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...aides tried to squelch a Transportation Department warning to American travelers about lax safeguards against terrorism at the airport. White House aides feared such a warning would prompt a frosty reception for Hillary Clinton when she visited Athens in March to witness the lighting of the Olympic flame. Outraged FAA officials protested that travelers shouldn't be kept in the dark about the warning--which was required by law. Eventually White House lawyers decided the warning couldn't be skirted, so it was issued on March 21, a week before Mrs. Clinton's visit. The White House then pressured...
...developed in the 1970s. Those worked well for the problem of that era--hijacking--but do little to combat the threats posed by plastique or suicide bombers. "Our security system is not a model that one would hold up with any pride," says Billie Vincent, who was head of FAA security from 1982 to 1986 and now runs a consulting firm...
Among other measures, the 1990 legislation required the FAA to speed up explosives-detection research, to heighten security checks on airport personnel and to release passenger manifests within three hours of a crash. The deadline set by Congress: November 1993. The FAA failed to adhere to that timetable, blaming Congress for setting overly stringent standards and requiring complicated tests of the new technologies. But that same year--five full years after Lockerbie--the inspector general's office of the Department of Transportation released a report blasting the FAA's overall security program. It is the only such report that...
...report states baldly that airport security was still "seriously flawed" and "not adequate" at the nation's riskiest airports, which include New York City's John F. Kennedy. While the FAA had rated the four airports visited by its inspectors as "good to very good," undercover agents from the inspector general's office reached dramatically different conclusions. In 15 out of 20 attempts to gain entry to supposedly secure areas, agents had little trouble: they got into aircraft-parking areas, baggage areas, and one agent managed to slip an unarmed hand grenade through a metal detector...
ATLANTA: ValuJet's plans to take to the air less than three months after its disastrous May plane crash were met with a tight-lipped response from the FAA Wednesday. While the airline, grounded since mid-June, says it anticipates that revamped maintenance and training procedures will convince the FAA to reinstate its license by early August, the agency won't say when it expects to reach a decision. "The FAA knows the heat is on and is going to scrutinize ValuJet's operations from top to bottom before it lets the airline fly again," says TIME's Jerry Hannifin...