Reporters smuggle knives through 11 U.S. airports

NEW YORK – Reporters investigating airport security were able to smuggle small knives and pepper spray through checkpoints at 11 U.S. airports including the Portland International Jetport, the Daily News reported Wednesday.

The reporters carried utility knives, rubber-handled razor knives, a pocketknife, a corkscrew, razor blades and pepper spray through every airport security checkpoint they encountered over the Labor Day weekend, the newspaper said.

CBS News also tested security screeners last week, although the crews did not attempt to smuggle banned items through checkpoints. They carried bags lined with lead to block X-rays and sailed past about 70 percent of screeners at several airports nationwide.

“They’re impossible to miss, and yet they just continually let it go,” said Steve Elson, who used to check security for the Federal Aviation Administration and helped with the CBS investigation.

The Daily News said guards X-rayed and hand-searched its reporters’ bags, asked them to remove their shoes and checked photo identifications, but did not find the banned items.

The airports included the four at which the terrorists boarded flights on Sept. 11 last year: Newark International, Boston’s Logan International and Washington Dulles International, as well as the Portland International Jetport in Maine, the News said.

The other airports were New York’s La Guardia and Kennedy airports, Chicago’s O’Hare, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Santa Barbara, Calif.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Leonardo Alcivar, a spokesman for Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, told the News after learning about the reporters.

Chris Nardella, a spokeswoman for United Airlines, told the newspaper: “That is a violation of federal law that you guys knowingly took those items on an airline.”

David Steigman, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, could not immediately say Wednesday whether charges were expected against the reporters.

A call to the FBI was not immediately returned.