After LAX shootings, officials rethink airport terminal security

As U.S. officials and lawmakers explore ways to prevent another firefight like the one at Los Angeles International Airport last week, they're likely to run into practical limits on security upgrades -- while also reviving the debate on what restrictions Americans are willing to accept in exchange for greater safety.

"To some extent, it's an unavoidable risk," said Stewart Verdery, former assistant administrator for policy and planning at the Department of Homeland Security. "We have an open society. You have malls. You have stadiums. You don't normally screen 50,000 people going into a stadium for weapons."

The shooting Friday began at a TSA checkpoint, whose purpose is keeping bombs and weapons off planes. No matter how far the initial line of defense is pushed outward from those vulnerable targets, the risk couldn't be eliminated for the men and women on guard, said security specialists, consultants and a congressional committee chairman who oversees the TSA.

"The TSA is there to make sure it doesn't happen on an airplane," said George Hamlin, a former Airbus SAS executive who runs Hamlin Transportation Consulting. "How do you set up a system to protect the protectors?"

TSA Administrator John Pistole said Saturday that the agency is discussing airport security issues "writ large" with Congress, including whether officers should be armed. The agency will study its policies and procedures to determine what can provide the best possible security, he told reporters in Los Angeles.

The agency was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to bolster protections against terrorists boarding aircraft. House Homeland Security Committee chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), whose panel oversees the TSA, promised fresh attention to in-airport security during an interview Monday on CNN.

"How we typically stop a lot of these things is through good intelligence," McCaul said.

The apparent LAX shooter, identified by authorities as Paul Ciancia, 23, left a note in which he wrote of wanting to kill TSA agents, the FBI said. Ciancia's family alerted authorities in New Jersey, and Los Angeles police visited Ciancia's home the morning of the attack, McCaul told CNN.

Ciancia is accused of killing one TSA officer and wounding two other TSA employees and a civilian passenger, according to the criminal complaint filed Saturday in Los Angeles federal court. He was shot by airport police and remains hospitalized.

Richard Bloom, chief academic officer and professor of security studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz., said the apparent absence of a link to international terrorism in last week's case raises questions about whether airports need safeguards for lower-level threats.

"As worried as we are about al-Qaida or al-Shabaab or some other terrorist organization, maybe we need to recalibrate for the garden-variety unstable individual who can commit violent acts as well," Bloom said.