WASHINGTON - Undercover investigators have smuggled guns, knives and fake bombs through airport checkpoints as the United States Government wages a "zero tolerance" policy against security lapses after the September 11 attacks.
The agents, conducting an audit of 32 airports for the Transportation Department inspector general's office, were also able to gain access to restricted areas and board planes without being challenged by security on dozens of occasions, a Government source said yesterday.
The audit began in November and ended just before the Government - through the newly created Transportation Security Administration (TSA) - took over airport security from the airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration in mid-February.
But some of the companies doing the work during the audit period are still stationed at security checkpoints under contracts that will run until a new federal workforce of screeners is phased in between May and mid-November.
Investigators were able to get guns past screening checkpoints about 30 per cent of the time, while knives were undetected in 70 per cent of tests. Fake bombs made it through 60 per cent of the time, USA Today reported.
Investigators have said the terrorists who hijacked four airliners on September 11 and used three of them to demolish the World Trade Centre and damage the Pentagon were armed with plastic knives and box cutters.
Investigators believe the suspects either carried those implements, which were permitted under Federal Aviation Authority rules, aboard their flights or had them planted by accomplices who gained access to the four planes.
Transportation Department officials would not comment on the audit details, saying its results were too sensitive to reveal publicly.
But aviation regulators defended actions to tighten security at airports since September 11.
"The FAA and the TSA have worked closely with the inspector general's office to address security issues and have taken immediate action any time we've been notified about problems," said FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown.
The FAA has evacuated dozens of airport terminals and pulled hundreds of people off aircraft to repeat passenger screening procedures after security breaches.
The first 300 of about 1100 people hired so far to work as federal screeners began training this week. A total aviation security workforce of between 30,000 and 40,000 people will replace screeners who continue to work for private companies that have signed short-term contracts.
One of those companies, Argenbright Security, still mans screening checkpoints even though the Transportation Department had hoped to replace it by now with other private firms.
Replacing Argenbright, which has been at the centre of several high-profile security lapses, remains a top priority of transportation planners.
The company was replaced at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport but remains at around 30 airports across the country.
A spokeswoman for the company, a unit of British-owned Securicor, said it was waiting for notification on its status from the Government.
In the meantime, she said, it was working for a smooth transition to an all-federal screener force.
A department spokesman said the work on finalising screener contracts was taking more time than expected. "We are moving as quickly as we can without going too fast," said Chet Lunner. "It's a massive amount of paperwork."
Meanwhile, relatives of the 40 passengers and crew killed on September 11 on board hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania, will be allowed to hear the cockpit recordings during a single, private listening session next month, the FBI says.
The decision was approved by FBI Director Robert Mueller. Families have been asking the FBI to let them hear what transpired in the cockpit after some passengers apparently rushed the hijackers with the shout "Let's roll".
Attorney-General John Ashcroft has praised the Flight 93 passengers as heroes "who sacrificed themselves in a field in Pennsylvania so terrorists would not succeed in striking Washington a second time on September 11". Their actions were "the most dramatic of the heroic acts" of September 11 and its aftermath.
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Links: War against terrorism
Timeline: Major events since the Sept 11 attacks
Agents rip open US air security
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