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[ThatHawaiiGuy]

Weapons still getting past airport screeners
Fri Sep 26, 6:36 AM ET Add Top Stories - USATODAY.com to My Yahoo!


By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY

Guns and knives, along with box cutters like those used by the Sept. 11 hijackers, slipped past screeners in recent airport security tests by undercover agents.


Two years after the terrorist attacks prompted tighter security at airports nationwide and the deployment of 50,000 government-paid screeners, congressional investigators found that the Transportation Security Administration has not stopped the flow of lethal weapons through checkpoints.


The frequency and types of weapons remain classified. "You wouldn't want to know. ... It's gruesome," said Rep. John Mica (news, bio, voting record), R-Fla., chairman of a House aviation panel. "We have a huge army (of screeners) that's not working well."


Sources who have seen the classified information confirmed that guns, knives and box cutters were among the weapons that eluded screeners in tests by the General Accounting Office (news - web sites), the investigative arm of Congress. The GAO report, released Thursday, said the transportation security agency doesn't adequately train screeners or keep track of how well they are performing.


Those screeners are part of a vast bureaucracy created after the terrorist attacks, when Congress ordered private airport screeners to be replaced with a government force. The goal was to increase federal oversight of screening procedures and improve training and supervision.


A spokesman for the TSA, Nico Melendez, said screeners have found more than 1,000 prohibited guns, more than 2 million knives and 50,000 box cutters.


He noted that checkpoint screening is only part of a multilayered security system that includes reinforced cockpit doors, thousands of armed federal air marshals, hundreds of armed pilots and screening of checked bags for explosives. Taken together, he said, they provide "the best security of our transportation system in our nation's history."


Rep. Peter DeFazio (news, bio, voting record), D-Ore., said much more needs to be done. "What I worry about is that these people (terrorists) seem to repeat patterns," he said. "I'm worried they'll try to take planes down again."


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&ncid=716&e=22&u=/usatoday/200309...

Can't keep drugs out of prisons; can't keep weapons out of airports...sheep never learn...write all the laws you want: the law breakers break the law, the good sheep citizen obeys the law, hoping the gov will keep them safe.