US Consults Israel on Anti-terror Plans

The Los Angeles International Airport, the world’s fifth busiest airport, has clinched a deal to consult Israel on anti-terror measures, reported the Los Angeles Times on Saturday, June 14.

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“To have Israeli eyes on LAX on a constant basis, it’s a huge deal,” Los Angeles City Councilor Jack Weiss said.

LAX officials signed an agreement on Friday with Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport to seek consultancy on fortifying anti-terror measures at the airport.

Under the agreement to start this fall, three Israeli security experts will carry out periodic reviews of anti-terrorist measures at the airport.

The Israeli experts will visit the airport twice a year and provide additional consulting by e-mail.

“There’s a recommendation they gave us,” said Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The agreement is believed to be the first between a US airport authority and a foreign government agency.

In the US, federal authorities are responsible for security inside airport terminals.

Serving over 61 million passengers in 2007, LAX is the fifth busiest airport in the world by passenger traffic and eleventh-busiest by cargo traffic.

It is the busiest airport in the state of California, and the third-busiest airport by passenger traffic in the.

Learning

Villaraigosa said LAX wants to learn from Israel’s experience in fighting terror.

“[The agreement] is going to put us in a position to learn . . . to implement state-of-the-art technology and other measures to help us secure our airport.”

Villaraigosa described Ben-Gurion the world’s safest airport, pointing to one of the $2,000 trash cans placed outside the airport.

Made of reinforced steel, the cans serve as emergency receptacles for any explosives the police might find.

From inside the can, the force of any blast would go only upward.

Gina Marie Lindsey, the executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, said her agency wants to learn from Israel how to fortify the perimeter of LAX and how to incorporate anti-terror strategies into plans for expanding the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

LAX also wants to learn to apply Israel’s system of electronic scanning of automobile license plates to identify terrorists as they approach the airport, she said.

“You don’t see a lot of guards walking around with machine guns,” said Lindsey.

“And we certainly don’t want that either.”

The US has tightened up security measures at airports since the 9/11 attacks.

In 2004, the US began fingerprinting and photographing foreign visitors arriving at its major airports and seaports in a multi-million security program.

It has also arranged a partnership with more than 40 foreign ports so that US customs agents are allowed to inspect US-bound shipments.

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