Re: [APML] Planes

["Joseph Dartsum" <jdartsum@hotmail.com>]

>From: "Herb York" <herb@buytelescopes.com>
>Reply-To: astro-photo@seds.org
>To: <astro-photo@seds.org>
>Subject: [APML] Planes
>Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 13:54:07 -0700
>
>I look forward to them ruining my astro-pictures again.
>I'll never look at it them same way after this.
>Herb York

I'd like to remind you that the planes were PRECISELY the problem...

What the heck ever happened to airport security, cabin security??  If the 
terrorists never gained entry into the pilot's cabin, this whole thing never 
would have happened!  Not to mention, other security measures, which have 
totally been lacking..

As a matter of fact, it's now being learned the FBI & CIA apparently dropped 
the ball.. They had evidence of an impending attack, but did nothing.  
That's our tax-payer dollars at work..  Some of these people were actually 
picked up and questioned...nothing happened.

I wonder now how amateur astronomers will commute via airliners, to get to 
favorite places in CA or AZ, without the ability to carryon tools, etc.  Or, 
are swiss-army knives also banned on check-in luggage?

I think the question is not the terrorists, but the American airline 
companies for ALLLOWING an opportunity for disaster to strike.  It all goes 
back to the old phrse, "We are our own worst enemy".  This whole thing could 
have been avoided, if we "Americans" were on the ball.  Fact is, we weren't. 
  This is now being revealed, in many media reports.


---------------------------
I couldn't agree more Herb!  Well said.
Speaking of planes, my wife and I live on the coast between LA and San
Diego.  Last night we could hear the low rumble of military jets off the CA
coast.  This morning I found out that they were(and possible still are?)
patrolling the entire west coast.  It was very spooky in that we knew why
they were out there...not on training runs as was the case for many years
with the now closed El Toro MCAS.
At this time, I would also like to say Jen and I's thoughts and prayers are
with those who were involved or had family members or friends involved in
yesterday's horrific tragedy.  We have a friend who works five blocks from
the WTC.  He watched the towers crumble.  Thank God he is ok.
I cannot tell you the sadness, shock and anger I have at this time.  I am
sick to my stomach.  Our country will prevail and I am positive those
responsible for this will pay like no one has before.

Chris
----------------

Heh.  "Pay like no one has before"?  You gotta be kidding me.  Boeing just 
announced 30,000 layoffs by end of next year, due to expected sales 
drops..many of these airline companies are on the verge of bankruptcy.  
(Continental is 10 days away.  The Feds are going for a bailout plan, 
invovling billions of dollars).  The airline companies have also announced 
layoffs, thousands.

Guess who pays for America's "slacking"?  You guessed it..  Americans.  
Those comments above really reflect some real lack of depth of thinking.  
I'm not surprised then..it's the same kind of behavior that got us into this 
whole mess.  Think of what America COULD be doing, if it had invested some 
$$ into better security & pro-active policies.  We could be looking forward, 
to some exciting progress at the start of the New Millenia.  Now?  Talk of 
going to war, paying out billions for recovery.  Your mention of payback is 
incredibly stupid.  American are the ones that are going to PAY...hundreds 
of billions of dollars, to do a military campaign, etc. (send cruise 
missiles over, which are totally ineffective anyway.).

You have to respect the people who masterminded this plan, it was well 
thought out and executed.  You never underestimate your opponent, as the 
saying goes.  I'm afraid we're dealing with a very determined, and capable 
enemy.  I think America is in for a real shock, if they're expecting 
vindication from a retaliatory strike.  It's like trying to walk into a 
kitchen, & getting rid of cockroaches with a shotgun.

I hope the parties who wrote the above, don't exhibit the same 
narrow-mindedness in a rather simple mental exercise, that they do for 
astrophotography.  Astrophotography as I understand it is a complex 
operation, which requires forethought and precise technique.  I'm afraid to 
see what these "Americans" do, in terms of astrophotography.

Read the below article, if you dare.

http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,311591-412,00.shtml

How Secure Are Our Airports?

*	Some Experts Say There Is Little Security
*	Who Is Manning The X-Ray Machines?


NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2001
AP
A Boeing 737 Continental plane prepares to land at the Newark Airport on 
Thursday, Sep. 13.

(CBS) If the President and the Congress are going to make good on their 
pledge to end terrorism, they will have to examine all the things that might 
have gone wrong this past week. The place they should start is the nation’s 
airports.

The fact that security there was lax has been an open secret for many years 
- just how lax is a scandal. Government study after government study, test 
after test, report after report demonstrated conclusively that security at 
America’s airports was hopelessly ineffective.

We still don’t know how terrorists managed to hijack four airliners and turn 
them into weapons of mass destruction. But we do know that, in spite of all 
those X-ray machines, metal detectors, and requests for picture ID’s, the 
system is riddled with holes and manned by undertrained, underpaid workers. 
And even the most sensitive restricted areas leading directly to the 
airplanes have proven easy to breach with weapons and explosives.

No one was more aware of the problems than Steve Elson. Until 1999, he 
worked as a special agent for the Federal Aviation Administration’s office 
of Civil Aviation Security. A former Navy SEAL trained in counter-terrorism, 
Elson spent three years as part of an elite, secret FAA unit called the Red 
Team.

Elson’s five-man team traveled all over the country, conducting covert 
assessments, secretly probing security at major U.S. airports. They didn’t 
tell people they were coming, and they didn’t tell people they had been 
there. Their findings went to their bosses at the FAA.

“We found generally that the results were almost the converse of the 
standard FAA results over the years,” says Elson. “For instance, if the FAA 
standard testing methods indicated a 90, 95 percent success rate, in many of 
the type of tests we did, it was more of a 90, 95 percent failure rate.”

According to Elson, the reason the reason for the wide discrepancy is 
simple. The official tests, he says, were a joke. “The FAA runs out and does 
a lot of testing. These are basically designed for the airports and the 
airlines to pass, so the results look good,” he says. He says that the FAA 
would frequently let a particular airport or carrier know that it would be 
tested. Not only did airport and airline security people know when the tests 
would occur, according to Elson, they even knew what to look for: 
FAA-approved test objects. These objects are, Elson says, “devices that have 
been developed by the FAA, to test different stations in a screening 
checkpoint, to check the metal detectors.”

He says that employees are trained to know what they look like. Elson gives 
some examples: “We have like an old dynamite bomb. It's just a couple 
sticks, a huge clock, wire and generally, an empty bag in this - anybody can 
see it. And I wrote FAA headquarters and said, "Do we have a memorandum of 
agreement with the terrorists that they promise to use a big bomb, very 
obvious in an empty bag?”

At one point, Elson says, he got his hands on something called a modular 
bomb unit, a replica of an sophisticated, difficult-to-detect explosive 
device that was much more representative of something a terrorist might use. 
Out of 50 to 60 tests, he says, there was one detection. “But I was able to 
talk my way out of it and get away, without being caught. So, I was 100 
percent successful as the bad guy.”

But it wasn’t just the red team that was getting those results. In 1998, the 
FAA’s deputy administrator for security, Cathal Flynn, contracted an outside 
firm to conduct a vulnerability assessment at a major U.S. airport, which 60 
Minutes agreed not to name because the results were so abysmal. It was all 
spelled out in this FAA memo.

“According to the document, and this is not a restricted or classified 
document, there were 450 tests conducted. The team was caught four times. 
That meant the bad guys got through 99.11 percent of the time,” says Elson.

According to the document, testers got into baggage areas and passenger 
lounges, planting fake explosives in suitcases, carry-on luggage, and 
catering carts. They got into ramp areas and aircraft holds. And they 
breezed through metal detectors with no problem.

“And if you look further through the document, it talks about these people 
going through a screening checkpoint with pistols behind metal belt buckles 
sometimes, and Mac10 machine guns on their back,” says Elson, who calls the 
current level “non-security.”

“It's a facade. It looks like something. There's a lot of people and a lot 
of buzzers and noise. But in effect there is no security,” says Elson.

At Congressional hearings last year, the Inspector General for the 
Department of Transportation seemed to agree. Alexis Stefani said her office 
had conducted its own secret tests to see how easy it was to get 
unauthorized personnel into restricted areas. In 68 percent of those tests, 
which took place at eight major airports, they accessed secure areas without 
being challenged.

The Inspector General’s report went on to say that “after penetrating secure 
areas, we boarded a substantial number of aircraft operated by U.S. and 
foreign carriers… and were seated and ready for departure at the time we 
concluded out tests.”

Six days later, in November 1999, the FAA responded stating that “the agency 
has already worked with airports, tenants and air carriers… and “tests 
showed airports had fixed the problems.”

Six months after that, the General Accounting Office, the investigative and 
auditing arm of the U.S. Congress, conducted yet another set of secret tests 
at two major airports. Using phony identification, they were waved around 
security checkpoints 100 percent of the time. That result points out perhaps 
the most serious deficiencies in the system, one that seemed apparent to 
anyone who regularly passed through a major airport.

The passenger-screening checkpoints with metal detectors and X-ray machines 
are the responsibility of the airlines, which in turn contract the work out 
to the lowest bidder. A handful of private companies, like Globe, Huntleigh, 
and Argenbright Security, man the front lines in the war against terrorism 
with low-skilled, poorly-trained employees, who earn slightly more than the 
minimum wage, usually about $7 an hour to start.

Until last February, Dan Boelsche ran Argenbright Security’s passenger 
screening operation at Dulles airport in Washington. Boelsche, a graduate of 
the Naval Academy and a former Navy pilot, says he competed with fast-food 
businesses for employees.

“Low skilled jobs. In a in a position that really requires some skill,” he 
says. “(And) extreme responsibility.”

Boelsch says 90 percent of his employees at Dulles airport were not even 
born in the United States; some were foreign nationals with work visas who 
had come to this country less than a year ago from places like Russia, 
Africa and the Middle East. Boelsch estimates that roughly 15 percent were 
from Pakistan, a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism. There was no requirement 
that employees be American citizens. The fact that many employees had 
recently arrived in this country made it difficult to do background checks, 
Boelsche says.

Besides low wages no benefits, and abuse from passengers, the hours are long 
and the work is tedious. At many airports, the annual turnover rate exceeds 
100 percent. At Boston’s Logan Airport, where two of the hijacked flights 
originated, the turnover rate was 200 percent. Last year, federal 
prosecutors indicted Argenbright Security for supplying applicants at 
Philadelphia International Airport with phony high school diplomas, 
falsifying test scores, and lying about background checks that were never 
conducted. Fourteen security screeners had been convicted of various 
felonies including aggravated assault, robbery, resisting arrest and 
forgery.

At Oakland International , procedures were so lax that even employees are 
embarrassed. All Daniello Worcullo and Kevin McCree had to do to get their 
jobs at Huntley Security was to watch videos for two days and take a test, 
true or false. They may lose their jobs for talking about their training, or 
lack of it.

Every six months, they were given what the company called a called a 
refresher course. McCree describes it: “Just go through the same video that 
we've been taught with The same video. So you're going through the same test 
over and over and over.”

One of the few lawmakers in Washington who showed an interest in airport 
security before last Tuesday’s events was Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson of 
Texas. Last November, she pushed through legislation that was supposed to 
remedy some of the problems. But most of the provisions hadn’t taken effect 
last Tuesday.

"I've had a lot of depressed days and nights to think about it by myself and 
with friends," Elson says. "And now that the reality has hit and I… we all 
knew this was gonna happen, and the Congress knew, and I said the whole 
government structure knew. So right now… I'd rather be angry than sad. And I 
am really angry."

60 Minutes wanted to talk to the FAA and to the private security companies 
that man the airport checkpoints , but they did not want to talk to 60 
Minutes – at least, not this week. They may have to talk at a Senate hearing 
later this week. Among the recommendations to be discussed is the formation 
of a federal police force responsible for airport security.


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