By Associated Press CHICAGO -- A major security breach at O'Hare International Airport, where a passenger carried knives and a stun gun through a checkpoint, has prompted federal authorities to order background checks for eight private security workers.
"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.
One of the knives reported seized from the passenger was missing, the Chicago Sun-Times said Wednesday.
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. 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."
Convictions in the last 10 years for any of 35 crimes listed by the FAA would be disqualifying, Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Monique Bond said.
The Sun-Times reported Wednesday that two knives seized during the initial screening disappeared, and one still had not turned up. The newspaper cited unnamed police sources saying Argenbright workers initially 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. Local police and federal officials also did not respond to phone calls.
Federal officials said they would provide additional training to Argenbright employees at O'Hare and assign plainclothes inspectors to monitor job performance at the checkpoints.
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.
But Gurung was allowed to continue to the gate area with a plastic bag containing seven more knives, a stun gun and a container marked "tear gas-pepper gas." Those items were discovered by United workers who searched his luggage at the gate.
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 re-arrested 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.
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.
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 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.
Copyright 2001 Associated Press