Following the November 13 Paris attacks, which killed 130 people and injured 350, authorities found that as many as 57 employees at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle international airport were listed on a terror watch list. The employees all had security clearances with runway access. A report from the Sunday Times of London explains the security clearances were revoked after an extensive police search at the airport.
Belgium, where several of the Paris attackers had lived, also has pulled security badges from several airport workers after discovering that some had links to jihadis who had traveled to Syria.
Meanwhile, anxiety has been brewing about radicalism among bus, Metro and railroad workers.
Samy Amimour, who blew himself up in the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, managed to get a job as a bus driver while on a watch list […]
Paris police official Philippe Riffault explained that the review of airport runway and security clearances will begin with 5,000 security personnel. Review will focus on “what these people might have been doing since they obtained their authorization,” Riffault said.
In recent days, four planes were spray-painted with Arabic graffiti in airports in France. The graffiti was located on the panels covering the aircraft’s fuel tanks.
With these findings, Americans are rightly concerned about what kinds of access potential terrorists might have to aircraft and luggage on their own soil. An investigation by the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security found that 73 of airport employees on terror watch lists were granted security clearances by the TSA. CBS reported on the investigation:
