Former TSA Admin Warns of Dangers From Airport Employees

In the wake of a string of recent terror attacks from Paris to Belgium, Americans wonder how secure their ports of travel really are.

Tom Blank, former deputy TSA administrator, told FOX Business’s Neil Cavuto there might be more security gaps than the average passenger realizes.

“We have literally tens of thousands of people who work at airports…and when they show up to work, they access the secure area of the airport without going through the kind of screening that TSA puts airline passengers through. This is a clear security gap and has been exposed earlier this year,” he explained.

Blank pointed to a situation in which there was an attempt by an airline passenger to carry smuggled guns from a baggage handler through security. Blank said for many years, the threat airport employees – from baggage handlers to concession workers, caterers, and fuelers – pose has been known as a potential security gap. But it’s a problem he also said that has no real solution yet.

“These are folks that come to work, just as everyone does, as airline passengers do – they have backpacks, and they have lunch pails, and they may have toolboxes, and they’re carrying them into secure areas of airports and nobody is really having a good hard look at what might be in there,” Blank said.

To be fair – Blank said airport employees are subject to criminal history checks, which are updated on a periodic basis.