Airport Screeners Fail to Detect 'Bombs'

Oct. 18, 2007 — -- Last year, covert investigators -- known as red teams -- descended on two of the nation's busiest airports to see if government screeners could stop them from smuggling bombs onboard commercial planes.

The result was failure across the board, with screeners unable to detect simulated bombs and bomb components.

Seventy-five percent of the devices got by screeners at Los Angeles International Airport, while screeners at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport missed fake explosives 60 percent of the time.

"Flunking a test 70 or 60 percent of the time … is something that is so scary that the American people should be outraged that six years [after 9/11] this is still possible," House Homeland Security Committee member Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., told ABC News.

Department of Homeland Security officials say the low scores are the result of tests intentionally made much more difficult.

"I don't think we're ever going to get to the point that there's an A+ or perfect score, because if we ever get a perfect score it means the testers aren't pushing hard enough," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday.

Screeners are being challenged in part because terrorists are getting increasingly creative and deceptive, using common household products to make bombs that can get past screeners.

In recent weeks, the government warned that terrorists might try to smuggle remote control toys in carry-on luggage to detonate bombs.

Markey, who represents a Boston-area district, added, "[9/11 hijacker] Mohammed Atta and the other nine who came to [Boston] Logan Airport in 2001 found the route of least resistance to bring their little knives and their little box cutters into the passenger cabins of planes. Al Qaeda is always looking for the easiest way to bring down a plane."

At Reagan Washington National Airport just outside the nation's capital, the Transportation Security Administration demonstrated the degree of difficulty of the new tests Thursday.