Guns Stream Past Airport Security

Hundreds of guns, knives and fake bombs made it past US airport security staff during an undercover government test which exposed huge holes in security.

Staff at 32 airports failed to spot 70% of the knives, 30% of the guns and 60% of the dummy explosives carried by secret investigators in the months after September 11. The potential weapons were carried in clothing or stuffed into luggage.

The agents also managed to gain access to off-limits areas, including the airport Tarmac.

Critics rounded on the homeland security director, Tom Ridge, and said the results represented a widespread failure to increase vigilance after the hijackings.

"We still have the same people doing the same jobs they did before September 11," a security expert, Reynold Hoover, said. "There really wasn't the change we thought there was."

The tests were conducted by the US transportation department's inspector general between November and February, when the airports should have been on high alert.

The findings were in a memo sent by the inspector general to senior transportation officials, and leaked to the newspaper USA Today.

It said that the investigators conducted 783 tests at screening points and other areas of airport security.

The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said the findings highlighted issues that needed to be "dealt with forthrightly". But he said they also backed up the administration's decision to take control of airport security from the private sector. The federal government took responsibility for security on February 17.

The new authority, the Transportation Security Administration, has recruited 1,200 new supervisory screening staff to improve security.

A spokesman for the TSA said there had been "dramatic changes" since the tests were conducted.