Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
By wire servicesNathaniel Heatwole sent an e-mail to officials about his actions and claimed to have beaten security several times this year.
WASHINGTON - Box cutters and other dangerous items remained on a pair of Southwest Airlines jets for about a month even though the college student who smuggled them aboard sent federal authorities a signed e-mail detailing what he had done, according to court papers unsealed on Monday.
Nathaniel Heatwole also told authorities that he left items on two more planes, according to U.S. Attorney Thomas DiBiagio. Other packages were found on April 13 and April 14 in planes in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Tampa but it was unclear when they were planted.
Heatwole, 20, was charged Monday with carrying a concealed weapon aboard an aircraft, which could bring him up to 10 years in prison.
The junior at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., was released without bail but ordered to stay away from airports and off planes. A preliminary hearing was set for Nov. 10.
Heatwole sat stone-faced during the hearing. His parents were in the courtroom but did not greet or acknowledge him during the hearing and did not comment afterward.
The FBI affidavit, obtained Monday by the Associated Press, said Heatwole breached security at Raleigh-Durham airport on Sept. 12 - the day after the two-year anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks. He did it again Sept. 14 at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, the affidavit said.
His bags contained box cutters, modeling clay made to look like plastic explosives, matches and bleach hidden in sunscreen bottles, the affidavit said.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, when 19 hijackers used box cutters to take over four airliners, box cutters and bleach are among the items that cannot be carried onto planes.
The e-mail was signed "Nat Heatwole" and listed a telephone number. The items were discovered in plastic bags in the bathrooms of the two airliners and contained notes about when and where the items were carried aboard. They were signed "3891925," which is the reverse of Heatwole's birthday: 5/29/1983.
Heatwole's e-mail claimed credit for six airline security breaches between Feb. 7 and Sept. 14, though he said he only left items on four planes.
While the Transportation Security Administration received the e-mail on Sept. 15, it was not sent to the FBI until last Friday, after a Southwest Airlines maintenance worker discovered the items in one plane's bathroom when it landed in New Orleans. A similar discovery was made on the second plane, then in Houston.
According to an FBI affidavit, Heatwole's signed e-mail "stated that he was aware his actions were against the law and that he was aware of the potential consequences for his actions, and that his actions were an "act of civil disobedience with the aim of improving public safety for the air-traveling public.' "
However, DiBiagio said Heatwole's conduct "was not a prank. This was not poor judgment. . . . It was not a test. It was not a civil action. It was a very serious and foolish action."
Deputy TSA Administrator Stephen McHale said Monday's court action "makes clear that renegade acts to probe airport security for whatever reason will not be tolerated, pure and simple."
"Amateur testing of our systems do not show us in any way our flaws," McHale said. "We know where the vulnerabilities are and we are testing them. . . . This does not help."
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, whose department includes TSA, said officials "will go back and look at our protocol" for handling such e-mails. He said that the agency gets a high volume of e-mails about possible threats and that officials decided that Heatwole "wasn't an imminent threat."
During a visit to Duke University on Monday, Ridge called the latest incident "a bad experience."
"But we may learn something about it that we can apply across the country," Ridge said.
"That the system is so vulnerable that a 20-year-old college student can penetrate it so easily it says a lot about where we are today with airport security," said Billie Vincent, a former security chief with the Federal Aviation Administration.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers promised investigative hearings into systemic flaws, among them lax training for airport screeners.
- Information from Knight Ridder Newspapers and the Associated Press was used in this report.