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A student's test of airport security yielded troubling results, both in the initial breach and the slow response to it.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, anyone who would try to smuggle a weapon onto an airplane isn't thinking straight. The FBI says that a college student, testing airport security procedures, planted the box cutters, matches and bleach that were found aboard two Southwest Airlines planes. Nathaniel Heatwole, the 20-year-old charged with carrying a concealed weapon aboard an aircraft, was foolish to play the role of air security citizen-cop. Antiterrorism is serious business. Still, the episode shows how the government, despite an unprecedented commitment of public money, continues to make fundamental mistakes in its management of airport security.
According to an FBI affidavit, Heatwole told authorities he carried the items past security screeners last month at airports in Baltimore and North Carolina, hiding them in lavatories in the two planes. He then sent an e-mail to federal authorities, alerting them to "security breaches" at the airports and listing exactly where the bags were on specific dates and flights.
Still it took authorities nearly five weeks to find the bags and interview Heatwole, even though the e-mail included his name and number and made it clear the incident was meant to test airport security. The federal Transportation Security Administration, which handles security at the nation's airports, did not share the e-mail with the FBI until after the box cutters and other items were found by aircraft maintenance workers.
Security screening at the Baltimore and Raleigh-Durham airports clearly failed, the latest examples of a widespread problem with screeners being unable to detect dangerous items in carry-on bags. But the time it took for federal authorities to locate the banned items is as troubling as the breach itself. How could box cutters, matches, bleach and modeling clay shaped like plastic explosives be allowed to remain on a commercial aircraft for nearly five weeks?
Some members of Congress have called for hearings to establish how this incident happened and to examine the breach against a broader backdrop of recent security failures. If the government can't find weapons on flights even when led by the nose, what confidence should the flying public have that the same safety system can defend against genuine terrorists? Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge says his agency has determined that Heatwole's e-mail "wasn't an imminent threat" but promised to "go back and look at our protocol" for how such e-mails are handled. "This is not a good experience. This is a bad experience," Ridge said. It could have been worse. The first thing to do is to institute a policy that makes room for common sense, one that says if you are told about weapons on specific planes, go check it out.