Feds search backgrounds of checkpoint workers for convictions

CHICAGO (AP) -- Federal authorities said they will make criminal background checks of eight O'Hare International Airport security workers a priority after a man carrying knives and a stun gun was allowed through a checkpoint.

"We want to know if they have any criminal convictions and if they are who they say they are," Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said Tuesday, as the agency launched the checks.

Saturday's security breach at a United Airlines checkpoint at O'Hare came about two weeks after federal officials ordered new background checks of Argenbright Security Inc. employees at 13 airports nationwide, including O'Hare. The company was put on probation last year for hiring people with criminal records to staff security checkpoints at Philadelphia International Airport.

It was unclear whether the company had begun the checks at O'Hare before Saturday. But Atlanta-based Argenbright issued a statement Tuesday saying seven of the eight employees had previously undergone fingerprint-based FBI background checks that revealed "no disqualifying crimes preventing their employment."

Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Monique Bond said the FAA has a list of 35 disqualifying crimes. She said only convictions within the last 10 years would be considered disqualifying.

Further questions about the employees arose Wednesday when the Chicago Sun-Times reported that two knives reportedly seized during the initial screening went missing at first, and one still had not turned up. The newspaper cited police sources saying Argenbright workers at first denied knowing about the knives, but that one worker turned over a knife on Monday.

United Airlines will not comment about the missing knives, spokeswoman Chris Nardella said. Argenbright officials did not immediately return phone calls Wednesday.

Federal officials said they would take steps to avoid further security breaches by providing additional training to Argenbright employees at O'Hare and assigning plainclothes inspectors to visit the checkpoints to monitor job performance there.

On Saturday, Subash Gurung, a 27-year-old unemployed Nepalese national in the country on an expired student visa, told Argenbright employees at the United Airlines checkpoint that he was carrying two knives. The knives were confiscated at the checkpoint.

But Gurung was allowed to continue to the gate area with a plastic bag containing seven knives, a stun gun and a container marked "tear gas-pepper gas." United employees searched the bag by hand and found the items.

Law enforcement officials said Gurung told them he mistakenly packed the knives in a plastic bag rather than his luggage before leaving for the airport.

Gurung was arrested by Chicago police on two misdemeanor charges and released on bond. He was later rearrested by FBI agents when he returned to O'Hare to retrieve his luggage. He is scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing Thursday on a federal felony charge of attempting to board a jetliner carrying weapons.

Prosecutors have noted that the charges say nothing about the terrorism investigation stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and say there is nothing to arouse suspicion about Gurung's planned trip to visit a friend in Omaha.

Still, Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta on Monday called the breach "a case of dramatic dimensions."

United said it was conducting its own investigation to determine how the lapse occurred. The Chicago Department of Aviation has taken away the security badges of the eight security employees, all of whom have been suspended pending the outcome of an internal Argenbright investigation, Bond said.

Argenbright also provides security for American Airlines at O'Hare, and three other security companies staff checkpoints in the airport, Bond said.

Argenbright was fined $1 million after pleading guilty to violations in training, testing and background checks of its employees at Philadelphia International Airport. Prosecutors said 18 guards it hired had convictions that included drug dealing, kidnapping and theft.