It Takes a Tragedy

n Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 blew up in mid air when a bomb concealed in a portable stereo detonated in the plane's luggage compartment. The explosion killed all 270 people on board and 11 villagers in Lockerbie, Scotland, where the plane's wreckage fell.

Three months later, the victims' families met with President George H.W. Bush and petitioned all U.S. senators to conduct an inquiry on airline security. The government declined.

Then, in September 1989, a bomb in the cargo hold of French UTA Flight 772 ripped open the plane over the Niger desert, killing 171 people.

Two months later, a bomb felled Columbia's Avianca Flight 272 after takeoff from Bogotá and claimed 113 lives.

Another year went by before Congress passed and the president signed a 1990 law instructing the Federal Aviation Administration to develop machines to detect explosives in airline luggage. The law didn't require airlines to use the devices.

In 1992, the FAA opened an aviation security laboratory. For three years, its engineers worked hand-in-hand with the nation's only manufacturer of explosive detection systems, hulking machines that can see objects hidden inside luggage. In 1995, the government certified a machine to detect the amount of explosives terrorists would need to bring down a plane.

Not one U.S. airline bought the equipment.

The next year, another plane exploded. The crash of TWA Flight 800 in July 1996, which killed 230 off the coast of New York, would later be linked to a mechanical defect, but at the time, federal officials feared it was a bomber's work. Since the airline industry still wasn't using the explosive detection equipment the FAA had spent years developing, the government decided to buy the technology and install it at airports. The FAA planned to outfit every U.S. airport within 20 years.

After Sept. 11, 2001, Congress moved up the deadline. The terrorist attacks spawned a new airline security law requiring explosive detection systems to be in use at all 429 commercial U.S. airports by the end of 2002. More than five years had passed since the FAA had certified that the machines were ready to use.

The saga of how the government finally began screening fliers' luggage for explosives is punctuated by disaster, and it illustrates how agencies and businesses have only begrudgingly responded to terrorist attacks. For more than a decade, airlines, Congress and the FAA failed to make explosive detection a central part of air travel security and counterterrorism. Efforts to increase security were aborted repeatedly, and restarted only after another airliner exploded.

During the 13 years between the bombing of Pan Am 103 and enactment of the second airline security law, the people working inside government to make flying more secure learned a painful lesson: Progress rides on the back of catastrophe.

MONEY TALKS

The families of the Pan Am 103 victims spent months urging Congress and the White House to investigate the security lapses that allowed terrorists to bring down the airliner.

Ultimately, a few influential senators pressured the first President Bush to create a commission on airline security. The 1990 Aviation Security Improvement Act came in response to the panel's findings.

From this law, and the legacy of Pan Am 103, the FAA's aviation security lab was born. Housed in a few buildings at the agency's sprawling technology center outside Atlantic City, N.J., the lab became the central location for airline security research and development.

The lab had a broad mandate: Develop equipment and procedures to counter threats of terrorism. Explosive detection was the most pressing need. So the lab's engineers launched what's known as a "phoenix" project. They used an existing technology, the CAT scan equipment doctors use to capture images of patients' bones and organs, to develop a new device for a different purpose.

InVision, a small manufacturer in Newark, Calif., already had been working to build an explosive detector based on medical scanners. The FAA awarded the firm a $4 million grant, and the company and the lab became partners.

The work was monotonous. Once the FAA engineers had determined the minimum amount of explosives terrorists would need to bring down an airliner-a figure they keep confidential-InVision tried to make a machine sensitive enough to detect it. Lab technicians molded explosive material into innocuous shapes and concealed it in luggage. Then, they sent the bags through the bulky detector on a long conveyer belt. They repeated the process, with different explosives in different shapes concealed in different bags, to measure the machine's accuracy. If the machine failed to detect the fake bomb, InVision went back to the drawing board. For two years, engineers tweaked the machine to get more precise readings and to avoid false alarms. The detector measured an object's density, not its shape, and sometimes couldn't distinguish between dangerous and harmless substances. It often mistook a jar of peanut butter for a block of plastic explosives.

Each new terrorist strike around the world goaded the engineers to work faster to avert the airline attack they feared might be next.

In December 1994, one of the world's most dangerous terrorists boarded Philippine Airlines Flight 434, assembled a bomb in the lavatory and placed it under a seat. On a subsequent flight, the bomb detonated, and a passenger was sucked out of the plane. The bomb maker, Ramzi Yousef, had masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Yousef used Flight 434 as practice for a plan to take down 12 air-liners almost simultaneously.

In 1995, the government finally declared the explosive detection machines ready for use in airports. As Yousef's attack demonstrated, aircraft remained vulnerable to bombs in carry-on luggage. But the FAA had high hopes the detectors would close a significant security gap.

Foreign airports, some competing to be declared the world's safest, were among the first buyers of the detectors. Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport and Great Britain's Manchester Airport placed the first orders. Many at the FAA lab assumed U.S. airlines, which handle their own security operations, rapidly would follow suit.

They didn't.

U.S. airlines contended the machines were too expensive. Each explosive detector cost nearly $1 million, not including operating costs and maintenance. Each airline would have had to buy its own machine to screen bags on its flights. Congress passed no law requiring explosive screening, so neither government agencies nor airports could force the airlines to buy detectors.

BLOOD AND PROGRESS

For all the excitement the FAA lab's work stirred among foreign airports, the push to improve airline security in the United States all but died in the years following the Pan Am 103 bombing, says Paul Polski, the former lab director.

Because airlines refused to buy explosive detectors, R&D work on new models ceased. InVision had spent about $20 million developing its first machine. FAA grants to the company totaled $6 million. InVision estimated it would take four years to develop a faster and more efficient model. But with little new revenue and no new grants, the company had no way to fund more research.

But then, on July 17, 1996, another airline disaster shocked explosive detection research back to life. TWA Flight 800 exploded shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The catastrophe, which killed 230 people, occurred during the summer Olympics in Atlanta. Federal officials feared the disaster was the work of terrorists.

Following the crash, then-Transportation Secretary Federico Peña traveled to the FAA security lab in Atlantic City. He told Polski and his team that he wanted to see every technology that was ready to roll out. The lab had developed three dozen counterterrorism devices, from blast-resistant luggage holders to explosive detectors that screened passengers' bodies. How many of these technologies were in U.S. airports now, Peña asked. Polski showed Peña a chart. One axis listed the lab's products, and the other listed the countries whose airlines or airports had bought them. Below "United States" was a line of zeros.

Peña was outraged. If the airlines wouldn't pay for explosive detectors, then the federal government would. The FAA secured $20 million in additional R&D funding for the lab, and then allocated more than $140 million to buy explosive trace detection units. The trace detectors-wands that baggage handlers swipe inside and outside luggage-were less accurate than the larger machines made by InVision. But they were cheaper and could be deployed faster.

The first trace detectors were installed at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in 1996. The FAA planned to install some form of explosive detection in every U.S. airport by 2014. In late 1996, the agency bought 54 large explosive detection machines from InVision. The $52 million order and new grant money from the FAA let InVision ramp up its operations. The money fueled development of the fastest explosive detection machine ever.

But once again, complacency supplanted the urgency that follows a plane crash. Orders for the machines dwindled. By 1999, InVision was losing money.

Other research areas suffered, as well. The FAA lab built bomb-resistant luggage containers for use in wide-body jets. They could withstand a blast larger than what brought down Pan Am 103. Yet airlines bought only a few of the containers. They complained of high maintenance costs, says Polski. But some airlines failed to repair their containers even after luggage-carrying forklifts pierced them.

The FAA lab also explored ways to detect explosives on the human body. Engineers developed a portal that blew air from underneath a person, knocking microscopic particles off his skin and clothes and then sucking them into a chemical analyzer. But even after Ramzi Yousef carried chemical and bomb components onto Philippine Airlines 434, airlines failed to purchase the device. Today, the Transportation Security Administration, which now runs the lab, is testing the portal for use in airports-at the government's expense.

WAKE-UP CALL

Some security experts contend it was the government's responsibility to assume the cost of explosive detection, because the airlines would never accept it as theirs. It wasn't in the companies' financial interest to make a hefty investment for top security, says Doug Laird, the former head of security for Northwest Airlines. Airlines always have feared strict security measures would lead to flight delays that would translate into lost business. Even today, they view the InVision machines as too slow.

But the FAA's commitment to producing the best technology also is questionable. A 1994 investigation by the General Accounting Office found that the agency's method for certifying explosive detection devices "does not ensure that the technology can perform reliably in day-to-day use." Despite a recommendation by the National Academy of Sciences to test the machines at airports before certifying them, the FAA planned only to test them in the lab.

Also, the lab had 40 security projects under way, but the agency had conducted tests on only seven of them, auditors found. None of the explosive detection projects fully met the FAA's performance requirements, which included minimizing false alarms.

Meanwhile, aviation security decayed. From 1994 to 2000, the General Accounting Office issued 10 reports citing weaknesses and vulnerabilities on the part of airlines, airports and the government. The problems needed long-term attention, but repeatedly were ignored, investigators said.

The run up of criticisms before Sept. 11 now reads like an eerie prophecy:

• "Slow progress in addressing long-standing screener problems."
• "Vulnerabilities still exist in the aviation security system."
• "Additional controls needed to address weaknesses in carriage of weapons regulation."

HISTORY REPEATS

The TSA, which has hired more than 55,000 passenger screeners now working in all U.S. airports, declared on Dec. 30 that it had met the explosive screening deadline-one day ahead of schedule. However, the requirements of the 2001 airline security law had been eased. TSA didn't have to install explosive detection machines in every airport by the deadline. Instead, in some airports, TSA could combine trace detection by inspectors using wands, bomb sniffing dogs and matching passengers with their luggage to screen all bags. TSA won't reveal which screening methods are used at which airports.

Some security experts say this approach is ineffective. "It's no secret how to screen luggage," says Laird, the ex-security chief for Northwest Airlines. Explosive detection machines are the most reliable method. "Trace [detection with wands] can in no way be compared to [the machines]," he says. "It should never be used for a primary screening device. The TSA knows that."

Others question the accuracy of the explosive detection machines. Some have false alarm rates approaching 30 percent, says Ray Bjorklund, vice president of market intelligence at Federal Sources Inc., a technology research firm in McLean, Va. He adds that there hasn't been enough research into the costs of maintaining and installing the large machines at airports.

TSA officials say combined screening methods have dramatically improved security. But some skeptics have questioned whether lawmakers realize that not all bags are being screened for explosives using new technology. If Congress thinks all bags are being searched, they may be less likely to increase TSA's budget for new machines. Already, the agency has spent an estimated $3 billion on explosive detection technologies. Laird says that's "not even close" to what it would cost to fully screen all bags, whether checked or carried on board.

Since taking over from John Magaw, the first head of the TSA, James Loy has eased or lifted a number of security requirements to reduce the "hassle factor" at airports. Passengers may now check in at automated kiosks. The TSA no longer asks passengers whether they're carrying objects given to them by unknown persons, a practice Loy says added no security value. And passengers now may carry liquids through airport metal detectors. Ramzi Yousef carried liquid bomb components through similar detectors.

No civilian aircraft has been bombed since the Sept. 11 attacks, but terrorists have attempted to down airliners using explosives and missiles. In December 2001, Richard Reid boarded a plane with explosives attached to his shoes. And one year later, terrorists fired shoulder-launched missiles at an Israeli charter jet taking off from Mombasa, Kenya.

But even in the absence of a successful bombing aboard an airliner, the history of air travel security efforts is clear: Those who forget the past will be condemned to repeat it.