A new report by government auditors details how bomb parts and various like items were smuggled past screeners at 19 airport checkpoints across the United States.

The 14 November report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) set off a flurry of press coverage and a Congressional hearing, right at the advent of the Holiday travel season. A ban on carry-on bags would provide a marked increase in security, given the way GAO investigators succeeded in passing through Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening checkpoints undetected, but this course is not likely, given that the Bush administration is taking steps to expedite holiday travel by freeing up some military airspace along the east coast of the United States.

The GAO’s Gregory Kutz, manager of the office’ Forensic Audits and Special Investigations, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at a hearing 15 November that his group’s circumvention of airport screening procedures “clearly shows the increased security risk of the current policies of allowing substantial carry-on luggage aboard aircraft.”

GAO officials also indicated that bomb components could be successfully concealed on one’s person. “Under the pat-downs that TSA implements now, they would not have been caught,” said Kutz’s assistant, GAO’s John Kooney. He argued that the way the pat-downs are conducted “needs to be changed.”

Rep. Henry Waxman (D – Calif.), the committee chairman, was not pleased by the revelations. “These findings are mind-boggling,” he declared. “In spite of billions of dollars and the six years the TSA has had to deploy new technologies and procedures, our airlines remain vulnerable. The American public deserves better.”

Rep. Thomas Davis (R – Va.), the ranking minority member of the committee, said in a written statement, “Unfortunately … TSA still cannot consistently detect or prevent prohibited items from being carried onto aircraft.”

It is not clear what Waxman’s committee will do in light of this report.

However, the GAO findings were downplayed by TSA officials. TSA Assistant Administrator Ellen Howe said passengers must get through 19 layers of security, including the watchful eyes of behavior observation teams. “There is nothing in the [GAO] report that is news to us … that we were not working on, or don’t already know,” she said. “It’s like a combination lock. If you get through one layer of security, it doesn’t mean you get through all layers of security.”

TSA Administrator Kip Hawley discounted the GAO’s bombs, which were developed with the support of a national laboratory and a law enforcement agency, and were videotaped blowing open a car door and a trunk during a test.

“We can’t be squeamish and say, ‘Oh, my goodness, they brought some firecrackers through and put it in the trunk of a car.’ We need to stop all things, but we have to focus on what truly does us harm,” Hawley said.

What Hawley did not say is that a bomb placed in an overhead bin would likely blow a hole through the fuselage and cause massive structural damage as the force of the slipstream peeled away the aluminum skin (as occurred in 1988 when the roof blew off an Aloha Airlines B737 from metal fatigue and corrosion). Even if a bomb were not powerful enough to cause such damage, a lesser explosion in the aircraft would likely kill or injure nearby passengers and the event would cause widespread panic about the security of air travel. The public uproar over even a less-than-fatal bombing of an airliner would be manifested in a loss of confidence in air security and a wholesale reduction in travel by air.

Kutz said the bomb components – including liquid explosive and parts for a detonator – were obtained at local stores and over the Internet for a cost of less than $150. As Kutz testified, “By using concealment methods for the components, two investigators demonstrated that it is possible to bring the components for several IEDs [improvised explosive devices] … through TSA checkpoints and onto airline flights without being challenged by transportation security officers.”

Kutz discounted Hawley’s assertion that a bomb of sufficient strength to blow the door off a car would not imply serious damage to an aircraft. He said that tests conducted last July indicated that the liquid explosive and detonator produced an explosion “with a force sufficient to cause severe damage to an aircraft.” Many of the details of the smuggling at TSA checkpoints are classified, but sufficient elements of the trials were in Kutz’s unclassified testimony to give a feel for the threat (see Figure A).

While TSA officials assured that new technologies, such as x-ray scanners and liquid-scanning machines (to be deployed in 2008) should plug the gaps revealed by the GAO, Andrew Thomas, editor of the 3-volume Aviation Security Management, maintains that the problem is largely one of people, not technology. “There still seems to be a challenge within TSA to properly train screeners,” he maintained.

Screeners, he said, need to be more fully trained to:

• 1- Identify a potentially prohibited item.
• 2- Isolate it.
• 3- Resolve whether it is or is not so.

“Despite the call for new technologies, screener training needs to remain at the forefront,” he maintained. This requires a “back to the basics” approach, which he said involves:

• Identification, isolation and resolution training.
• Rigorous and consistent testing.
• Assessment of the testing results.
• Recurrent training based upon the outcomes.

Thomas says, “The threats posed to transportation networks are human. The solutions, therefore, must be human ones, aided with new technology. Not the other way around. Training is not sexy, nor is it glamorous. However, it must drive the human component of the security equation. This is the foundation of a true risk-based approach.”

While improved training will help, aviation security consultant Billie Vincent believes the problem is larger. “We need to reduce the clutter that airport screeners have to filter through in order to have a chance of detecting potential bomb components and weapons,” Vincent maintains. To this end, Vincent believes the carry-on bags should be limited to one per passenger (women traveling with children, handicapped people and flight crews excepted), and that the carry-on should not be bigger than a standard laptop computer and no more than 4 inches deep.

The problem of searching for bomb components was perhaps best illustrated by Dr. Andrew McClumpha, an Associate Fellow at the British Psychological Society:

“The human factors considerations at the checkpoint are bloody simple. Imagine, for starters, how many times you’ve gone to the fridge to get a bottle of catsup, opened the door, stood there and stared at the bottle for 30 seconds or so, closed the door, and asked the household in general ‘where’s the bloody catsup?’ We’re asking the screeners to do the equivalent of opening the door to the fridge that’s not theirs, grabbing the catsup, and closing the door, all within five to ten seconds, and then immediately go to the next fridge for a bottle of beer, and then, immediately, to the next to get the mustard, and so on, all the while identifying all of the other contents of each fridge on each opening. All with unerring accuracy. Bloody impossible!”

Vincent believes McClumpha’s illustration puts real meaning into what a screener is faced with. And the screener’s task is vastly complicated by the number and size of the articles that have to be inspected (see Figure B).

Vincent adds:

“If we are serious about coming to grips with the problem, we (1) have to get out of the denial stage by the TSA by their respective remarks in response to the GAO’s findings, and (2) addressing the carry-on article problem. Doing so will provide the screener with a better chance of detecting the components of explosives as well as disassembled weapons, and will also speed up the movement of persons through security screening checkpoints. “The problem cannot be solved by training, motivation or new technology alone. It can only be solved by reducing the number and size of the articles to be screened.”

(Thomas, e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; Vincent, e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; McClumpha, e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it )