Agencies Criticize LAX Handling of Hijack Alert

The decision to allow a SWAT team to storm a Singapore Airlines jet Monday after it had transmitted a computerized hijack alert sparked a debate Wednesday among law enforcement officials in Los Angeles on whether the action had violated protocol and jeopardized the safety of those on board.

Several law enforcement sources, including some from the Los Angeles Police Department, complained that Los Angeles International Airport police had overstepped their authority by sending SWAT officers onto the plane after it landed at the airport Monday afternoon. The hijack alert turned out to be false.

But airport officials said it was necessary to board the plane right away because they weren’t certain whether a hijacking was underway.

The quarrel underscores the jurisdictional complexities that involve protecting the airport, aircraft and passengers at what the state has ranked as California’s No. 1 terrorist target. At least six agencies are charged with security at the airport. Among them are the FBI, Transportation Security Administration, LAPD and the independent airport Police Department.

“Every addition to the alphabet soup of agencies at the airport potentially adds to confusion in times of crisis,” Councilman Jack Weiss said.

Questions about the ground response followed a revelation Tuesday that several federal agencies had known that the flight’s transponder was malfunctioning for at least four hours, but had failed to notify airport officials and local law enforcement about the problem. The communication breakdown left local law enforcement agencies scrambling to deal with the plane just minutes before it landed.

The FAA’s Oakland center received the hijack alert about 12:30 p.m., but officials from the airport, FBI, the local TSA and LAPD weren’t notified until 4:48 p.m.

The transportation security agency, which provides security at the nation’s airports, said Wednesday that it didn’t notify agency officials in Los Angeles about Flight 20 because officials in Washington, D.C., had been told by the FAA that the jet’s transponder was malfunctioning, said Nico Melendez, an agency spokesman. As a result, the TSA was not required to call the L.A. office, he said.

But the agency is changing that policy as a result of Monday’s incident and will notify its local offices when such an event occurs, he said.

On Wednesday, Mayor James K. Hahn sent a two-page letter to Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, calling on the FAA to work with the TSA and other agencies to determine why local officials had not been alerted about Flight 20.

“Given the events of Sept. 11, the close coordination between agencies and existence and use of a tight notification process is critical,” Hahn wrote. “Monday’s events were a very poor example of that.”

Airport officials said the lack of information about the flight’s status ultimately led an armed airport police SWAT team to board the jet, a move that LAPD and federal officials called an overreaction.

“It was a very dangerous move,” said one official versed in counterterrorism, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “What was the urgency? I can understand taking action if there’s an immediate threat ... but the fact is, the plane was on the ground.”

Another official, the FBI’s on-scene commander, was more diplomatic.

“It was evident to me along with LAPD personnel that protocols were violated,” said Herb Brown, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s crisis management, which includes the FBI’s SWAT team. “Our ultimate concern was the boarding of the plane, and I will leave it at that. But we are going to take a careful look at the [procedures] that were not followed and make sure it does not happen again.”

The turf war led the agencies to call a 2 1/2-hour, closed-door meeting at the airport Tuesday, where officials squabbled about which agency ultimately had the authority to call the shots at Monday’s incident, sources said. Another closed-door session is scheduled for next week.

Agents and officers from the FBI, LAPD, TSA, U.S. Customs and airport police responded to a remote gate near the sand dunes after the flight had taxied there about 5:35 p.m.

Federal officials and the LAPD said airport police should have waited for more FBI personnel before storming the aircraft. Under federal law, the FBI is charged with taking control of aviation incidents on the ground that may involve terrorism.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Bosley said agents were told that the hijacking was a false alarm shortly after the FBI had been notified of the problem about 4:50 p.m. Still, Bosley and others said, FBI procedures required that the FBI’s SWAT team verify that there was no threat.

When the FBI SWAT team arrived at LAX, according to one source who asked not to be named, its agents were “incensed” that airport police had stormed the plane.

Airport officials disagreed that they had violated procedures. “There’s a whole protocol for how this should work and [airport police] went right down the checklist,” said Paul Haney, an airport spokesman.

They also said, and the TSA agreed, that the possibility that there might have been an emergency situation required immediate action.

“No one objected to the airport police’s special response team going down to handle the airplane,” said Larry Fetters, the TSA’s federal security director at the airport. “It was something they couldn’t avoid because of the short notice on this incident. There wasn’t a whole lot of time to wait for someone to show up.”

Airport police had “the only sufficient manpower to deal with the incident” immediately after the flight arrived, Haney said. Airport police were unsure whether the hijacking alert was false. They said that the FAA had diverted Flight 20 over the ocean from its coastal flight pattern and that the military had scrambled two F-16s to shadow the jet.

The confusion about the response by law enforcement agencies prompted lawmakers to call a renewal of the decade-old debate about combining the airport police and the LAPD.

The issue reemerged most recently in the summer of 2002 after a deadly Fourth of July shooting at LAX. Several public safety officials argued that merging the LAPD and the airport police would eliminate communication problems and costly duplication of resources.

Said Councilman Weiss: “We saw questions of command and control in the wake of the El Al terrorist shooting, and the fact that questions are being raised here only underscores a recurring fundamental question: Should we even have an airport police department independent of the LAPD?”