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Airport-safety Advocate Tied To Bomb Scare

March 14, 1999|By Washington Post

WASHINGTON - A former Transportation Department inspector general is under investigation for allegedly trying to check luggage that contained what appeared to be a disassembled fake bomb, sources said Saturday.

The discovery of the bag Friday night at the Columbus, Ohio, airport led to the evacuation of hundreds of people from a concourse and the closure of one of two runways for four hours, police said.

Mary Schiavo, the former inspector general, left the federal government in 1996. She wrote a best-selling book Flying Blind, Flying Safe that warned of lax aviation safety and appears frequently on television to comment on air safety. In January, on ABC's Good Morning America, she said she had checked ``fake bomb equipment'' at the same airport but ``didn't get it on planes.''

Richard Morgan, director of public safety at Port Columbus International Airport, said the airport was investigating the incident in conjunction with the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration. Schiavo is ``one of the names mentioned as being involved,'' Morgan said, adding that investigators would interview her. No charges had been filed.

Schiavo was at the airport at the time of the discovery with a film crew from a local TV station, Morgan said.

Frank Scafidi, an FBI spokesman in Washington, said officials were examining what, if any, laws may have been broken. While it is illegal to threaten to bomb a plane or airport, ``absent a threat, there may not be a violation,'' he said.

Schiavo, whose frequent criticism of the FAA has annoyed many U.S. aviation officials, did not return calls left at her home in Columbus.

Morgan and other officials said the bag in question was checked on an America West flight departing for Washington. At about 5 p.m., America West gate agents notified airport police to say they had a bag that, when passed through an X-ray machine, appeared to contain an explosive device. A passenger had checked the bag for the flight but had not boarded the plane, making agents suspicious.

Increasingly, airlines conduct such ``positive bag matches'' to make sure passengers who check bags board planes. But with 2.3 million checked bags a year on domestic flights, it is difficult to do so on every flight.

Eventually, Morgan said, officials decided the situation was so serious that they evacuated the B-concourse - one of three at the airport - and shut down the airport's north runway to have the bag examined at the end of the runway by a team of explosive experts. No bomb was found in the bag, Morgan said, but he would not describe its contents.

Sources familiar with the probe said the bag contained objects that appeared to look like pieces of an ``explosive device.'' Schiavo's name was on the ticket that accompanied the bag, sources said.

Air traffic controllers had to divert planes to the airport's other runway for four hours, Morgan said. ``This caused a disruption,'' he said.

``I don't know if this rises to a violation of the law,'' an official said. ``But something ought to be done about this.''

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the crew members also faced civil penalties of up to $13,000 (£9,300) for each security violation.

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Sorry for trying to be subtle. I was not doubting you - I only wanted a citation.

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