Homeland Security

Testimony of Bob Monetti

President of The Victims of Pan am Flight 103, Inc. and VPAF103 Representative to the FAA Aviation Security Advisory Committee

Before the House Transportation Committee

24 September, 2001

The Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, Inc. have been trying to get the airlines and the FAA to provide real security for the traveling public since the bombing of PanAm flight 103 in December of 1988.. The events of September the 11th show us just how little we actually accomplished.

The security activity that is performed at our airports is perfunctory, it is done primarily because it's required by regulations.  It not done to actually provide security.   As an example, friends of mine took a trip to he West coast.   At San Francisco airport on their return,  they were told that their bags were going to be subject to more thorough inspection and they were directed to the CTX machine.  The machine operator then asked them which two of their four bags they would like to have x-rayed!   The motions are there but security surely is not.

The attitude of the airline's and the FAA needs to change.   Maybe seeing the World Trade center towers collapsing will convince them that this is serious?  Both the people who perform security operations and the other people in this secure areas of the airport (mostly airline employees).  See the LA Times article.

What passes for security at most airports in this country is a hodge podge of measures enacted at various times to counteract various threats over the years.. The measures put in place in the past two weeks reflect that quite clearly.  Cars are not allowed to park near the terminal buildings, because someone exploded a car bomb in front of LaGuardia airport in 1972.  Is this a threat today?  I don't know.  Our intelligence people should tell us if this measure is still needed or obsolete.

What passes for security at most airports in this country is also the result of some very effective lobbying by the airlines, both at the FAA and here in Congress.  Measures that might have prevented terrorist attacks were watered down to reduce costs and potential delays.  For example, the Computer Aided Passenger Screening system (CAPS) selects passengers that merit further scrutiny.  The original plan was to examine the checked baggage, the carry on baggage and the passenger more carefully.  This was reduced to just examining the checked baggage.  The selectee passenger and his carry on baggage pass through the same check point screening that we are all too familiar with.

What passes for security at most airports in this country is a result of the inept, contradictory and conflicted interests at the FAA.  The airlines justifiably distrust and fight against many of the measures proposed in the past by the FAA because they were impractical, unworkable and did not actually improve security.  It also reflects the stupidity of trying to fight against terrorists by federal regulation.  In 1996 it was generally agreed that certifying the companies that do the check point screening should be certified.  It makes sense.  We certify our hair dressers.  The hope was that by certifying screening companies, we could improve quality.  Its now five years later.  The regulation may be out.  Of course any company applying for certification will get a one year "bye'.  Total elapsed time for this simple idea  -  SIX years!

What passes for security at most airports in this country is a result of what you in the House of Representatives have allowed to happen.  You have oversight responsibility.  You've read the GAO reports.  You've read the DOT Inspector General's Reports.  Or you should have.  Not only didn't you watch what was going on and try to stop it, but this sub-committee went even further.  You earmarked $5,000.000 of last years aviation security budget to be spent in Congressman Duncan's district in Tennessee.  The FAA people estimate that they get about a value of about 5 cents of each dollar spent in Tennessee.

What passes for security at most airports in this country is a result of what we the flying public have been willing to put up with.  Some of us get angry when we see how lax security obviously is.  Some of us get angry when we have to wait in a line more than 20 seconds.  All of us are part of the problem if we don't tell the airlines, the FAA and our elected officials what we kind of security we want. 

What is needed is for a group of people who understand what security is and also understand how airports and airlines actually operate and how terrorist might operate to sit down and working out an integrated plan to provide security for our aviation industry.  I believe we could come up with an intelligent and reasonable system which would provide prudent security without undue delay, without an incredibly high cost and without compromising our civil liberties. 

I do not believe this is ever been attempted in the past.  We came close in 1996 with the Baseline Working Group.  But the report we published was a "cookbook" of how to provide security to counter various threat vectors, rather than a comprehensive security system.

*** Security Overlooks Airline and Airport Workers

This is the best article we have seen to date with regard to security and how it relates to airline and airport workers. This article from the Los Angeles Times has been condensed. Please see the full story for details.  Brian Bell   Airline Biz.com

 * From the LATimes: Flight Security Still All but Overlooks Workers

 Security measures at the nation's airports focus primarily on screening passengers while paying scant attention to thousands of airline and airport employees with unfettered access to commercial airplanes. Even after last week's hijackings and terrorist attacks on the East Coast, no national policy has been established to assure that airport workers don't smuggle weapons or explosives onto aircraft. A patchwork of practices that varies from airport to airport and airline to airline allows some employees to gain access to aircraft using an identification badge without going through metal detectors or security screenings as do passengers.

The Federal Aviation Administration last week ordered airlines and airports to conduct random screening of flight crews but not other workers with access to aircraft. Carriers across the nation let some employees go to work on planes without passing through screening devices, as long as they possess airport identification.

In 1999, Miami International Airport became the first airport in the country that insisted all of its ramp workers pass through metal detectors and have their bags X-rayed. The procedure began after almost 60 baggage handlers and other ramp workers were arrested in a federal sting operation on suspicion of smuggling drugs. For more than a decade, critical reports and investigations have warned it was easy for employees to smuggle weapons onto commercial airlines.

Just one day before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a federal judge in Santa Ana sentenced a former security guard at an LAX duty-free shop to five years in prison for conspiring to bypass airport security and smuggle firearms and explosives onto an airliner. Lionel Rodriguez, 31, of Diamond Bar smuggled 10 guns, plastic explosives and four fake hand grenades around metal detectors, using his airport ID in the fall of 1999.

The problems have been well documented. From late 1998 to early last year, federal investigators from the U.S. Department of Transportation tried to find out how easy it would be for a hijacker to board an airliner without bothering to pass through a metal detector. Acting like airport employees, investigators walked or drove into supposedly secured airport ramp areas and climbed aboard parked aircraft in exercises that, at many airports, were quite easy. The test results reflect security troubles stretching more than a decade. Undercover operatives reported that they boarded 83 airplanes without being challenged, officials told Congress.

Recent audits at six airports showed that reference checks for job applicants were frequently not done.  The large Atlanta-based airport security firm Argenbright Holdings Ltd. was ordered to pay fines and restitution of $1.5 million last October by a federal judge for falsifying background checks on 1,300 of its security-screening employees at Philadelphia International Airport from 1995 to 1999. Some of the employees turned out to have felony convictions for drug dealing, kidnapping and assault. Argenbright now provides screening  services at Newark and Dulles airports.  Armed with such evidence Congress last year increased background screening requirements ordering checks for all employees, not just those whose applications aroused suspicions. It also expanded the list of criminal offenses that disqualify applicants from holding airport jobs. Many employee representatives said they welcome measures to tighten security.          

Robert Monetti, President, Victims of Pan Am 103, Inc.

1615 Longfellow Drive  Cherry Hill, NJ 08003-3547

Business Phone 609-405-6169

Fax 856-428-4221  E-mail  bobmonet@mindspring.com

Bob Monetti was born and raised in Northern New Jersey.  In 1967, he married Eileen Surak and they later had two children, Richard in 1968 and Kara in 1973.  Bob's career as an Engineer for several manufacturing and engineering companies started after graduating from Newark College of Engineering in 1969.  He specialized as an Equipment Engineer in the chemical, nuclear and pharmaceutical industries.

Unfortunately, on December 21, 1988, Bob's life completely changed.  His son, Rick, who was returning from his semester in London, was murdered in the explosion of Pan Am 103.  Rick was only 20 years old.  Since that fateful day,  Bob has been working through his grief and helping to make aviation security safer through his participation in the organization Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, Inc., made up of family and friends of those killed.  He has been an integral member of the organization serving as Secretary, Newsletter Editor, Aviation Security Representative, Chairman and - currently - President.  Most of his activities in the organization for the past eleven years have been focused on aviation security issues.  He is the group's representative on the FAA's Aviation Security Advisory Committee (since 1989) and has served on many ASAC sub-committees and on the Baseline Working Group in 1996.  For the past four years, he has worked as a part time Consultant to the FAA on some aviation security technical projects.

Bob will continue his work for the group until all his goals - to find out the truth about the bombing, to make air travel safer, to persuade the United States to handle terrorism better and to survive this tragedy - are met.

Disclosure Statement:

I have recieved an FAA-ACP contract for my work on the baseline Working Group in 1996.  Actual amount for time and travel expenses was approx. $18,000.

I worked on a contract for the FAA-ACP in FY1999 reviewing test reports. Actual amount for time and expenses was approx. $3200.

I currently have a contract with the FAA-ACP to reexamine the container hardening program.  No monies paid yet.  Total contract value is $19,500.