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© St. Petersburg Times, published November 7, 2001
CHICAGO -- Federal authorities launched criminal background checks Tuesday of eight O'Hare International Airport security workers who allegedly allowed a man carrying knives and a stun gun through a checkpoint.
The security breach came about two weeks after federal officials ordered new background checks of Argenbright Security employees at 13 airports nationwide, including O'Hare. The company was put on probation last year for hiring people with criminal records to staff security checkpoints at Philadelphia International Airport.
The Federal Aviation Administration will put a priority on the employees involved in Saturday's security breach at a United Airlines checkpoint at O'Hare.
"We want to know if they have any criminal convictions and if they are who they say they are," FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.
Atlanta-based Argenbright issued a statement Tuesday saying seven of the eight had previously undergone fingerprint-based FBI background checks that revealed "no disqualifying crimes preventing their employment."
Federal officials said they would provide additional training to Argenbright employees at O'Hare and monitor job performance there.
On Saturday, Subash Gurung, a 27-year-old unemployed Nepalese national in the country on an expired student visa, told Argenbright employees at the United Airlines checkpoint that he was carrying two knives. The knives were confiscated.
But Gurung continued to the gate area with a plastic bag containing seven knives, a stun gun and a container marked "tear gas-pepper gas." Those items were discovered by United workers who searched his luggage at the gate.
Gurung was arrested by Chicago police on two misdemeanor charges and released on bail. He was later rearrested by FBI agents when he returned to O'Hare to retrieve his luggage. He is scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing Thursday on a federal felony charge of attempting to board a jetliner carrying weapons.