Security Overhaul May Allow Airport to Reopen

President Bush would like to see Reagan National Airport reopened--but under much more stringent security, a top administration official said Sunday.

The remarks by Andrew H. Card Jr., White House chief of staff, were a clear indication that the administration is responding to political and business pressure to reopen the airport, the only one still closed following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

As recently as Friday, the White House had distanced itself from remarks by Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, who said the airport would “definitely” reopen.

“The president would like us to get National Airport . . . opened as quickly as we can,” Card said. “But we have to be sensitive to the security concerns.”

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also agreed Sunday that it was time to resume flights from Reagan National.

“I personally am hopeful that Washington National will be open,” Rumsfeld said. “I think that it would be a shame if we had to alter our behavior. When we do that to any great extent, the terrorists win.”

Card spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” while Rumsfeld was interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Government officials said heightened security procedures might include placing air marshals on a greater proportion of flights serving National, much closer scrutiny of passengers, baggage and airport workers and new restrictions on aircraft approach and departure patterns.

Located across the Potomac River in Arlington, Va., Reagan National is only a 15-minute cab ride from downtown Washington, making it an ideal location for business and government travelers. But the Secret Service long has regarded it as a security risk. Planes landing and taking off come within close proximity to the Pentagon, the White House, the Capitol, CIA headquarters and other government buildings.

“It is a relatively minor, minor course correction to end up crashing into one of those buildings,” Rumsfeld said.

But Card said he was “optimistic that we can find the right balance between security and economic opportunity.”

The country’s 37th-busiest airport, Reagan National usually handles about 9,000 takeoffs and landings a day, slightly more than the volume at San Jose International. Its continued closure has idled thousands of workers in the airline and related industries and sent shock waves through the metropolitan Washington economy. The survival of US Airways, which is headquartered nearby, has been in increased jeopardy since Reagan National was closed.

Political and business leaders from Virginia and Washington have lobbied the White House intensely to reopen the airport. Members of Congress, many of whom fly to their home districts for the weekend, also are applying pressure. The airport is minutes from their offices--unlike Washington’s other airport, Dulles International, which is about 30 miles from downtown. And they get free parking.

Bush is expected to decide the airport’s future after reviewing the options early this week, Card said. He left open the possibility that it might reopen gradually and operate under much stricter security affecting passengers, pilots, air traffic controllers and airport workers.

Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and the local authority that operates Reagan National are designing a new security plan that they hope will convince Bush to reopen the facility.

Among the measures under consideration, government and aviation sources say, is a ban on corporate jets and private planes. Officials say other measures could include aggressive and highly visible patrols of terminals, parking lots and access gates and painstaking screening of passengers, including the use of computerized profiling to identify potential risks.

The most drastic option available--shooting down a hijacked civilian plane--is not of much use against aircraft landing or taking off at Reagan National. There is little time for fighter aircraft to intercept a pilot bent on a suicide attack against one of Washington’s buildings.

“The problem is almost impossible to deal with from the air,” Rumsfeld said. “What one would have to do is to deal with it from the ground. . . . And I think the way to deal with that is by proper training of people on the ground, the protection of aircraft [and] air marshals.”

Ground-based missiles may offer better protection as a last resort than fighters, aviation sources say. But there might not be enough time to fire them, and it would be very difficult to prevent damage on the ground.

American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, took off not from Reagan National but from Dulles. It flew as far as the Ohio-Kentucky border before turning back. A source who was briefed on the hijacked plane’s radar track said it came high from the west and circled deliberately over the Virginia side of the Potomac River, losing altitude in preparation to strike the Pentagon. Some authorities now question initial reports that Flight 77 was aimed at the White House and diverted to the Pentagon at the last minute.