comprehensive in that it also includes provisions for Federal law enforcement assistance to prevent hijackers from boarding airline aircraft. We support the broader approach with the modifications we have suggested. It is unfortunately true that such additional protective measures now seem necessary in light of current efforts of mentally deranged or criminally inclined persons to use the airlines for their anti-social goals.

Mr. Chairman, I wish to assure the Committee of the complete cooperation of the airlines in the exploration of the problem of hijacking. We offer our assistance to the Committee in every possible way both with respect to furnishing information or in developing suggested legislative language for the use of the Committee.

Senator CANNON. Next Mr. Robert Bauter, director of corporate security, Hughes Air West. You may proceed, sir.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT T. BAUTER, CORPORATE SECURITY DIRECTOR, HUGHES AIRWEST

Mr. BAUTER. My name is Robert T. Bauter.

I am corporate security director for Hughes Airwest, a regional airline serving 74 airports in the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

I appreciate this opportunity to comment on S. 39. I want to underscore some problem areas which confront us as a regional carrier. These problems may or may not be the same as those of the trunk line; I am speaking solely on behalf of Hughes Airwest and want the committee to understand that this statement is not being made on behalf of any other organization.

I have served Hughes Airwest in my present position since September 1968. I entered the airline security field at a time that the industry was beginning to experience its highest incidence of successful hijacking. It was during this period that the FAA, with the assistance of several airlines, developed a complex voluntary screening program. This program utilized the services of airline employees in selecting potential hijackers, through the use of the "profile," with which I am sure the committee is familiar; metal detectors for clearing those who fit the profile; and the expertise of Federal law-enforcement officials for the search and further handling of those who could not be cleared by the first two methods. In our experience, this program was 100 percent effective, and I shall have more to say about that later.

We at Hughes Airwest realized at the outset that although we are a small airline in terms of revenue per passenger-our average fare today is $31.38 and was less 3 years ago-we are a large airline in terms of the number of departures per day (456) and in the number of airports we serve (74). Therefore, we have a large exposure to hijackers even though we are a regional airline.

It is because of this high exposure that we readily welcomed and participated in the scientific program to prevent hijacking that I have described. At a time when it was unpopular to spend money beyond bare essentials, we promptly purchased all the necessary detection equipment at our own expense and now have every gate on our system covered.

The diligence of our gate agents in administering this screening program and the excellent cooperation of the U.S. marshals and customs agents have left us with a 100-percent successful record. We have

never been hijacked while following this procedure. But we were once hijacked when, through inadvertence, the proper procedures were not followed. To us, this is the exception which proves the rule.

Today, however, this past experience has been set aside. The airline industry has been regulated into a nonscientific, blanket approach to the hijacking problem in the form of a 100-percent search of passengers and carryon items. As a regional airline, we are hard put to process our passengers in the same manner as the larger carriers, and this change works a hardship on us which we feel is unnecessary.

To be specific, let me point out that many of the airports we serve have no holding areas in which passengers can be conveniently prescreened. We, therefore, must conduct this 100-percent search during the boarding process. Our jet aircraft are at the gates on the average of 20 minutes per stop, but many times are there for only 10 minutes. This is hardly enough time to search all passengers, many of whom are regular travelers known well to the airline employees.

The 100 percent carryon baggage search is further complicated by the fact that the shorter hops on our route system dictate that many of our passengers do bring their luggage on board with them. They are not going cross-country for extended periods, have little luggage, and prefer not to check items which would result in their spending more time in the baggage claim area than in the air!

Aside from the physical inconvenience, the airline manpower requirement for 100 percent screening certainly cannot be ignored. The January 2, 1973, edition of the Aviation Daily, published the estimated costs to 18 domestic airlines. The $3,600,000 estimate for Hughes Airwest would be a major financial burden for us.

To summarize to this point, I would say that our experience has shown that a conscientious application of the earlier program will do the job, cost far less, and result in far fewer delays and inconveniences for the traveling public. I urge the subcommittee to keep this experience in mind while putting the final touches on the legislation before reporting it to the Senate floor. If at all possible, we would like to have a choice of methods available to us in combating this terrible crime.

Now I would like to turn your attention to another area of concern, which is shared by airlines and airport operators alike. Prior testimony has stressed the need for Federal law officers to enfore Federal laws. We agree with this principle. We do question, however, whether or not a new Federal force must be formed.

Again I must rely on my day-to-day direct involvement in the hijack deterrence program to note that both the U.S. marshals and U.S. customs officers assigned to the screening program display lawenforcement competence and professionalism of the highest order. We see no reason why they should be supplanted.

We need more than a mere presence of law officers at our airports; we need visible law enforcement, which will complement the team effort of airline employees, security guards and airport operators in conducting the best possible screening. The techniques of search are inherent in law-enforcement training, but foreign to the skills required of airline employees.

We are Hughes Airwest do not want to presume to tell this committee how to construct a total nationwide deterrent to hijacking. The thoughts I have offered here today are a reflection of our own experience as a regional carrier. We share them with the committee, in the hope that they will assist you as you strive to arrive at a solution which will be effective and fair under all circumstances and in all parts of the country. We would hope however that your ultimate solution would leave us with some flexibility to apply the lessons of our own experience. We pledge to the committee and your staff our fullest cooperation and support.

Thank you.

Senator CANNON. Thank you very much for a fine statement. As one who rides your carrier quite frequently I hope you keep up that fine record.

Senator Hart?

Senator HART. No, I am not a regular rider. But I hope you keep up your fine record.

Senator CANNON. Thank you.

The next witness, Mr. Richard Anderson, representing Scent Unlimited, Oxford, Miss.

STATEMENT OF RICHARD ANDERSON, SCENT UNLIMITED,
OXFORD, MISS.

Mr. ANDERSON. Mr. Chairman.

Senator CANNON. Sir?

Mr. ANDERSON. I am here representing a behavioral research organization that has succeeded in developing a new technological breakthrough in using what is probably the oldest detection device known to man, and that is the dog.

The need for this type of system was brought home to me very rapidly on my trip up here. I went through an air terminal where the security consisted of two desks, and two tables across a hallway. They had four rather young, very inexperienced, obviously untrained, newly hired people doing the searching. I was traveling onboard a plane with this attaché case and a slide projector that is approximately 8 inches by 8 inches, with a wooden top on it and a leather strap to make sure it doesn't come apart.

The search at this particular airport consisted of looking at the slide projector and putting it on the back table and, therefore, clearing it. The search of the briefcase consisted of opening it up. There were two articles in there, two cartons. One contained an extra bulb for the slide projector, the other contained extra slide cubes. Either was large enough to contain enough explosives to blow a hole in the side of that airplane. My first thought was to fault the people performing the task. They could have been at fault for not checking the briefcase more thoroughly. But on second thought there was really no way they could have checked that slide projector.

I could have hidden inside that slide projector, inside the mechanism, two or three hand guns fully loaded with no problem and walked onboard.

Only short of dismantling that particular instrument I was carrying onboard with me could this loophole have been closed. Now, this brings home the necessity of a Federal force that is fully trained, that is constantly on the alert for the many hundreds of loopholes that are now evident in the security system.

Only by keeping ahead of the skyjackers and being able to find the loopholes and close them before the skyjacker finds them are we going to be able to effectively stop this thing.

There really are two problems, interrelated, in the airport-airline security problem. Right now the concentration is on preventing individuals from boarding the airplane with weapons. The other problem is preventing explosives from going onboard that airplane, whether being carried or being shipped. This involves the individual who is an anarchist, who is mentally deranged, who is interested in committing mass murder. This is the more difficult. We can set up systems to check people and can do it fairly effectively if we use all systems possible.

What I am saying basically is that magnetometers, by the way I was not checked by a magnetometer at this particular airport either, I walked through and picked up my baggage and walked onboard the plane.

Magnetometers are effective in checking individuals. They have not proven particularly effective in checking hand luggage or parcels. Human visual search can only go so far in checking hand parcels and luggage carried onboard. You cannot dismantle everything people are carrying onboard an airplane. This is the reason that some 7 or 8 months ago we, at our own expense, decided to experiment, since we had particular expertise in this field, on developing and eliminating most of the problems of using dogs as detection systems.

The dogs olfactory ability has been known since the existence of dogs, since the Egyptian days certainly.

They have been trackers of game and people and as you know, they have been used effectively in Vietnam as mine detection dogs.

However, for practical purposes, there were certain flaws in the use of this system. A number of these were that the training time involved between a one-man, one-dog relationship in the old training system ranged from 4 to 6 months. This was quite expensive, it meant you were tying up a man 4 to 6 months, paying his salary, maintenance, plus maintenance of the animals, et cetera. The cost ran between $6.000 and $8,000. This also produced the one-man, one-dog relationship, which produced an enormous personnel turnover cost. You could train a man with a dog, he got back to the job, 90 days later he found a better job, you started over again and you lost the investment in that particular individual.

At any time that the handler was not available the dog was immobile, therefore, he was not usable. Another major fallacy of this was that the reliability factor has to be 90 percent or more to be effective. You were never sure after the initial search period of the dog, after an hour or so, as to how reliable he was.

These things we have eliminated. We have taken laboratory procedures of conditioning, psychological conditioning, and applied these to automated training systems, not only in this but in a number of other areas we are researching at the present time.

What we have done is set up a procedure whereby we can, through the conditioning process, produce a dog that is highly reliable, 90 percent or better, much better than 90 percent, under many, many conditions, practically any condition you can think of, so that they can detect by the odor of the substance.

We have experimented with all explosives and the odor emanating from cartridges carried in handguns. We have also experimented with narcotics, and we can combine all three of these in one detection system, bomb material, plus concealed weapons plus narcotics. It was mentioned here earlier about the problem of narcotics detection. I believe Senator Hart raised this question. I have talked to several lawyers about this, I am not a lawyer myself, I am a researcher. They say this would tend to put the legal question into a different category. If you have a detection device that is specifically searching for and finding narcotics, that this is a different category than if you are searching for a weapon and find narcotics by accident.

I don't know all the legal ramifications of this but we think anyway, that the use of this triunit of bombs, guns, and narcotics detection, particularly with the narcotics detection on there, that the flow of narcotics through our airports and by airlines could be almost eliminated.

We know that there are many instances where a man cannot visually detect, by looking through something, if it is concealed in an inside liner or secret compartment, that they cannot detect explosives materials or firearms. The same is true of magnetometers, they have their limitations.

Dogs have their limitations also. There is no perfect system. But I am here to advise you that there is a new advanced technology in this field that eliminates many of the old liabilities of using this system, and it is available.

We are not a commercial company as such. We could with our facilities produce for the FAA, LEAA, anyone else, or we are perfectly willing to sell our system at a very nominal cost to reimburse us for our investment, to anyone who may want to use it, because we are basically a research organization and not a commercial concern.

Senator CANNON. Have you called this to the attention of the FAA? Mr. ANDERSON. Yes; I have. I have been in touch with the Security Division of FAA. They sent a bomb and security expert, his name was Mr. Tom McCormick out of their Atlanta regional office. He came to our facilities checked us out and has submitted a report. I have not read that report. I understand indirectly that it was a relatively good report.

I believe your staff assistant there has a copy of it if you would like. Senator CANNON. Have you discussed this with any of the air

carriers?

Mr. ANDERSON. I have talked in the past to security directors of three or four airlines. I have talked to the president of at least one airline. This was several months ago. At that time, your committee was, I think, preparing an antiskyjacking bill for the last session of Congress.

The general attitude that I got at that time was, that the airlines at that point were simply not particularly interested in investing any