Suspicious Bags Found on Planes in Houston, New Orleans

Search of all U.S. commercial flights ordered

October 17, 2003
By PATTY REINERT and S.K. BARDWELL
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
 
WASHINGTON -- Investigators with the FBI and Homeland Security Department were scrambling today to determine how box cutters and other items got onto two Southwest Airlines planes in Houston and New Orleans.

The items, discovered in the planes' lavatories by maintenance workers late Thursday, were accompanied by notes indicating the items were intended to test the Transportation Security Administration's security measures.

Boxcutters have been banned from carry-on luggage since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the East Coast. The 19 al-Qaida terrorists who hijacked planes and crashed them into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon outside Washington and a Pennsylvania field used box cutters as weapons.

"It doesn't appear to be a terrorist event," FBI Director Robert Mueller said during a visit to the FBI field office in Houston. "I think it is safe to fly."

"There is no cause for the public to be unduly alarmed," said an FBI agent who asked not to be named. "There is nothing to indicate this involves terrorism, but rather was a case of someone trying to draw attention to these items."

The agent, assigned to the bureau's Washington headquarters, said TSA has ordered all U.S. commercial airlines to search their planes within the next 24 hours as a precautionary measure.

Southwest Airlines said it has searched its other planes and found nothing suspicious.

There were no plans to ground any planes in the nation's 7,000-plane commercial fleet, the FBI agent said, and the stepped-up searches were not expected to cause major delays.

Discovery of the items on the craft flying to Houston's Hobby Airport from Austin, and on another Southwest flight from Orlando to New Orleans prompted the FBI to order every commercial flight in the United States searched over the next 24 hours.

FBI special agent in charge Bob Doguim said the actual searches are being conducted by TSA personnel in Houston. Any suspicious items found during the searches will be investigated by the FBI.

"Right now we're not seeing any effect" on flight schedules from the ordered searches, said Houston Airport Systems spokesman Ernie DeSoto.

"They've got 24 hours to do it, so they've got a lot of time to search when the planes land and are getting cleaned up," DeSoto said. "It's possible it won't cause any delays at all."

DeSoto said if delays are caused by the searches, they probably will happen Saturday, if the 24 hours nears and many searches remain to be conducted.

TSA officials in Washington said the items found on the two Southwest flights were contained in bags, but were not in luggage.

A written statement from the airline said the items appeared "intended to simulate a threat" and that each bag was accompanied by a note that "indicated the items were intended to challenge Transportation Security Administration checkpoint security procedures."

"We will not speculate on who might have left these items on board," the written statement said.

Southwest said security checks of its entire fleet of 285 aircraft found no other suspicious items.

The New Orleans flight had originated in Orlando, Fla., and was scheduled to go on to San Diego later Thursday night, said Southwest spokeswoman Beth Harbin. The crew reported a lavatory wasn't working and a maintenance worker discovered the bag at about 9 p.m., she said. The other aircraft was in Houston for routine maintenance when the bag was discovered a short time later.

In addition to the box cutters and notes, the bags contained bleach and some form of clay, according to a senior law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity. Clay can be used to hide explosives or attach them to other surfaces, while bleach could be thrown in a person's eyes to temporarily blind them.

Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said the airlines already clean and search each aircraft before passengers board.

"We have directed them to make sure the searches in the next 24 hours are as comprehensive as possible," he said.

Roehrkasse said investigators were focusing on determining how the materials got onto the planes.

"That is paramount to not only determining the facts of the case, but to determining the security implications that may exist," he said.

Homeland Security Administrator Tom Ridge was in his home state of Pennsylvania today and did not make any public statement, Roehrkasse said.

There was no plan to change the status of the nation's color-coded terror alert system, which today was set at yellow, meaning there is a "significant risk of terrorist attacks."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.