Bush: Use Guard to Protect Airports(Federalizing Airport Security)

CHICAGO (AP) - President Bush urged governors Thursday to call up National Guard units to protect U.S. airports while he implements a long-term plan to secure airlines from terrorist attack. The package includes putting the federal government in charge of airport security.

Hoping to reassure jittery travelers, Bush also proposed spending $500 million on aircraft modifications that would deny or delay access to cockpits.

Terrorists hijacked four airplanes Sept. 11, crashing two into the World Trade Center in New York and one into the Pentagon outside Washington. A fourth crashed in Pennsylvania, apparently after passengers struggled with the hijackers. U.S. air travel has dropped sharply since the attacks.

The White House released an outline of Bush's air-security plan shortly before the president left for Chicago, where he was discussing the proposals with airline workers.

Hundreds of workers gathered outside an airport hangar to greet the president. Two jets were parked nose-to-nose at the event - one each from United Airlines and American Airlines, the carriers hijacked Sept. 11.

For the second time this year, Bush was having lunch here with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat and brother of Al Gore's campaign chairman last year.

Bush said Wednesday he was offering the ``confidence-boosting measures and some concrete proposals'' to ``convince the American public it is safe to fly.''

``One of my concerns is that this terrible incident has convinced many Americans to stay at home,'' Bush said. ``And one of the keys to economic recovery is going to be the vitality of the airline industry.''

-Expanding the use of federal air marshals aboard commercial airliners. ``The requirements and qualifications of federal air marshals are among the most stringent of any U.S. federal law enforcement agency,'' the White House statement said.

-Spending $500 million on plan modifications, including efforts to restrict the opening of cockpit doors during flights, fortify cockpit doors to deny access from the cabin, alert the cockpit crew to activity in the cabin and ensure continuous operation of the aircraft transponder in the event of an emergency. The transponder allows air controllers to track a plane.

-Putting the federal government in charge of airport security and screening, including the purchase and maintenance of all equipment. The government would supervise passenger and baggage security and perform background checks on security personnel. Uniformed federal workers would manage all operations; federal and nonfederal workers would share the security work.

``Fully implementing the extensive security proposal may take four to six months,'' the White House statement said. ``During that time, the president will help ensure that every airport has a strong security presence by asking the governors of the 50 states to call up the National Guard - at the federal government's expense - to augment existing security staff at every commercial airport nationwide.''

Bush's trip to Chicago was the second time he has traveled on Air Force One since the Sept. 11 jetliner attacks on New York and Washington that left nearly 7,000 dead or missing.

White House officials said the administration has several other options under consideration, including installing cameras to monitor jetliner cabins. Bush also hopes to reopen Reagan National Airport outside Washington, the only airport still closed due to the Sept. 11 attacks, but is not yet convinced that flying there would be safe, aides said. He is examining options that could lead to the reopening of the airport.

Bush's plan does not include arming pilots, action requested by the pilots themselves. ``There may be better ways to do it than that, but I'm open for any suggestion,'' Bush said Wednesday, as aides privately confirmed that he is cool to the idea.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta boarded a commercial flight Thursday at Baltimore-Washington International Airport to demonstrate his confidence in the air system. He was bound for Chicago to join Bush, accompanied by Jane Garvey, head of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Mineta waited in a long line at a BWI security checkpoint. He placed a leather bag on a scanner's conveyor belt, took out his keys and walked through the metal detector. It beeped, prompting a security guard to give Mineta a thorough sweep with a hand-held detector before allowing him onto Concourse A.

Bush's father, the nation's 41st president, planned a news conference at Logan Airport in Boston to reassure Americans before flying from Boston to Houston.

The White House is also eager to convince the public that life is returning to normal, and getting Americans back onto airplanes is part of the effort.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the number of commercial flights each day had returned to near normal, now at about 5,500, compared with the maximum before the attacks of 6,500.

However, relatively few people are on those flights. Delta Air Lines, for example, says its planes typically are only 35 percent filled.

You three seem to have missed an important message in my post, that being: Let government set standards that the private sector must follow. The only reason why we have (or rather, HAD) minimum wage employees screening bags is because the GOVERNMENT dropped the ball and did not set proper standards or give proper oversight to the issue.

We don't need for security screeners to be government employees. We just need to know that they have the skills to do the job. After all, we don't have government-employed airline pilots flying commercial airliners, nor government-employed stewardesses. But the commercial airline pilots are required to have a license to fly (government oversight and regulations).

We can solve this problem without hiring more government employees.

How about you three make sure your brains are engaged before your knees start jerking?

Why is a suicidal tema of hijackers going to be worried about a 10% chance that there is one guy with a gun on a plane?

The era of all hijackings has ended, and no government measures will deserve credit for it. The change in mentality among passengers will deter almost all future hijackers, and prevent any more plane-as-missle efforts.

This is because GOVERNMENT cannot be depended on to do anything right. Furthermore, it is not GOVERNMENT'S responsibility to keep you safe, it is you own right and responsibility. When the government takes this right from you, it's called unconstitutional. If you willingly give up this right and abdicate your responsibility for favor of letting GOVERNMENT set the standard and take the heat, then you get what you get. And 9/11 is what you get. The various forms of government, including but certainly not limited to, the FAA, disarmed everyone on those four planes.. so a dozen guys with office equipment killed 7.000 of your fellow countrymen.

I have absolutely no idea why grown, seemingly educated, otherwise reasonable sounding people cannot grasp these core concepts. All the history is there for you to read. All the rules by which government is supposed to play, and all the things they are NOT supposed to do to us, are clearly stated in our Constitution. It's all there! Nobody cares. Nobody bothers. Just this blather after the fact.

Well, it sure beats having complacent, underpaid people whose attitude is "it's a job", and many of whom do not speak english.

I can tell it's been a bloody long time since you had any dealings with the feral gummint!

[Whose average employee you just described to a "T!"]

In the interest of keeping original reply brief, I stated that the FAA had delegated their responsibility to the airlines, failing to add that the FAA retained their oversight responsibility. The standards you so desperately crave HAVE EXISTED SINCE LOCKERBIE! In my personal observation the FAA has failed to enforce them, and on this point we seem to agree. I would like to see the entire existing security branch of the FAA kicked to the curb OR better yet relieved of oversight responsibilities and put some of those arrogant bastard (and bitch) agents actually man the checkpoint.

You said :"How about you three make sure your brains are engaged before your knees start jerking?

I say:" you appear to be jerking something other than your knees."

I didn't realize that the FAA already had standards. I wish your original post had communicated that info.

So, if government won't uphold its own standards, how is having government employees instead of private sector employees going to solve the problem?

I believe the President is in favor of having armed air marshalls on every flight (they would be undercover in the passenger compartment) and having pilots behind locked, impenetrable doors. In the event of an emergency, the armed air marshall would handle security and the pilots (behind locked doors) would fly the plane to the nearest available airport.

Pilots should be armed, but it should be made clear to them that their first and foremost duty is to maintain control of the cockpit, and their weapons are to be used for that purpose only. If pilots stick to their primary duty, the firearms training required would be minimal. Indeed, the hardest part of training would be training the pilots that--though armed--they should remain locked in the cockpit even if with a machete starts killing all the passengers.

Another point to consider: if a flight has one sky marshal and no armed flight crew, a terrorist who manages to wrest control of the marshal's gun would have nearly 100% guaranteed control of the plane. If the pilot and copilot are also armed, however, they'd have a decent chance (probably 25%-75% depending upon circumstances) of keeping control of the plane. While I wouldn't want to stake my life on those odds, even a 25% chance is a lot better than a 0% chance.

The airlines responsible for the crashes, and security should be bankrupted by lawsuits so they can never again provide such shoddy security.

While airline security was, and largely still is, a joke (knives that can evade metal detectors are stone-age technology), there is no evidence I've seen that airlines' security did not behave exactly as specified. The problem, plain and simply, was that there was nobody on three of the planes to try to stop the hijackers, and on the fourth the only way to stop the hijackers was to crash the plane.

I have an idea on airline security. Generally, when the enemy gets to the last line of defense, ie: the pilots, the battle is lost. So when a hijacker exhibits a sharp object I would suggest shoving it up his or her behind prior to there heading towards the cockpit. Ergo, sharp object goes from on board to inboard.

"Another point to consider: if a flight has one sky marshal and no armed flight crew, a terrorist who manages to wrest control of the marshal's gun would have nearly 100% guaranteed control of the plane."

This is a good point. One good thing is no one knows who the marshall is. But obviously one hijacker could flush out the marshall while the others try to overpower him. I hope that President Bush's purported reluctance means he does not want armed pilots to be the only line of defense on the plane. I agree that a undercover marshall and the possibility of armed pilots on every flight would be the best plan.

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