The Search for Safety

Just a few hours after the La Guardia bombing, President Ford ordered federal action to make certain that such a tragedy does not happen again. Specifically, he assigned a task force, headed by Transportation Secretary William Coleman, to draw up recommendations for tightening airport security. Coleman hoped to have them on Ford's desk within two weeks. It would be no easy task, though, to determine whether any of the 1.1 million passengers who enter the nation's 425 main airports each day was carrying a bomb. "A bag is a bag," confessed one perplexed FBI official, "and in the luggage rooms everything looks alike."

In the immediate aftermath of the La Guardia bombing, many airports took their own emergency measures. Washington, Chicago, Minneapolis and San Francisco temporarily closed down most or all of their locker areas. At Washington National Airport, a bomb threat came within hours after the La Guardia explosion, and guards used specially trained dogs to sniff out potential explosive devices. Virtually every major airport expanded its security forces; in the case of one airline, the increase was as much as 25%.

Officials had long worried over the mounting number of weapons being brought into airports. In 1972, 1,313 firearms, mainly handguns, were confiscated. Last year that figure jumped to about 5,200. Thirteen explosive devices were found at airports in 1972; in 1975, 156 were discovered. In addition, a sinister array of knives, brass knuckles and clubs were found either on individuals or hidden in luggage, washrooms and potted plants.

At Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, bomb threats have become so common (they average five a month; one closed the airport for an hour last week) that teams of experts using a dog can check the entire airport in 15 minutes. Nonetheless, even experienced personnel were extra cautious last week. Passengers who left their bags for a moment to buy a newspaper or take a drink of water sometimes returned to find them seized.

And skycaps at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, the world's busiest, got strict instructions not to check baggage through unless a passenger could produce a ticket.

"Nobody feels secure," explained John Carr, acting manager at O'Hare. "We're skittish about everything. We are doing everything we can with our experience and background --but just what are you looking for?"

Traditional metal-detecting devices sometimes fail to spot modern bombs, which often have nonmetallic, acid-filled starters. The new devices that experts are developing include X-ray detectors that can more accurately locate a bomb without seeing it, an electronic sniffer that picks up the vapors emitted by dynamite, and a device for creating an electronic field that could cause certain explosives to emit an identifiable beep. On less exotic levels, officials are considering placing all lockers in a secured area, as Los Angeles did after a 1974 blast killed three people, or banning them altogether, as London has done.

But "a determined terrorist can penetrate any security," warns Jordan Booth of the sheriffs department in Michigan's Wayne County. Short of airport officials' requiring every person entering an airport to carry an identity card or stopping everyone at the airport gate to check his person or his baggage--which in some cases would involve more than 100,000 people a day--some risks will continue to be run.

Ira Lipman, whose Memphis firm provides security forces for a number of American airports, asked the basic question:

"Can anything be 100% secure?"

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