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Law exempts cargo planes from security checks

As authorities investigated suspicious cargo in air freighters at the Philadelphia and Newark, N.J., airports Friday, officials said there is no policy or law ordering the screening of parcels loaded onto cargo-only planes.

As authorities investigated suspicious cargo in air freighters at the Philadelphia and Newark, N.J., airports Friday, officials said there is no policy or law ordering the screening of parcels loaded onto cargo-only planes.

Just a few months ago, on Aug. 3, a federal law took effect requiring that all cargo loaded onto passenger jets be subjected to security screenings. But cargo planes were excluded, said Stephen M. Lord, director of the homeland security and justice team at the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

"There is some screening conducted by Customs and Border Patrol and TSA, but it's more random, focused on high-risk flights," Lord said.

The GAO issued a report during the summer as the cargo mandate for passenger planes approached. Lord's office produced the study on the 100 percent screen requirement, as he called it. But the issue of screening of parcels on cargo planes has not been examined since 2007, he said, when freighters were excluded from the law.

"I think it was perceived to be a higher risk, any plane carrying passengers," Lord said. "The attention's been focused on passenger flights because they were used in the 9/11 attacks."

But a successful attack on a cargo plane or facility could cause major problems - economically, at least, said David G. Ross, a transportation analyst who follows United Parcel Service Inc. for investors with Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore.

Ross said investors were not worried about the terror threat to transportation companies in light of what happened at the Philadelphia and Newark airports and elsewhere.

"I'm not concerned," said Ross, who also monitors trucking and other transportation enterprises. "Terrorist attacks are a possibility in any of the companies we follow."

But several of the incidents involved UPS planes and at least one UPS truck - and to Ross, the message he gleaned was:

"Biggest transportation company in the world."

UPS is larger even than FedEx Corp., he said. The volume of cargo it transports across the globe is titanic, whether it be retail merchandise or other goods.

"They're moving it all," Ross said. "They move a good percentage of GDP [gross domestic product] every day."

UPS and FedEx both have "very good security in general," Ross said. But they have "hundreds of thousands of vehicles across the world."

A package truck in New York City is one thing, he said. But an attack on a UPS hub could be "really bad."

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