. I think that what the caller is engaging in is blaming the victim. The fact is that these people who conduct these kinds of terrorist actions are violent people. And this is the same as saying that the woman who wears a skirt comes above the knee is responsible for her rape. Whatever we did is a relevant The fact is that they chose violent means to achieve their ends. And there were lots of other options out there there were lots of other choices. They chose violence. So to blame America for everything in the world

especially terrorist actions is just ridiculous and it's blaming the victim and it's just it's a wrong headed thinking so set that aside. A couple quick questions for you. There are standards for initiating any kind of new safety or security initiative or action that you would said. And I've got to pass that economic test is the benefit is the risk benefit analysis working out. Is there any kind of standard for evaluating the effectiveness of of those actions or initiatives. In other words once we do something is there any kind of congressional standard that says we should evaluate the effectiveness in hardcore tangible measurable terms. Excellent excellent point. Yes and No. Excellent point what happens is exactly that we get these programs in place for example cap. One is the best best example would put the program in place and we say well we've addressed this issue and then we sort of put it in a box and put it on the shelf and we let it run and we assume it's addressed it. And then there's no systematic review every year for example when we come up

for re funding every year. You have to get your budget every year issue should be able to justify that program each and every year and instead they take on a life of their own. And in the case of caps what happened is the way they were doing it got skewed completely from the way it was supposed to work they were supposed to be profiling people and they ended up only looking for bombs in suitcases. And that is the way the program went far afield and it just got reappropriated year after year was supposed to happen in the General Accounting Office. And each agency's Department Office of Inspector General is supposed to review those programs annually so that they have the resources to do it. And that's the issue they get around a program. You know maybe once every five years or so the Geo is responsible for doing these kind of audits on government programs who's auditing the Geo. And they do have a Quality Control Division where they are to look at

themselves but there's a there's an oversight agency the president's council on integrity and efficiency looks at the sort of the quality of these reviews and they have a peer review where the inspectors general to a certain extent the jail but they look at each other so there is some kind of a peer review. G.A. Oh by and large response to requests by Congress Congress will pass them to do certain things and they will go out and look and do because they're an arm of Congress and they will go out and look at what Congress has asked them to look at. By and large they do good reviews but they can only read their small office. They can only do so much every year. I've often found it unfortunate to call it government or business organization an oversight committee because there is a somewhat double meaning there. But the other question I had then is very much related. You had mentioned that that airport workers are simply doing the same things in the same old ways and that's why we haven't really seen a lot of changes in

performance in the last two three years you've heard all kinds of stories about the giant quantities of weapons that have been brought aboard set aside you know things that could be weapons like knitting needles but are not commonly thought of as wedding weapons what you hear all these these examples and you never hear any follow up. You always hear promises that we're going to retrain our people at X airport we're going to retrain our people but at this particular terminal but you never hear any results of that. These are low paid low respected employees. We've got as you have pointed out if it was a tremendous power issue that that for example the baggage screeners are rotated every 30 minutes or so. Why don't we why don't we see any change changes in actual policy in practice in this country. And why isn't the government making that happen. Since they're in charge. These kind of procedures it just seems like the little contractors who are hiring unskilled trained unprofessional individuals. They're

not being forced to do the right thing for safety. And I know from my own experience I can name I can name three or four airports that I've been through in the last three years that it's very clear that they're making decisions based on personal stereotypes. You know it's the person who complains the most it's the person who has the most. Let's let's call it ethnic or religious garb on if not the person who may be dangerous. You know they just make arbitrary decisions based on their own personal bias. And you know nobody's doing anything about this why is the government not forcing this didn't happen. And I'll go ahead and get off and let you answer. Thanks. OK. Go well I should premises by saying this is my opinion but the fact the matter is I think it's pretty clear from what's been going on in Washington the government does not intend long term to be in this business. The government made a big hoopla if you recall when the TSA was formed that the screeners would be government employees but not real government employees meaning that they would not incur sort

of the long term rights and benefits of government employees so they could be fired at will. And a lot of people said Well that was so you can really enforce the rules against him and get a real crackerjack organization I think there it's clear now that we're discussing re privatizing and remember that was in the legislation even after 9/11 that they that this can be re privatized and given back to the security companies that failed so miserably on 9/11. And that is what we see happening. Starting as early as next year private airports will be able to bid with private companies to do this and to do this undoubtedly cheaper and will be able to go back into private industry. For example some of the security companies who failed on 9/11 actually sued the government saying that the government took away their business and owed them pay for taking away their private enterprise. And so I think by next year we'll see the government going back to giving these to these the cheapest bidders to provide the security and that's why we really don't see a lot of effort placed on the long term development of these employees and that's why

one of things I wanted to see was that airport security be treated as an arm of an existing organization like the Coast Guard like Customs some kind of an organization which already knew law enforcement already did a good job Coast Guard as a mighty good job. Customs does a pretty good job too. And where people would have a career progression you wouldn't be a screener your whole life. And we don't see that at all I think we're going back to the old system and that's why you don't see a real emphasis on training and a real emphasis on development of these employees. That being said I like the fact that we did this after 9/11 because we needed to get control of who was working in our airports the fact that Dulles Airport in Washington D.C. or in Virginia outside of Washington had perhaps as high as 80 percent of the screeners really evil alien that that person illegally in this country were all that we had to enforce our security. So I appreciate the fact that we did at least for a couple years three years here the anniversary this week coming up at least for a couple years. We had U.S.

citizens looking at U.S. flight operations. We won't have that for too much longer I don't think just go there occasionally as stories continue to come up that make you wonder about who it is that is doing this work and this summer for example it apparently it's fairly routine that screeners who work for the Transportation Security Administration will open and inspect some percentage of checked bags looking for possible explosives well this summer at three major airports 20 baggage screeners were charged with stealing things from checked bags and if we can't if we can't trust. Not to steal stuff out of our baggage can we trust them to be doing what they're supposed to be doing and making sure that there are no explosives that go in the plane. No you know there are bad you know there are bad government employees in every in every part of government. And the you know and that further explains that there are going to be problems in the system there are going to be places where things fail we had the same thing happen of course before it was the TSA as well we had

the theft rings we had drug ring planning drugs in airplanes and things like that so we have had problems under both systems. But I simply cannot tolerate a large branch of our law enforcement which is what we should think of airport personnel as. But we should not have a United States law enforcement performed by foreign nationals. To me that was absurd. And I believe will probably end up back in that same situation again. But. Aside from the fact that a few people were bad I mean we have we have bad we have bad Secret Service agents and bad FBI agents and bad government servants occasionally too and for me that was not a reason to say well go back to the old system. I like the fact that they were government employees and the reason they had to be government employees is that is the only employer who may discriminate against its employees on the basis of citizenship. And I think that's important. We need U.S. citizens protecting US airports.

Let's go to the phones again here we have a caller in. Number two the low road morning Davidson. Yes it was mentioned earlier that one of the results of the increasing annoyances of airport security is that there's a movement toward personal just transportation among the wealthy. Might there suggest that there could also be a corresponding movement of terrorists which George personal jet transportation for as you well. Oh absolutely I think that's what people are. For example you people remember about a year and a half ago a 7 0 7 went missing in Africa 7 and 0 7 was unaccounted for. No one knew where or when and I think there's a concern in this country about private aircraft and how you do police that and of course that that issue died down. You know we had a lot of issues about that right after 9/11 and what do you do about the Cessna's who's policing the small planes of America parked at you know

14000 air strips all over the country and there wasn't much that was said about that there wasn't much that we could. They are due so we made an effort to try to keep track of the pilot who's our pilot records and a pilot logs that doesn't do anything to help us you know determine who was a pilot trained overseas and then gets into this country through legal means then. Remember one of the things that came out in the prosecution of the World Trade Center bombers before 9/11 the previous bombing on the World Trade Center is that Osama bin Laden had sent a pilot into this country to purchase the King Air in Texas. And this is back in the early 90s and fly that King Air airplane over to the Middle East and so once you have the planes and the ability to do that overseas it's a very very difficult to find out who's doing what and so we have international plane registries and we have or at least we're working to have international pilot registries but the problem that we've had is several countries including Middle Eastern countries including Saudi Arabia would not cooperate with us. And

so that's a that's a big issue and that's right if you if it's terrorists can afford multimillion dollar operations it's going to be important to not only you know track the terrorists the track the flow of money. We try to get one or two more calls next is Erica line number three. As a traveler myself and I get searched oh probably a hundred times a year. I find the searches to be really inconsistent so I think a lot of the security is actually got to be in the aircraft itself. So there's two things about the aircraft that I kind of wonder about. The first thing is why do we allow a foreign national to pilot an aircraft over our airspace in the first place. And secondly why do we allow commercial airliners to be designed where there's access from the cabin it would seem to make it a lot safer to have access from the outside only. And once they're in the air that would kind of solve all the problem of hijackings

altogether. Take my answer off the air. OK. All right. Well on the foreign nationals you're absolutely right and you make a great point this issue came up several times before 9/11 in a lot of interesting ways. One airline had tried to require for example their pilots to be U.S. citizens a foreign national with a green card. Sued the airline the decision of the courts were that you had to allow foreign nationals with a green card to be treated exactly the same way as U.S. citizens. So even in U.S. aviation foreign nationals are allowed to participate in the system and fly in the system but form planes coming into this country allowed to fly over our airspace by virtue of international treaties in connection with the International Civil Aviation Organization which is a part of the United Nations and we have the United States has been a signatory to most of those treaties are a few that we didn't sign. But by doing so we allow overflight over our country. There is called the five

freedoms of flight and we sign on to almost all of them of course interior flights have to be flown by U.S. carriers here. But that's broken down so significantly that at this point we're talking about in aviation circles are talking about even going further that allowing even for an operators airplane operators to operate within this country with point to point service in this country that's a huge issue. We had difficulty even after 9/11 getting some countries such as Saudi Arabia to tell us even anything about their pilots who were bringing planes into this country. And this is true even after the tragic crash of EgyptAir because suicide crash occurred before 9/11 two years before 9/11 so huge issue on that on the cabin access issue. I obviously has the system where you have the double door system which is makes it much much more difficult and as a hardened double door system is supposed to be able to resist explosives. So you simply cannot get to the cockpit. Other

people are asking more basic questions for example why do we not have with this age of computers and there are many modern wonderful flight systems that have a great safety override. Why do we not require our planes at this point to be built towards a system which simply will not allow the aircraft to be flown into objects and that system's already programmed in the plane we have the entire topographical map of the world programmable into a very small flight computer literally on the computer screens of the day the World Trade Centers actually should have popped up. On the screen in the plane and had we had those systems on board it would not have been possible to cause a collision so there are lots of systems out there that could make a pact like this in the future. Less likely not that and something even more basic like hardened luggage containers so the old bomb suitcase wouldn't work either. But those technologies are expensive and that's always going to be the big debate in Washington what's worth our investment as a nation. And then we have some people that is

simply few refuse to address it they just say yeah well you know it's the cost of doing business and that kind of attitude that often prevails in Washington. So we're going to come down to dollars and we're going to have to leave it there my apologies when people we can't take but we've simply used our time. Our guest this morning Mary Schiavo she's former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation has known attorney has been for a long time following issues of aviation safety and security Miss Campbell thank you very much for talking with us today thank you.