Analysis: JFK plot shows 'back door' risk

WASHINGTON, June 4 (UPI) -- The foiled plot to blow up fuel tanks at JFK International Airport has highlighted the vulnerability of the U.S. aviation system's infrastructure.

Authorities say that the plot was broken up long before it was operational and insist that the fuel tanks at JFK are secure. However, aviation security experts say such infrastructure represents a vulnerable "back door" to the nation's airports.

"The back door to airports has always been an issue," John Raidt, an aviation security specialist for the 9/11 Commission, told United Press International.

"You have trucks coming and going ... you have aviation fuel," said Raidt. The foiled plot highlighted the need the commission identified to build security in at all levels of airport planning and construction, he said.

The Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, the federal agency set up by the U.S. Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to take responsibility for aviation security, oversees perimeter and infrastructure security at airports. But the work of protecting them day-to-day rests with airport operators, and a government audit last year found enforcement efforts were patchy.

The report by the Government Accountability Office said TSA had been undertaking assessments of access control and perimeter security at airports, including covert testing, but was unsure of how to use the results.

"TSA identified instances where airport operators failed to comply with existing security requirements, including requirements related to access control," said the report. It said TSA had "identified threats to perimeter and access control security" at every single airport it had assessed in 2003 -- the latest year for which information was provided.

It said that the agency "had not yet determined how to use the results of its inspections in conjunction with its efforts to conduct covert testing and vulnerability assessments to enhance the overall security of the nation's commercial airport system." The report said further details were classified, and a TSA spokeswoman declined to comment.

Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that runs JFK, said they were happy with their security.

"These tanks are 300 feet away from an internal airport road. They are surrounded by heavy-duty fencing and barbed wire, and are patrolled 24 hours a day," he told UPI. "Our security is good."

Raidt said that since Congress hurriedly set it up in 2001, the TSA had focused primarily on passenger and baggage screening -- where it had day-to-day operational responsibility, and which was the most "glaring vulnerability" -- and had tended to neglect perimeter security.

"TSA and Congress in its oversight role need to take a step back and look at the total security picture," he said. "It is not just the air operations that are considered symbolic and that are targets."

"They are hubs of commerce," Raidt said of airports. "They are very high profile."

Andrew Thomas, editor of an academic journal on transportation security and assistant professor of international business studies at the University of Akron, Ohio, told UPI that the oversight role TSA had in relation to perimeter security at airports resembled the role the Federal Aviation Authority had in relation to passenger and baggage screening before Sept. 11.

"It's more complicated than screening" where the agency has direct control, he said. "You have to work with the other stakeholders ... to strike a balance between security and not stifling the industry."

In the complaint unsealed at the weekend, four men are charged with plotting to blow up the fuel tanks. The man charged with instigating the plot, Russell Defreitas, is a U.S. citizen of Guyanese origin who had worked at the airport as a cargo handler during the 1990s.

In conversations with an FBI informant, Defreitas allegedly boasted about the potential destructive impact of the attacks, and noted the symbolic significance of hitting an airport named after one of America's most admired presidents.

"They love John F. Kennedy," he said, according to a draft transcript of a recorded conversation cited in the complaint. "If you hit that (airport), this whole country will be in mourning. It's like you can kill the man twice."

But the complaint, which details only enough of the evidence to show probable cause for a warrant, does not reveal any serious discussion of how to overcome airport security measures to reach the fuel tanks.