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Heads up: 3,807 employee security badges gone missing at Chicago/O'Hare airport
O'Hare is one of the busiest airports in the nation. The [CBS channel] 2 Investigators have learned that 47 more employee access badges are missing, bringing the total we've discovered to 3,807 the biggest security failure involving access badges ever to be exposed. Airport employees are allowed to go through a back gate. All they have to do is show their access badge. They are not searched.The latest missing badges belong to employees of Mesa Airlines, which operates flights for United Express. One of them belonged to Marcia Pinkston, who worked as a flight attendant. She says she was fired for complaining about security. She says the airline never asked her to return her access badge and for months she could have used it to gain access to airplanes. Last month, Pinkston told CBS 2 about other security failures, including employees sharing security codes or "piggybacking" by following someone through open doors to gain access to secure areas. At the time, the Transportation Security Administration vowed to investigate. But Pinkston tells CBS 2 that no one from TSA has contacted her even after she made allegations about piggybacking and code sharing. Paul Maniscalco, a terrorism expert at George Washington University, says the threat of airport employees is real and points to numerous incidents including one in March at Orlandos airport when two employees smuggled drugs and guns on to a plane, and earlier this month in New York at JFK Airport a former cargo worker was charged with plotting to blow up fuel tanks. Thanks to the CBS 2 investigation, the Department of Aviation fined Mesa Airlines $47,000 because of the missing badges. Thats the first time any airline has been fined for this issue. Mesa Airlines said the fine is just a proposal and did not want to comment. Posted by: trailing wife 2007-06-26 |
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