By David Lawder and Doina Chiacu
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Employees at U.S. airports should face tighter security screening, a U.S. senator and a New York prosecutor said on Wednesday, two weeks after a baggage handler was charged with helping to smuggle 153 guns onto flights from Atlanta to New York City.
Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said he asked the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to require that all airline and airport employees be physically screened every day before work, his office said in a statement.
While pilots and flight crews must pass through metal detectors at airports, the people who repair and clean planes, load luggage and work in areas beyond the security checkpoints do not get screened.
Schumer cited a gun-running operation exposed last month for which Delta Air Lines baggage handler Eugene Harvey was charged with helping a former Delta employee, Mark Quentin Henry, evade detection with the guns in a carry-on bag.
The smuggling operation "was a cake walk for criminals to pull off due to a major loophole in our airport security protocols," Schumer told a news conference.
Ken Thompson, the district attorney for New York's borough of Brooklyn, whose team broke the case, said Henry legally purchased handguns and assault rifles from owners through a Georgia-based gun classified advertising website.
He then handed them off to Harvey, who brought them into Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport's secure area undetected, Thompson said. They were transferred back to Henry, who carried them onto New York-bound Delta flights, said Thompson, who appeared at the news conference.
Four men, including alleged gun traffickers in New York, have been charged in the scheme, which brought 153 guns to the area from Atlanta between March and December 2014, Thompson said.
"A bomb could have easily been put on any of these planes, just like the guns were, and so the federal government has an obligation to do something about this immediately," Thompson said, noting that ordinary passengers must still surrender water bottles at airport security stations.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson is "rigorously analyzing" the findings from Thompson's investigation, DHS spokeswoman Marsha Catron said.
"To this end, to help assess potential vulnerabilities related to site security at airports nationwide behind the sterile area, Secretary Johnson is going to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport tomorrow to meet with TSA and airport stakeholders," she added.