The companies that screen passengers and baggage at the nation's airports readily acknowledge that they do not do their job very well.
Yet as Congress debates the future of aviation security, these companies are lobbying hard for an expanded role, arguing they are the only ones who know how to do it right.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
"This is an opportunity to fix what has been wrong for many, many years in the United States," said Thomas Berglund, chief executive of Securitas AB, the Swedish company that recently purchased Burns International Services of Chicago to become the third-biggest screening company in the US. Its Globe Security unit screens passengers for American Airlines at Logan International Airport in Boston, the departure point for the first hijacked plane that hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
Securitas and two other European companies that have bought the big American providers of airport screening services during the last 18 months contend that the economics of the business here are flawed. Because it falls upon the airlines to hire screening contractors and pay them, contracts typically go to the lowest bidder.
"In Europe, we deal with vice presidents of operations, or heads of corporate security. Here, we deal with purchasing agents," said Lior Zouker, president and chief executive of ICTS International NV, the Dutch company that last year purchased Huntleigh USA Corp of St Louis to become the No. 2 US screening company. "What do you want a purchasing agent to do, besides getting a contract for 10 cents per hour less?"
Huntleigh performed the screening of passengers on the United Airlines flight from Logan that crashed into the second twin tower in New York.
To put the business on what they consider a more rational financial footing, the companies favor the Bush administration's approach -- and the approach favored by House Republicans: overhauling airport security. For at least 18-months, the federal government would contract with the companies to supply screening services, under tougher standards set and policed by Washington. Any company that flunked would be replaced by federal workers.
"We think we have some pretty good models in NASA, the State Department's embassy protection system, where they hire outside contractors, who are really quite good," Chet Lunner, a spokesman for the Transportation Department, said. "There is some evidence that if you raise the standards, you can get better quality." Administration officials add that it would be easier to fire contract workers who failed to perform than to remove civil service employees.
In the Senate, on the other hand, there is strong sentiment for a federal takeover of airport security, on the grounds that that only the presence of government security personnel will restore public confidence. Congress is expected to take up the issue again soon.
"It's the job of the US government to keep America safe," said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV. "We can no longer afford to leave any aspect of our airport security to the lowest bidder among private companies. We need a federal work force with federal training and testing, federal accountability and oversight at every airport in the country -- large and small."
Berglund, of Securitas, said that his company bought into the American market expressly to reform it. Securitas has also recently purchased security operations from Pinkerton and Loomis Fargo, a business formed by the 1997 combination of Wells Fargo and Loomis Armored Inc. Besides Securitas and ICTS -- which stands for International Consultants on Targeted Security -- the international entrants also includes Securicor PLC, a British company that last year acquired Argenbright Security from AHL Services of Atlanta to become the largest airport screening company in the US.
The security companies have never had a trade group or a lobbying operation, but since Sept. 11 they have hired Burston-Marstellar for public relations; Kenneth Quinn, a former general counsel of the FAA, as their lawyer, and Ungaretti & Harris, a lobbying firm headed by another former FAA lawyer, to press their cause.
In Europe, passenger screening is the responsibility of the government, not the airlines, and European governments use either civil servants or contractors to do the work. Legislation now under consideration here would create a passenger tax to pay the bill, so that, as in Europe, there would be no commercial incentive to scrimp.
Whether any of the screening companies were lax in their duties in the four hijackings of Sept. 11 is not clear. The planes may have been hijacked with weapons, like small knives and box-cutters, that the Federal Aviation Administration's rules tell screeners to ignore.
But overall, their performance has been poor, according to government investigators. In April last year, the General Accounting Office reported to Congress on the latest of a series of tests in which its investigators set out to slip weapons by airport security. "Screeners' ability to detect objects during the agency's tests is not improving, and in some cases is worsening," the report stated.
Last year, Argenbright pleaded guilty and agreed to pay US$1.2 million for falsifying records, performing inadequate background checks and hiring at least 14 airport workers in Philadelphia who had criminal convictions for burglary, firearm possession, drug dealing and other crimes.
David J. Beaton, president of the Global Aviation division of Securicor, said the Philadelphia problem was isolated. Asked if screeners had failed to catch some weapons in carry-on bags, Beaton said that his employees had confiscated more than 4,000 items last year.
None of the companies has thus far made European-style changes in the US. Zouker said that 10 months ago, a major American airline invited him to review security arrangements at one of its hubs and asked if he would take over and improve it. The average pay for screeners at the airport, he said, was US$6.75 an hour; when he told the airline that he would have to pay US$3 an hour more to upgrade the operation, the airline said it was not ready to take that step.
"We need the federal government to come into the picture, to drop the airlines out of the equation," Zouker said. "They're not bad guys, but they have a conflict of interest" -- namely, their profits.
Any overhaul of the security system, he said, needs to make it possible to pay screening workers -- who sometimes make less than employees at airport food stands -- at rates that reflect the importance of their work.
"You have to look at the risk behind it, that we will lose an aircraft," Zouker said.
"What is the risk at a fast food restaurant -- that he will put on less mayonnaise?"
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