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Testing,
1, 2, 3, testing. Jihadists never go on furlough. While shutdown
theater preoccupies Washington, terror plotters remain on the clock. The
question is: Will America keep hitting the post-9/11 snooze button?
At Los Angeles International Airport, two dry ice bombs exploded this week, and two others were found in a restricted area of the airport. According to the Los Angeles Times, the devices "appeared to be outside the terminal near planes where employees such as baggage handlers and others work on the aircraft and its cargo."
That reminds me: It's been more than a year since watchdogs warned Capitol Hill that our massive homeland security bureaucracy was neglecting these very areas of our nation's airports. Grandmas, babies and war heroes are routinely groped, manhandled and humiliated in the name of transportation safety. But untold numbers of ground personnel still have easy, breezy access to airplanes and luggage.
In August, seven baggage handlers at Kennedy Airport were arrested after being videotaped stealing jewelry, cash, watches and computers from passenger luggage. In June, a baggage handler at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport was arrested after using his credentials to bypass airport security and carry backpacks containing what he believed were drugs and guns onto commercial flights. It's almost as if any bumbling bimbo can connive his or her way into supposedly secure territory.
A Nigerian illegal alien named Bimbo Oyewole did just that. He used a dead man's birth certificate and Social Security number to get a job with a private security firm at Newark Airport. Con artist Bimbo went undetected for more than two decades while supervising security guards who policed tarmacs, planes and cargo. Last summer, in the wake of Bimbo's belated bust, the DHS inspector general called for stricter background checks on baggage handlers, maintenance workers and other civilian airport employees.
But by the feds' own admission, legions of workers who were grandfathered into the system may yet be traipsing around restricted areas of our nation's airports -- doing God knows what. TSA does not keep systematic records on airport security breaches reported to headquarters. "I'm going to tell you right now that the next incident is going to come from the ground," Rep. Chip Cravaack, R-Minn., testified last spring. "It's going to come from the shadow of the aircraft, not from the terminal. I'm telling you that."
At Los Angeles International Airport, two dry ice bombs exploded this week, and two others were found in a restricted area of the airport. According to the Los Angeles Times, the devices "appeared to be outside the terminal near planes where employees such as baggage handlers and others work on the aircraft and its cargo."
That reminds me: It's been more than a year since watchdogs warned Capitol Hill that our massive homeland security bureaucracy was neglecting these very areas of our nation's airports. Grandmas, babies and war heroes are routinely groped, manhandled and humiliated in the name of transportation safety. But untold numbers of ground personnel still have easy, breezy access to airplanes and luggage.
In August, seven baggage handlers at Kennedy Airport were arrested after being videotaped stealing jewelry, cash, watches and computers from passenger luggage. In June, a baggage handler at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport was arrested after using his credentials to bypass airport security and carry backpacks containing what he believed were drugs and guns onto commercial flights. It's almost as if any bumbling bimbo can connive his or her way into supposedly secure territory.
A Nigerian illegal alien named Bimbo Oyewole did just that. He used a dead man's birth certificate and Social Security number to get a job with a private security firm at Newark Airport. Con artist Bimbo went undetected for more than two decades while supervising security guards who policed tarmacs, planes and cargo. Last summer, in the wake of Bimbo's belated bust, the DHS inspector general called for stricter background checks on baggage handlers, maintenance workers and other civilian airport employees.
But by the feds' own admission, legions of workers who were grandfathered into the system may yet be traipsing around restricted areas of our nation's airports -- doing God knows what. TSA does not keep systematic records on airport security breaches reported to headquarters. "I'm going to tell you right now that the next incident is going to come from the ground," Rep. Chip Cravaack, R-Minn., testified last spring. "It's going to come from the shadow of the aircraft, not from the terminal. I'm telling you that."
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