BALTIMORE, Oct. 17 (UPI) -- The FBI announced late Friday it had found the man suspected of planting box cutters and other suspecious items on two airliners, Fox News reported.
The agency was questioning a 20-year-old North Carolina man in Baltimore, according to officials.
Described as a college student
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An FBI statement said that agents had "located and interviewed the individual believed responsible" for leaving the packages and that the person poses no further threat to airline security. The person's name was not released, and charges were not announced.
Legal proceedings were expected Monday in federal court in Baltimore
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The announcement concluded a tense day in the U.S. airline industry, as the Transportation Security Administration earlier Friday ordered all U.S. commercial aircraft in the United States to be searched within 24 hours.
The TSA said the move followed the discovery late Thursday of suspicious articles including box cutters on board two Southwest Airlines planes at New Orleans and Houston airports.
The news of the discovery was greeted with dismay by lawmakers and other aviation observers.
"As a precautionary measure," TSA spokesman Darrin Kayser told United Press International, "we have issued a security directive to the airlines ordering all commercial airlines in the U.S. fleet to be searched."
The order covers 5
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FBI Director Robert Mueller -- who was coincidentally in Houston visiting a FBI field office -- said there was "no imminent threat."
"It does not appear to be a terrorist event," he said.
Box cutters are thought to be the weapons used by the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackers to seize control of the planes in the terror attack that killed more than 3,000 people.
Southwest Airlines said box cutters and other items "intended to simulate a threat" were found in the aircrafts' lavatories by maintenance staff.
The plane in New Orleans was on a scheduled stop on its flight from Orlando, Fla.
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"The lavatory was broken, and while it was being fixed, a small plastic bag containing the items and a note was found," she told UPI.
A similar discovery was made during routine maintenance on the second plane in Houston, she said.
The notes, she added, "suggested they had been put there as a challenge to TSA screening procedures."
A federal official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told UPI that passenger planes are screened and cleaned during the so-called turnaround before every flight.
A second official told UPI that the searches ordered Friday would be undertaken by airline personnel.
"All (this directive is) doing is making sure that they are more thorough, and that they step up the timeline where necessary," the first official said.
Harbin said that the packages were hidden in such a way that they would not have been found during the normal turnaround procedures. She declined to provide further details about the packages, the notes or their hiding places.
She added that Southwest searched its 385 aircraft Thursday night and found nothing more.
Kayser said that the TSA did not expect the searches to disrupt airline schedules. The searches, he said, were part of a larger investigation into the incident led by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
"We need to discover whether there are any more of these (packages) and then find out who put them there and why," FBI spokesman Bill Carter told UPI.
Carter denied the decision to search every plane was an over-reaction
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"We can't afford to take any chances
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Critics of the administration and the TSA seized on the event as evidence of the shortcomings of U.S. aviation security.
"Despite these wake-up calls, the Bush administration plows ahead with its ill-considered plan to slash 6,000 airport screening jobs
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"Someone needs to add up 2 plus 2 -- when you cut out inspections, the box cutters get in."
"This will not surprise anyone who knows anything about the way the TSA operates," says Steve Elson, who was a security officer for the Federal Aviation Administration when that body was responsible for aviation security.
Elson has been a trenchant critic of low standards in airline security since well before Sept. 11, 2001.
"Aviation security was terrible under the FAA," he told UPI. "It is -- if anything -- worse now."Related Topics Articles：
