Airports Deactivate Thousands of Defunct Security Badges

The nation’s airports have revoked the badges of tens of thousands of people who, although unauthorized, had been able to bypass security checkpoints and gain access to airplanes.

In the past, many former airport workers did not turn in their badges, which investigators warned could compromise security.

After last month’s terrorist attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration asked airports to check the badges of all employees, a job completed last week.

In Chicago alone, almost 12,000 badges were not renewed at O’Hare and Midway airports. Denver reported that 3,000 badges were not renewed. All the badges were deactivated.

“When the deadline was reached, the badges automatically were turned off,” Denver International Airport spokesman Chuck Cannon said.

FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto would not discuss the number of badges revoked nationwide but said anybody who can bypass security checkpoints now has a badge that is “genuine, difficult to counterfeit and tamper-proof.”

Federal officials are investigating whether box cutters and other weapons used to commandeer four jetliners Sept. 11 were planted on the planes by people with access to the craft, rather than being smuggled by the hijackers past airport security screeners.

Adding weight to this theory is the fact that box cutters were found on two planes that were grounded after the terrorist attacks, one in Boston, the other in Atlanta.

FAA Administrator Jane Garvey announced last week that airports and airlines would be required to conduct new background checks on all 750,000 employees who can enter secured areas.

Former Transportation Department Inspector General Mary Schiavo said each badge should have been invalidated immediately and surrendered at the time of each employee’s departure, but the airports and the FAA didn’t follow through.

“That’s definitely a security loophole that’s been out there,” said Paul Hudson, director of the Aviation Consumer Action Project, a group affiliated with consumer advocate Ralph Nader.

Meanwhile, newly elected House Democratic Whip Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco pressed House Republicans to take up an airline security bill that has unanimously passed the Senate. The legislation would put all 28,000 passenger screeners and other airport security employees on the federal payroll. House Republican leaders oppose such a move.

“It is unacceptable to hold America’s safety in the sky hostage to the political agenda of a handful in the House of Representatives,” Pelosi said Saturday in the Democrats’ weekly radio address.