WASHINGTON, May 1 (UPI) -- Lawmakers are demanding an inquiry into security screening at the nation's airports, United Press International has learned, amid concerns from the families of the victims of Sept. 11 that there has been "little or no improvement" in aviation security since 19 hijackers were able to seize four planes and use them to destroy the World Trade Center and damage the Pentagon.
The General Accounting Office -- Congress' investigative arm -- has been asked to undertake the inquiry by Rep. John L. Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee.
"We cannot be certain that these new screeners are better at detecting weapons and other threat objects," he wrote in a letter Wednesday to David Walker, the GAO chief, referring to the tens of thousands of federal employees hired by the new Transportation Security Administration to screen passengers and baggage at the nation's hundreds of major airports.
The letter calls for the GAO to report on how the TSA trains, equips and supervises its screeners, on how they measure their performance, and on how the new system compares to its pre-Sept. 11, 2001, counterpart.
The GAO has yet to agree to the inquiry, but this step, normally considered a formality, is likely to be taken next week, according to officials there. The inquiry is likely to take several months, according to congressional staff.
Thursday, representatives of the families of those killed on Sept. 11 handed a dossier on airport security to the commission set up to investigate the terror attacks. The dossier is a compilation of investigative reports by local and national media.
"What it shows is that there's been little or no improvement in aviation security since Sept. 11," said Stephen Push, a spokesman for the families, who lost Lisa Raines, his wife of 21 years, when American Airlines Flight 77 was crashed into the Pentagon.
Push lays the blame for this state of affairs squarely at the feet of the TSA: "All the evidence suggests that everything the TSA has done was to get people flying again. The way they see it, it is more important to make people feel safer than to actually make them safer."
He hopes that the commission will "document the continuing lapses and failures in aviation security," and recommend a shake up at the TSA.
Gerald Dillingham, director of civil aviation issues at the GAO, said he has not seen the families' dossier, but is familiar with some of the material they have collected. He does not agree with their conclusions.
"On the face of it, there's no way I could say that security hasn't improved since Sept. 11," he told UPI. "Obviously, you can argue that it's not bulletproof. ... It is always going to be possible (to smuggle some kinds of weapons onto an aircraft), no security system is ever perfect, but that doesn't mean it hasn't improved."
Steve Elson, a former Federal Aviation Authority security inspector who has worked with media organizations on stories included in the dossier, says the screening process is "a big hoax."
"(The TSA) keeps saying everything's great, and it's not."
Elson uses a lead-lined film shield bag -- which he says is opaque to the X-ray machines in airports -- inside a piece of hand luggage to test screeners. He says many don't even open the lead bag, and those that do usually don't re-X-ray the luggage it was in, to check that nothing was concealed behind it. He says this technique could be used to get a handgun onto a plane quite easily.
"The (screeners') failure rates are 90, 95 percent," he says, "in some cases even higher. But it's something that could easily be fixed at no cost. All you have to do is train these guys right. ... They're pretty decent guys, but there's no leadership."
The TSA strongly defends its procedures, pointing out that screeners intercepted 4.8 million items in the 12 months up to February.
"From a security perspective," spokeswoman Heather Rosenker told UPI, "(our performance) is a nine (out of 10), from a customer service perspective, it's a definite 10."
She admits that no system can be perfect, but says the agency is continually updating its 100-hour training program for screeners on the basis of feedback from the unannounced inspections carried out by teams of specialists.
"These guys try everything they can to get by our screeners, then give them instant feedback, letting them know what they did right and wrong," she explained.
Rosenker says the TSA welcomes the GAO inquiry, but one congressional staffer, who asked not to be named, said the call for an investigation stems -- at least in part -- from a skepticism about the TSA's own inspection procedures.
"They're only being tested by their own people at the moment," he told UPI, "we're a little suspicious of that. ... There's a tendency -- I'm not saying this happens but there is a tendency -- not to want to make yourself look bad."
He also disputes Rosenker's assessment of how well the screeners are performing.
"Their own testing shows that they still have a ways to go on both training and equipment issues," he said, declining to give details, which he said were classified.
