Seated and Ready for Departure
After penetrating secure areas, the auditors were able to board a significant number of aircraft operated by both U.S. and foreign air carriers.
     In some instances, according to the report, the auditors were seated and ready for departure when they concluded their tests.
     While the names of the major airports tested were not included in the report released to the public, The Washington Post quoted unidentified sources who named three of the airports as New York’s John F. Kennedy, Washington’s Reagan National and Chicago’s O’Hare. Others tested included the main airports in Atlanta, Miami, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Honolulu, the Post said.
     The report was delivered by the inspector general to the FAA last spring. A heavily redacted version was released by the agency on Wednesday.

An Ongoing Effort
The audit was no surprise to airport officials, who have been working with the inspectors for months and have been striving to improve security for years.
     At New York’s JFK, officials put in place a series of security measures after TWA Flight 800 exploded and crashed off Long Island in 1996.
     All JFK airport employees and construction workers are required to have credentials, new K-9 explosive detection units have been created, and employees receive cash rewards if they identify security breaches.
     But the federal auditors were still able to get past four security checkpoints in JFK airline terminals last spring, according to an airport official.
     After the Salt Lake City airport was inspected by auditors last year, officials found that employees there were often part of the problem, even if it was unintentional. So the number of employee access points were reduced, according to spokeswoman Barbara Gann. And a turnstile door was installed that allows only one person to enter at a time.
     Further, police patrols were increased and an ongoing airport security committee was formed. The airport launched an educational campaign to teach employees about security risks.
     “It’s an ongoing thing,” Gann says. “Actually, it helps to have that kind of scrutiny to help us improve.”

A Question of Training
The FAA finds the report “helpful,” a spokesman said, adding the agency would continue to work with the industry, airlines, and airport employees to make sure airports are secure.
     Further, the FAA says the auditors’ tests — 3,000 of them, conducted at 79 airports around the country — have helped improve security: The agency is pursuing almost 400 cases of security lapses at airports, the spokesman said.
     Bob Manetti, a part-time consultant for the FAA, says a fundamental problem with access control security is training.
     “It’s a tremendous education process, to train people from the airlines not to let people go in behind them. To make sure the doors are closed, and all of that other stuff that they don’t do,” says Manetti, who also meets with officials biannually as part of an aviation safety advisory committee.
     “You’ve got to train people what to do, you’ve got to reward them when they do, you’ve got to punish them when they don’t. And you’ve got to keep reminding them constantly,” he says.
     But the training required would cost a lot of money, says Manetti, “and nobody wants to spend that money to do it.”

Who’s to Blame?
According to the report, individuals and institutions should share the blame for security lapses.
     Airport operators and carriers are not successfully implementing procedures for controlling access, the report says. And airline and airport employees aren’t meeting their responsibilities for preserving the airport’s security.
     “The problem with access control is that it’s a joint responsibility of the airports and the airlines … the whole security system is based on a split responsibility,” says Manetti.
     “You don’t have this in any other country in the world but the United States. If you go to an airport in the U.K., or Kuala Lumpur, or any place else, there’s one authority in charge of security,” says Manetti.
     The audit also assigns blame to the FAA. It says the agency has not implemented its own program for enforcing compliance with security rules and that FAA policies need to be reworked.
     “FAA has been slow to take actions necessary to strengthen access control requirements and adequately oversee the implementation of existing controls,” the report says.
     But, says Manetti, “The ultimate responsibility is with the American people.”
     “If people don’t care that this report has come out, if they don’t complain to their Congress people about it, it’s not going to change.”

ABCNEWS.com’s David Ruppe contributed to this report.