US pledges to act on airline threat after student boasts of security breach

THE Bush administration pledged yesterday to move more aggressively against potential threats in the wake of an incident in which federal authorities said a young man boasted about successfully compromising airline security.

From now on, a Transportation Security Administration official said, the agency will single out for response any threatening communication and will seek to better train its employees on how to recognise such messages.

“The system should have picked it up. If this highlights a flaw in the system, it could be relatively easily corrected,” TSA spokesman Mark Hatfield said.

His statement came a day after student Nathaniel Heatwole of Damascus, Maryland, was charged in federal court in Baltimore with taking a dangerous weapon aboard an aircraft.

The case against Heatwole, 20, followed the discovery of bags containing boxcutters, bleach and other prohibited items aboard two Southwest Airlines planes. The government said Heatwole smuggled boxcutters onto two airplanes and then told the TSA what he did.

But an FBI affidavit said it was more widespread.

On September 15, the document said, the TSA received an e-mail from Heatwole saying he had “information regarding six security breaches” at the Raleigh-Durham and Baltimore-Washington airports between February 7 and September 14. Heatwole faces up to 10 years in prison.