TSA missing biggest airline threat: cargo bombs
As visible as the TSA is in airport terminals, there’s one place you very often won’t find vigilant agents: The cargo holds inside jetliners.
Estimates are that one quarter of all the cargo flown does not get screened at all. That’s more than one billion pounds.
"I don’t think with the budget and the personnel they have that they could ever verify everything," said counter-terrorism specialist Tony Cooper.
Cooper said the country has concentrated more on skyjackings after 9/11 rather than the lessons of Pan Am Flight 103. A bomb in the cargo hold blew the 747 jumbo jet out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.
"That is much more likely than the repetition of 9/11," Cooper said.
A new report by the General Accounting Office questions whether the TSA will be able to inspect every piece of cargo by August 1, as Congress mandated three years ago.
TSA is currently screening 75 percent of aircraft cargo.
GAO found that even though TSA increased screening for domestic cargo to meet new requirements of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007, the agency "does not expect to meet the mandate" for cargo coming to the United States from other countries, according to ABC News.
GAO reports that 96 percent of inbound cargo, which could hold fresh produce, electronics or car parts, is "shrink-wrapped" or "banded" and often exempt from screening.
The report also said the TSA still hasn’t approved a technology that can inspect large pallets and added the agency often does "not verify" what’s inside cargo from certain approved shippers.
The TSA agrees with that assessment, admitting that bombs hidden in cargo are a "significant" risk — and remain a "high" likelihood.
Billions of pounds of cargo fly with passengers in the US every year, according to the GAO.
Officials have asked TSA to create a backup plan because after next month, unscreened cargo won’t leave the runway.
The deadline for incoming international flights will be missed, Gale Rossides, TSA’s acting director, told the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee.
She said the agency might be able to ensure that only 65 percent of cargo on international flights is screened.
TSA officials have been saying since last year that meeting the August deadline for incoming international flights most likely would not be possible. But the need for another two years is the longest estimate to be disclosed so far.
Rossides said the biggest challenge is getting cooperation from the governments of 20 countries where nearly 85 percent of all cargo comes from.
By David Wilkening
David
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