Stamping Down on Tampa Airport Security

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill think there's a tangible risk that airport workers could use insider jobs to skirt security and help carry out a terrorist attack. On 01 March the Transportation Security Administration briefed reporters in Tampa on a nationwide program of random screenings of airport employees. The intent of the House Homeland Security Committee is to start a trial of random screening at a few sample airports. Call it a practicability test. Louis Miller, executive director at Tampa International Airport sees it as being untenable, impractical and unworkable due to the high worker traffic flow always moving between public and screened areas.

For months now, TSA agents have already been setting up ambush check-points behind Tampa's screened doors. To date they've found nothing of any security interest amongst Tampa's 6300 workers. The Airports Council International of North America, a trade group, has gone on record as saying that the additional screenings would further slow passenger processing. However rampant paranoia about latent insider sleeper threats is a favored mania on Capitol Hill and the legislation is likely to succeed. A Gulag-style once-over with a metal detector, a pat-down and shoes off/shoes on looks like being the new order of the day - each and every day, at each and every door.

Meanwhile at Nashville airport on 28 Feb, Oscar winning former vice president Al Gore was involved in a security breach when an American Airlines employee led him and his entourage around security, a clear violation of policy. The officer assigned to escort Gore to his gate sent out a search party for the former Vice President when he never came through. Gore and his party were soon found already at the gate for their flight. The officer asked the group if they had been through security, and when they said they hadn't, they were taken back and fully screened. Gore did not complain. Another airport employee, believed to be the AA rep, has been sent to Soylent Green - for re-processing.