Airport Security Lapses Exposed by British Reporters : Changes Ordered at London’s Heathrow After Journalist ‘Cleaners’ Gain Access to Jets

A “livid” Transport Minister Paul Channon ordered new procedures and an urgent security review at London’s Heathrow Airport on Friday after two British journalists separately gained unchallenged access to planes and baggage containers there by posing as aircraft cleaners.

The lapses occurred despite supposedly stepped-up security measures ordered after the bombing of Pan American World Airways Flight 103 last month, which killed all 259 passengers and crew as well as 11 people in a Scottish village where burning wreckage obliterated half a dozen homes.

Police officials here continued to refuse to comment on how they think the bomb was placed on board the New York-bound jet, but Pan Am officials in West Germany have been quoted as saying they are now almost certain it was done at Heathrow.

Security Passes Canceled

Flight 103 originated in Frankfurt, but the passengers switched to another, larger aircraft at Heathrow, where additional passengers boarded.

Heathrow officials summarily canceled the security passes for all employees of two airport cleaning services Friday and began checking thousands of other pass holders after learning of the security breaches exploited by the two journalists.

Channon said he welcomed Heathrow’s moves, but ordered that in the future no one have unsupervised access to aircraft and checked baggage in restricted areas of airports except people who have held an airport pass for at least six months.

On Page 1 of Friday morning’s Daily Express was an article headlined, “Exposed: Heathrow Security Shambles.” The article, written by reporter Graham Dudman, said in part:

“I broke through the new security system imposed at Heathrow Airport after the Pan Am jumbo bombing with frightening ease this week . . . armed with a passport to terror. The passport was an airside security pass given to me by a cleaning firm after a farcical checking procedure.”

Real Name Used

Dudman said he received the security pass and a $4.60-an-hour job as an aircraft cleaner after an interview that lasted “less than 10 minutes.” He said he used his real name but gave false personal and educational references which no one bothered to check.

“Two days later,” he said, “I was given the airside security pass enabling me to enter all restricted areas at Heathrow.”

He said he was able to approach aircraft and baggage containers without supervision while carrying bulky packages that were never inspected. His article was accompanied by photographs, taken with a smuggled camera, showing him standing next to a Kuwaiti airliner and a Pan Am baggage container.

“High-tech baggage scanners and armed intervention squads are of no great use if any Johnny-come-lately can equip himself in a matter of hours with a tarmac pass,” the Express said in an accompanying editorial. “This is an astonishing loophole which must be closed before there are any further pious platitudes about the state of security at Britain’s airports.”

Not long after the Express article appeared, London Weekend Television said that one if its researchers had also obtained a job as a cleaner at Heathrow and that he had planted a package under a window seat on a Japan Air Lines flight to Tokyo.

The researcher, Stewart Morris, said he used bogus references and a false name and address in getting his job, with a different cleaning service.

“I was not searched when boarding planes,” he said, “nor was I supervised while working.

He said he could have planted a parcel on any of several international carriers, and that he chose Japan Air Lines at random.

Morris informed colleague Paul Ross, a London Weekend Television reporter, who booked a seat on the JAL flight, retrieved the package in mid-trip, and allegedly was able to take it into the pilot’s compartment without challenge.

“It could have contained a bomb, a gun or a knife,” Ross said. “I could have taken the plane over without difficulty.”

The television report is to be aired Sunday, subject to approval by Britain’s Independent Broadcasting Authority.

Transport Minister Channon was described Friday by a fellow Conservative member of Parliament, Terry Dicks, as “outraged and livid at what he has heard.”

“This is a matter for resignations in some quarters when it is discovered who is responsible for this appalling and frightening lack of security,” Dicks told the Press Assn., a British news agency for domestic news. “How can the traveling public have any confidence in the security when things like this occur?”

A Transport Ministry spokeswoman confirmed that Channon “is extremely angry that this has happened.” She said he has ordered an urgent report on the feasibility of additional security moves, including:

-- Intensified searches of staff and their baggage.

-- Stepped-up searches of vehicles entering the tarmac area.

-- Closing some airport crossing points to free staff for tightening security elsewhere.

-- Increased patrols in restricted areas.

While the Transport Ministry “is responsible for laying down the security parameters,” the spokeswoman said, “it’s up to the airline and airport security people to implement them.”

John Prescott, transport spokesman for the opposition Labor Party, accused the government of trying to duck its responsibility. Interviewed by Independent Television News, he branded airport security as “wholly inadequate” and “a sham.” He blamed “sloppy management, costing lives, and not the proper priority for safety.”

A spokeswoman for Heathrow Airport confirmed that it had withdrawn “forthwith all airside passes issued to employees” of Skyliner Services Ltd., the cleaning company that employed Express reporter Dudman. “We have also started an urgent full investigation of the references of all holders of passes issued at Heathrow,” she said.

According to a statement issued by Heathrow, Skyliner, a subsidiary of Scandinavian Airlines, failed to carry out proper procedures for checking the references of job applicants “in spite of giving us written reassurances that they have done so.”

Skyliner’s managing director, Bjorn Petersen, said in a telephone interview that “we think it unfair that we are singled out for punishment.” He said his firm “followed the same procedures as our competitors.”

Petersen said he was not free to comment on the specifics of Dudman’s reports because of security constraints, but added, “I dispute most of what he says.”

Skyliner is the second-largest of nine cleaning firms at Heathrow, and the airport’s action affects 180 employees, Petersen said. He said he hopes the firm will be “back in business tomorrow or early next week” after complying with new procedures for issuing passes instituted by the airport Friday.

But Channon said he has asked the airport authorities not to issue any more passes for the Skyliner firm.

The Heathrow spokeswoman said that its statement about Skyliner was also “relevant” with respect to the firm involved in the London Weekend Television report--Fernley Aeroclean. A Fernley spokesman refused to comment.