Terror Concern Raises Security at Airports

'I feel the U.S. is paying attention, I also think it makes the terrorists think twice'

Dec. 25, 2003

Christmas Day security was tight at the nation's airports after officials canceled six Air France flights, saying there was credible evidence terrorists planned a jetliner attack on a U.S. target.

Los Angeles International Airport, which handles 150,000 passengers daily during the holidays, remained under its tightest guard since two months after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Private cars were barred from picking up or dropping off passengers at the curb.

Three flights between Paris and Los Angeles were scratched Wednesday. Two Thursday flights from Los Angeles and one from Paris - identified as flights 68, 69 and 71 - also were canceled.

American authorities notified France that "two or three" suspicious people, possibly Tunisian nationals, were planning to board the flights, said a spokesman for French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

Officials were concerned that members of the terrorist group al-Qaida might have been planning to hijack a plane and use it as a weapon.

"We believed they were going to take the aircraft over ... and that they were going to fly it into something in L.A.," a senior U.S. counterterrorism official involved in the investigation told the Los Angeles Times.

The official and two others who confirmed the scenario said they did not know the specific target, the Times said.

Many at the Los Angeles airport remained focused on their travels.

"All I care about is getting home," Goran Sobaca said Wednesday at the airport. The 20-year-old student was heading to Belgrade, Serbia-Montenegro to celebrate a family Christmas but his Air France flight to Paris was canceled. He arranged to reach Paris via Atlanta.

Jaime Anselen, a 79-year-old neuropsychologist from Malibu, said he had to cancel his vacation to Madrid because the alternate flight Air France offered him wouldn't have allowed much time to change planes in Paris.

"They ruined my vacation," Anselen said as he waited for a shuttle back to his car. "I have to cancel because I'm too old to be running through an airport. What kind of vacation is that?"

Still, Anselen said he understood the security concerns.

"I don't blame them," he said.

The airport, one of the busiest in the world, has twice been targeted for attacks in recent years - a foiled bomb plot planned for around New Year's Day 2000, and a shooting at a check-in counter that left three people dead on the Fourth of July last year.

Security around the nation has tightened since President Bush on Sunday raised the national terror alert to orange, its second-highest level.

Kendall Haynesworth, 29, flying out of Boston's Logan Airport, said the move made her feel safer.

"I feel the U.S. is paying attention. I also think it makes the terrorists think twice," she said.

Elsewhere, many travelers were nonchalant as they sipped drinks at La Guardia Airport in New York or browsed for books at Chicago's O'Hare. Many travelers moved quickly through airports, despite heightened security and wet weather.

Officials expressed concern that terrorists may try to use a biological, chemical or radiological weapon, and have installed more sensors around urban areas in California and elsewhere to detect dangerous microbes in the air.

The U.S. Coast Guard has upped its surveillance to 24 hours a day at ports such as San Francisco, where foreign merchant ships dock daily.

California Highway Patrol spokesman Tom Marshall said 28 helicopters and planes were flying continuous patrols over electrical grids, aqueducts, major bridges, power plants and state buildings.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the patrols because of the national orange terror alert, Marshall said.

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