- BOSTON (Reuters) - Undercover
agents posing as passengers last week smuggled weapons past security checkpoints
at Logan International Airport, where two of the planes used in the Sept.
11 attacks took off from, The Boston Globe reported on Thursday.
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- Citing an unidentified U.S. Department of Homeland Security
official, the newspaper said several of the department's undercover agents
were able to sneak the items past federal screeners.
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- Another unidentified source who works in security at
the airport told the Globe that the agents carried knives, a bomb and a
gun past several checkpoints at different terminals without being stopped
by Transportation Security Administration officers.
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- The report came as airports are trying to improve security
controls two years after four U.S. airliners were hijacked from East Coast
airports and smashed into symbols of U.S. military and economic might.
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- The Transportation Security Administration, the federal
agency that handles security at airports around the country, confirmed
that agents from the Department of Homeland Security had conducted tests
at Logan last week.
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- However, TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said she could not
comment on the specifics of the Globe report because Homeland Security
officials had not disclosed the results of the tests.
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- "We can confirm that the DHS inspector general's
office did have some individuals at Logan last week conducting tests. This
is not an anomaly -- they do this often and they will be conducting tests
at 15 airports this quarter," Davis said.
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- She also noted that TSA regularly conducts tests on itself
-- using "real threat objects" including inert bombs for the
purpose of finding weaknesses in the screening system.
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- "We don't deny the tests occur; we welcome them
and we do them ourselves. We see great value in them and passengers should
be more concerned if we weren't conducting them," she said. "There
are always improvements we can make."
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