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Feds Favor Foreign Airport Screeners Over American Cops Kevin Curran, NewsMax.comOne member of President Bush's Cabinet is being accused of placing more importance on preserving jobs for noncitizens than ensuring aviation safety. That charge comes from a New York attorney who says Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, a leftover from the Clinton administration, ignored his plan for using retired law enforcement officers to provide security at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Saving Jobs for Foreigners Charles Slepian, a security consultant who has been New York's City's director of tourism, told NewsMax.com, "The transportation secretary was persuaded to keep the same minimum-wage workers that are now employed in the San Francisco airport because the mayor of San Francisco convinced him it was more important to save jobs for non-American citizens than to provide security by using retired law enforcement personnel." Slepian is the chief executive officer of Foressable Risk Analysis Center (www.frac.com), a think tank concentrating on travel and business scecurity. He designed a program under which retired local, state and federal officers would be used at the screening stations rather than employees of the federal Transportation Security Administration. The plan was submitted to the TSA under the new transportation security law. U.S. airports come in five sizes depending on security risks. One project was to be selected from each size. The 23 largest airports are in category X. TSA spokesman Greg Warren called the program "a test of whether or not it is possible to have a private security screening company perform the same functions as a federal-deployed screening workforce. ... The federal security director and his staff would oversee all security operations at the airport." There were 19 proposals submitted among all five categories. "In making the decision ... we looked at a mix of airports from across the nation. ... We also looked at their willingness to work with us in this pilot program, also that the airports had a good mix of business, leisure and academic travelers," Warren told NewsMax.com. The airports selected were San Francisco International, Kansas City International, Greater Rochester International, Jackson Hole (Wyoming) and Tupelo (Mississippi). The two-year program starts Nov. 18. A committee will oversee it, then submit a report to Undersecretary John Magaw. The final report will then be presented to Congress. Ignoring Its Own Rules Slepian said the TSA ignored its own rules by selecting San Francisco as the category X airport for the program. He submitted a detailed proposal to Washington through the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates JFK, on Feb. 25. He met with representatives from the secretary's office – who originally told him they were not going to entertain that section of the law. About a month later, Slepian said, he was told the department would comply with the act's mandates, but all previous applications would be voided. "The only application they had when they voided it was from the Port Authority," Slepian said. While his reapplication was once again submitted through the Port Authority, Slepian told NewsMax.com, "We do know Mayor Willie Brown and the head of the union that represents the security people at the [San Francisco] airport flew to Washington, visited with Secretary Mineta and made the proposal. That is also inconsistent with the law ... because the airport authority is required to make the proposal and not local politicians." 'Same People in Place' Slepian does not think much of the competing plan. "The San Francisco proposal is not a proposal. All it is is a request to continue to do what they are currently doing. They just keep the same people in place. They did not offer any kind of a plan or program. ... "The goal of their program is to maintain the jobs for the people who now have them. ... They consider it be a jobs program, and we consider it to be a security program." His program for JFK "was to employ retired law enforcement people, who are already fully trained and experienced and have all the special skills that are needed to secure an airport, such as the ability to identify bombs, the ability to interrogate, the ability to evacute, the ability to speak foreign languages and so on." 'Illegal' "What, in my view, the secretary did is illegal," Slepian complained. "You cannot employ those 700 workers who are not American citizens even in a pilot project program. The law says if you are a screener, whether in a pilot program or working as a federal worker, you must be an American citizen. "Nevertheless, he granted that pilot project status to San Francisco knowing that 700 of those workers are not American citizens and the vast majority of them are employed by companies that are not American owned and operated, which is another requirement of the law." 80 Percent Are Not U.S. Citizens Eighty percent of the 1,200 screeners working for three contractors in San Francisco are not U.S. citizens, Daz Lamparas of Service Employees International Union admitted. He told NewsMax.com that "citizenship status has nothing to do with work performance." He said the situation was dismal as recently as 1999, with annual turnover of screening personnel topping 200 percent. Then the city implemented a quality standard program that established higher wages with medical insurance, vacation accruals and a union contract. The turnover rate is now less than 15 percent, Lamparas said. None of the immigrants are working illegally, he added. They all have green cards, and 200 of them qualify for naturalization, he said. More than 400 of them have not lived in the country the required four years and nine months to apply for naturalization. The majority of them came to California from the Philippines – where Muslim terrorists are active. The union has asked that the noncitizens be hired provisionally, because they have what the TSA needs, he said. "Why replace experienced people when it will take one year for newly hired personnel to become experts on the job?" Lamaparas asked. The federal security director at the airport, Edward Gomez, told Lamparas the citizenship requirement would apply to screeners under the program. Mayor Brown advised the union to keep negotiating with the contractors and TSA about that requirement, Lamparas told NewsMax.com. Honest, Educated Citizens Guaranteed Here Slepian said that as word of his proposal moved through the law enforcement community, he received about 1,000 applications. "We're guaranteeing that they are U.S. citizens. We're guaranteeing that they are not only high school graduates, but in many cases college graduates. We're guaranteeing they have no criminal records. "The federal government cannot make that claim for the people they are using right now." Furthermore, Slepian told NewsMax.com, many of those seeking the work felt a higher calling than a new paycheck. "That tragedy occurred here. They lost their own in those buildings. Many of them also lost friends and relatives in those buildings, and they wanted to show this nation that you could secure an airport. ... "In my view, the Transportation Security Administration essentially told them to go to hell." Why would a Cabinet member, even a Clinton holdover, opt for a program that benefited noncitizens over experienced police personnel? Slepian said it came down to Mineta's ties to the San Francisco Bay area. He was mayor of San Jose and represented the area in Congress for 20 years. "I can only conclude that it was dead on arrival in Washingon, D.C., and then I can only guess as to why. ... It's certainly something they did not want to happen, and so they killed it." The TSA's Warren would not comment on the specifics of the New York or San Francisco proposals but did tell NewsMax.com that "local labor market conditions" were among the criteria used in the selection of project sites. As for Mineta's ties to the area influencing his decision, "that is not something that I'd be able to comment on." 'Identifying Individuals Who Needed to Be Screened' Slepian said adoption of his program could prevent a repeat of the shootings in Los Angeles last week. "One of the things we had hoped to do was use some of these skilled law enforcement people to do profiling at the ticket counter area of the airports, at the front door area of the airports,so that they could help to identify individuals who needed to be screened even before they got to the screening stations." He said that "providing the training as to how to use a magnetometer or how to look at the screen in an airport would not be difficult. Let me say that many of these people already have those skills. There really is nothing that is done in an airport that we would not have personnel already trained to do. The law would require in any event that they undergo that same training anyway." Slepian won't quietly accept his plan's rejection. He said he would call for a congressional investigation and was contemplating a lawsuit against the TSA.
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