by James C. Mckinley Jr., The New York Times
ALBANY, April 11 - Gov. George E. Pataki plans to begin a sweeping program to sharpen security at New York City’s area airports, going beyond some new federal restrictions by requiring criminal background checks of workers in airport shops, the governor’s senior aides said today. He also wants to install fingerprint scanners quickly for all airport employees and do away with simple plastic passes.
Under Mr. Pataki’s plan, the states of New York and New Jersey would also install more sophisticated cameras, motion detectors and other devices around the perimeters of the region’s three major international airports - Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark. Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey fully supports the plan and has pledged to use his influence in his State Legislature to pass elements of it, his aides said today.
The improvements contemplated under the plan would put the three airports at the forefront of efforts to bolster security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, national safety experts said. The measures would go beyond those passed by Congress last November in the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which required background checks for security guards and people working on the aircraft or handling baggage but not for other vendors.
James K. Kallstrom, the state director of public security for New York State, said the proposed state laws, if enacted, would close a loophole in the federal regulations.
At Kennedy International Airport alone, there are more than 1,000 cashiers, restaurant employees, vendors and other workers who work inside the cavernous halls and gates beyond security checkpoints.
All have passes allowing them through the security checkpoints, and none have been checked for a criminal past.
“That may be good for the bottom line of the airport, but not knowing who those people are is really a security weakness,” Mr. Kallstrom said today. “We have no idea who these people are.”
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airports, will also begin installing new scanners that use sonic imaging to record the fingerprints of employees, Mr. Kallstrom said. The aim is to do away eventually with plastic passes, which could be handed off to a terrorist, and to use an employee’s fingerprints instead. He said the new fingerprint scanners could be in place in some places within six months of action by the two State Legislatures.
All told, the cost of the new devices would near $100 million, Mr. Pataki’s administration said, but all of that would come from Port Authority bonds and other revenue. It would not affect the budgets of the two states, aides to both governors said.
Many of the new security devices can be installed without legislative approval, but lawmakers must act to give the Port Authority the ability to conduct investigations into the history of all workers at the airports and to allow the use of fingerprint scans for identification, Mr. Kallstrom said.
Governor Pataki and Governor McGreevey were scheduled to unveil the plan Friday morning in a joint news conference in J.F.K. Airport’s Terminal 4. Their announcement would coincide with the appointment of a federal official, William Hall, who will oversee security at Kennedy.
The joint plan envisions the use of ground-based radar and sophisticated motion detectors to detect break-ins around the airfields, as well as a new array of low-light and infrared closed-circuit cameras to monitor intruders better.
The program would also provide counterterrorism training for the state and local police who, under a federal directive, are supposed to take over airport security checkpoints from the National Guard by the end of May.
But the most important piece of the plan in the eyes of state security officials is investigating the backgrounds of people working in shops and restaurants. A terrorist might not be able to smuggle explosives through a checkpoint, but a confederate at one of the shops could do so easily, state officials said. Even a knife used to cut meat at a restaurant might be passed on to a potential hijacker.
The lack of legal grounds to investigate the backgrounds of these employees, many of whom do not work for the airport, but for a contractor, has frustrated many airport managers across the country, said Todd Hauptli, a spokesman for the American Association of Airport Executives.
So far, however, the federal regulations have left out such workers and the states have not passed laws requiring them to undergo the same scrutiny as pilots, mechanics, baggage handlers, ticket agents and other workers more directly involved with flights, he said.
“There are a bunch of airport people who would like to be able to do background checks on virtually any employee at their facility but the authority doesn’t currently exist,” Mr. Hauptli said.
In November, Congress passed legislation requiring the federal government to take over the screening of passengers from private security companies.
The legislation provided for a federal security director at each airport and the training of 28,000 screeners. It also required the hiring of marshals to ride on commercial flights, the screening of all bags for bombs and fortified cockpit doors.
Congress did call for background checks for all employees who had unfettered access to “secured areas” of the airport, which were defined through regulations as the tarmac, ramps, baggage-handling areas and hangars. Later, Mr. Mineta made a regulation adding ticket agents and skycaps to the list of people that can be investigated by airport officials.
The federal law also encouraged airport operators to invest in new screening technologies to keep unauthorized intruders out, like scanners and locks that read fingerprints or retinas.
But the program envisioned by Mr. Pataki and Mr. McGreevey would put the three major New York area airports at the forefront of security.
The scanners have already been developed. They use a mechanism similar to a medical sonogram to read fingerprints even through gloves or some other substance, he said. A test project could begin in a matter of months, Mr. Kallstrom said, and Mr. Pataki’s aides said that he would like to see the program go into effect within a year.
“We are going to be deploying a fingerprint reader that we think is the state of the art,” Mr. Kallstrom said. “The employees are going to register. You are not going to be able to pass an ID to someone else and get him into the airport.”