January 2, 2003	Thursday	Shawwal 28, 1423

WASHINGTON, Jan 1: US Authorities at airports nationwide began checking all bags for explosives on Wednesday, the latest precaution sparked by the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks.

As of midnight, 100 percent of bags were being checked for explosives, more than 90 percent of them electronically, up from five per cent before the 2001 attacks, the Transportation Security Administration said.

Those not screened by machines were being gone over by hand or by bomb-sniffing dogs, or matched to passenger lists to make sure travelers who checked luggage actually got on their flights.

The bag-matching program was only be used rarely because it is considered an insufficient measure at a time of suicide hijackings. It will, however, include a secret security measure that the authorities declined to discuss.

Despite fears of longer lines at check-in counters on New Year’s Day as the new procedures took effect nationwide, a spokeswoman for the security agency created 13 months ago said travel was proceeding smoothly.

“There are no delays,” said Chris Rhatigan.

She said passengers had been prepared for the new layer of security aimed at making preventing terrorists from blowing up an airliner, as happened in 1988 with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

“Everybody was well aware that this milestone was coming and they were all prepared for it,” Rhatigan said. The Transportation Security Administration urged travelers to leave their bags unlocked for possible scrutiny of contents.

Citing security reasons, the authorities declined to discuss how baggage was screened at individual airports or which airports had been granted extensions for installing required luggage-screening machines.

James Loy, a retired Coast Guard commandant who heads the Transportation Security Administration, said the challenge was to keep innovating to prevent terrorists from finding loopholes.

Among changes so far have been stepped-up security at US airport perimeters, roving law enforcement officers at airports, thousands of federal sky marshals aboard flights, hardened cockpit doors and heightened vigilance for carry-on luggage.

“To the traveling American public I would say that you enter a system that is infinitely safer than we have ever been in any time in our lives,” Loy said on the PBS program NewsHour on Tuesday night.

But he said potential terrorists are constantly trying to “figure out precisely what we are doing and what is their way around it.”

“We must be about the business of exercising, checking and testing the system routinely, which we are doing,” he added.

Two US airliners commandeered by suicide hijackers toppled the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and a third was crashed into the Pentagon outside Washington. A fourth hijacked airliner crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.—Reuters

MARITIME ATTACK: The United States stepped up security at its major ports and seaside cities on Tuesday night, after receiving information that terrorists might be planning a “maritime attack,” US officials said.

The tip came as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies scrambled to hunt down five suspects with Middle Eastern names who slipped illegally into the country on or around Dec 24 and disappeared without a trace.

Although one official stressed the information received was “uncorroborated” and of “suspect credibility,” the warning cast a cloud over New Year’s celebrations in cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle that usually attract crowds of revelers.

“The US government received information that is uncorroborated, unsubstantiated and of suspect credibility, of a potential maritime attack,” said a White House official.

“Due to the holiday season and large gatherings in New York and throughout America, protective measures have been put in place,” the official added.

The new threat, gleaned by US intelligence from its sources abroad, was not expected to raise the national terrorism alert level, which remained at “yellow,” or elevated.—AFP