LONDON -- The government demanded an explanation from Pan American World Airways after a newspaper said Monday a reporter used false references to get a job with the airline and had the opportunity to 'plant anything into any bag at any time.'
The Sun report comes less than four months after a bomb was placed aboard a Pan Am jet and it exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
In a story headlined 'I Could Bomb Pan Am,' the Sun said reporter George Pascoe-Watson worked unsupervised and avoided security checks at London's Heathrow Airport by reporting for work before 6:30 a.m.
'I was totally free to plant anything into any bag at any time,' Pascoe-Watson said.
On his first day at work, he said he was left alone to load the luggage of the Israeli soccer team onto a Qantas Airways flight to Melbourne, Australia.
Pascoe-Watson worked two weeks at Heathrow loading baggage onto Pan Am jets, some flying the same route as the Boeing 747 that was blown up by a terrorist bomb Dec. 21, killing 259 people aboard and 11 others on the ground.
Transport Department spokesman David Deas said Secretary Paul Channon 'has ordered the airline to report as soon as possible.'
Pan Am denied The Sun's allegations that its security measures were lax.
'Pan Am's pre-employment checks fulfilled every requirement necessary to obtain an airport ID card,' an airline spokesman said. 'Pan Am regards as untrue The Sun's allegations that Mr. Watson was unsupervised.'
'No full check was made into my background before I started work,' said Pascoe-Watson, who used false references to obtain the job.
Training 'did not include any security briefing,' he said, adding Pan Am training chief Roger White told him, ''Everyone here takes short cuts. If we didn't, there wouldn't be an airline to run.''
Transport's Deas said, 'Each company is responsible for carrying out procedures that are required by us legally. (Pan Am) will be required to show proofs, just as with British Airways when there were some alleged lapses in their security earlier in the year.'
Pressure has mounted on both sides of the Atlantic for governments to disclose all warnings issued before Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed, following revelations that vital clues to identify the type of bomb that destroyed the jet were omitted from a warning issued by Britain a month before the disaster.
Additionally, a leader of the opposition Labor Party has a charged the British government with allowing lax security at Heathrow.
In January, two journalists exposed security breeches at Heathrow by taking jobs as cleaners. One planted on a Japan Air Lines jet a candy box, which was later retrieved by a colleague on the flight after it escaped security checks.
