Airport security lapse stuns America

Federal officials in America are investigating how a man carrying seven knives, a stun gun and tear gas passed through an airport checkpoint.

Subash Gurung, 27, a Nepalese citizen in the country on an expired student visa, was held pending a Thursday hearing on a federal felony charge of attempting to board a jetliner with weapons at O'Hare International Airport.

"The O'Hare failure was a case of dramatic dimensions," Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta told reporters.

Security employees at the checkpoint Saturday night did confiscate two folding knives that Gurung told them were in his pocket. But they failed to notice seven other knives, a stun gun and tear gas in his carry-on luggage. They were discovered by United Airlines workers who made a hand search of his luggage at the gate.

Federal law enforcement officials said there was no indication Gurung was involved in terrorism, and in a statement the FBI said reports that Gurung shared an address with alleged terrorist suspects were not accurate. Law enforcement officials said Gurung told them he mistakenly packed the knives in a plastic bag rather than his luggage before leaving

"The investigation does not seem to reveal any illicit, suspicious or nefarious intent about his trip to Omaha," said Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago.

The company that operates the security checkpoints for United Airlines at O'Hare, Atlanta-based Argenbright Security Inc., said eight employees including one supervisor had been suspended from duty pending an internal company investigation.

Company spokesman Brian Lott said they would be fired only if the investigation showed that "there was wrongdoing."

Chicago police charged Gurung with two misdemeanors and released him on bond early Sunday. The FBI rearrested him on the federal charge later Sunday when he returned to O'Hare to retrieve his luggage.

The luggage that came back from Omaha contained two more knives, one of them with a seven-inch (18-centimeter) blade, the FBI said.

Gurung told WLS-TV in Chicago that he collects knives and that the stun gun was for protection.

"I was living there in Chicago and I don't have any friends at the time," he said. "Two years I was completely alone there, totally insecure and lonely there."

In court, Gurung's lawyer, Piyush Chandra, declined to answer questions from reporters.

Lawmakers seized on the incident as ammunition in the fight over whether the job of securing the nation's airports should be federalized as Democrats would prefer or stay in private hands as President George W. Bush wants.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, said that if they were federal workers it would be impossible to fire them, even if they were guilty of a security breach, because they would have job protection.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, said the security system would never be as efficient as it should be unless those running it were federal employees "like the Customs Service, like the FBI."