1996.09.15: In 4 Reports Over 10 Years, Issues of Security at JFK

September 15, 1996
In 4 Reports Over 10 Years, Issues of Security at J.F.K.
By JOHN SULLIVAN and PAM BELLUCK

For nearly a decade, officials at Kennedy International Airport have been repeatedly told of security problems that made aircraft vulnerable to terrorist attack.

The warnings began even before the country was jolted into a greater awareness of terrorism by the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. In confidential security studies commissioned or conducted by the Port Authority itself in 1986, 1987, 1991 and 1993, experts identified holes and weaknesses ranging from inadequate police training to poor baggage screening. Each study recommended specific ways to plug these holes.

Ten years after the first study was completed, senior officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey insist that they have followed most of the recommendations in each of the reports.

But following the crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800, law enforcement investigators and other security experts say it is still far too easy to breach security at Kennedy.

In fact, some investigators examining security arrangements at Kennedy as part of their investigation of the July 17 explosion say they have been appalled by what they have found and are reluctant to have friends or family fly from Kennedy.

And while several of the major recommendations brought up in the security studies have been put into place, others, such as more rigorous procedures for X-raying luggage, have not been implemented.

In addition, the former director of aviation for the Port Authority, who left the agency last year, said Kennedy's system to keep unauthorized people out of high-security areas was installed hastily, under pressure from the Government and was ''a lot of baling wire and chewing gum.''

As far back as 1987, one of the confidential reports starkly noted that ''considerable security problems'' made the airport especially vulnerable to terrorism.

''J.F.K. Airport is subject to fanatics and suicide missions intending to blow up American aircraft,'' said the 1987 memo, written by a Port Authority police inspector who was summarizing the findings of a study by a private security consulting firm. ''We are vulnerable to missiles, time bombs, suicide attacks and other potential disasters.''

Since the crash of Flight 800, aviation experts have pointed out numerous problems that are not always unique to Kennedy, such as the failure to screen packages shipped as cargo and the absence of a requirement that security officers search most planes between flights. One law enforcement official testing the system managed to get into high-security areas even though the official, a white man, was wearing the identification badge of a black woman.

Those problems have been reported before, and some of them have been addressed in new national airport security directives issued since the crash. But what has not been apparent is the extent to which the Port Authority, which operates Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark airports, was made aware of the gaps in security several times in the last decade, and their efforts to address them.

The 1987 memo, obtained from authority officials who requested anonymity, advised against making information about the airport's vulnerability publicly available, cautioning that a ''public airing'' of the security firm's recommendations ''could cause severe repercussions for the Port Authority.''

Some of those recommendations could become increasingly significant in the aftermath of the T.W.A. crash. While investigators have not officially determined what caused the disaster, law enforcement officials say privately that they believe it was caused by a bomb smuggled into the passenger cabin.

In a 1986 report, a consultant hired by the Port Authority recommended 329 improvements. They ranged from minor items, such as a review of the police commander's workload, to major overhauls of security systems, such as the gates and alarms to control access to restricted areas of the airport.

Five years later, in another security evaluation, Port Authority security officials said that 54 percent of the recommendations had been or were about to be implemented. But they noted that many of the 329 recommendations were ''duplicative'' of others on the list, suggesting that the 54 percent figure might be overstating how widespread the changes were.

The 1991 report said, ''We have 'hardened' the airport security environment by, for example, upgrading perimeter fences, restricting access to sensitive areas, installing upgraded locks, improving police training, raising guard service standards, increasing employee security awareness, instituting security background checks and upgrading our I.D. card system.''

The 1991 report also predicted that an additional 17 percent of the recommendations would be implemented in the future.

The report went on to note that 38 recommendations that had not yet been addressed remained ''under consideration'' or were considered the responsibility of the airlines. Officials acknowledge that the Port Authority never passed the studies to the airlines so they could implement the recommendations judged to be their responsibility, such as more frequent baggage searching and stricter X-raying procedures.

Port Authority officials say they did hold extensive informal discussions with airline security directors at Kennedy. And similar recommendations for the nation's airlines were also made by a Presidential commission that investigated the Lockerbie bombing. But Government officials and aviation safety experts say that many of the commission's proposals were eliminated, delayed or weakened after lobbying by the airlines.

As for the remaining recommendations that concerned Port Authority responsibilities, the authority says that by now they have either been implemented or rejected as unworkable.

''No recommendations were rejected because they cost too much,'' said John Haley, the authority deputy director. ''Some recommendations were rejected because they would not have had much of a security benefit.''

For example, Mr. Haley said, the Port Authority rejected a recommendation to place police officers in boats to patrol the Jamaica Bay access to the airport. The authority felt that alternate patrolling methods would be more effective, he said, declining to describe the other patrols for security reasons.

The authority also decided against forming its own special police units, such as a bomb squad or a SWAT team. Instead it relies on other departments, such as the New York City police.

In 1991, after the Lockerbie bombing, the Port Authority installed a new terminal security system at Kennedy Airport. The system, which is designed to allow access to restricted areas only to people with proper identification cards and security codes, was among the most expensive and important recommendations made in the security studies.

After Flight 800, however, crash investigators were highly critical of the system, saying that it was relatively easy for a sophisticated terrorist to gain access to the airfield, the baggage or the aircraft. Port Authority officials have disputed those contentions, saying they regularly test the system and find it sufficient to keep unauthorized people away from the tarmac.

Still, David Plavin, who was director of aviation for the authority from 1990 to 1995, said the terminal security system was rapidly installed under pressure from the Federal Government. Although Mr. Plavin said the system worked as designed, he added that the requirements were not specific and that the pressure to finish it quickly was great.

''I'm remembering the feeling of flying blind,'' said Mr. Plavin, who is now the president of the Airports Council International, a trade group representing airports. ''We said, 'We'll do it, and we'll do the best we can with it, but we know we'll have to do it again in a few years.'

''We did something that we thought was going to do what it was supposed to do,'' he added, ''but it was really a lot of baling wire and chewing gum. We weren't really sure that it was either properly targeted or properly conceived.'' Mr. Plavin said that when he left the Port Authority last year, officials there were in widespread agreement that the system should ultimately be replaced.

At the time the authority began to install the system, the security focus was still concentrated on hijacking rather than bombing. Mr. Plavin said the threats deemed most likely at airports in the United States involved drug trafficking and, after the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, car bombs.

''I don't think anybody assumed at the time that other kinds of threats were likely or that they were being talked about,'' Mr. Plavin said. ''I think that's been the nature of security. There's a kind of a threat du jour and you have to kind of respond.''

Mr. Plavin declined to discuss the specific details of the system, but he said one of the greatest difficulties was monitoring every possible access point.

''If you wanted to keep people out of certain doors, you could put somebody on every door,'' he said. ''That's the simplest way, but it has disadvantages because it didn't have a way of contacting people at other doors at the same time. That's an abstraction, but ultimately the system had the same problem. Who was monitoring them? How you could communicate with other doors? Which door was open and which wasn't?''

Mr. Haley acknowledged that there had been recent examples of unauthorized people sneaking by the security system, such as a group of French radio reporters who walked by a gate soon after the Flight 800 crash. And last year, Kennedy was one of the airports examined during an investigation by the Department of Transportation Inspector General, in which investigators were able to smuggle guns, knives, deactivated hand grenades or fake bombs through security and, in some cases, onto airplanes.

Mr. Haley said, ''Our system is such that that is very much the exception. We test the system daily.''