Several named individuals appeared in my book AVIATION INSECURITY as players at Boston's Logan International Airport. The location where the 2 World Trade Center flights took off. It is, and remains, my contention that compromised management and security at Logan contributed directly to the 9-11 attacks. More than five years later, it is a fascinating case study to see where these folks are today.

In August 1998, Willie Gripper, the FAA's New England Region Civil Aviation Security Division Manager appointed the inexperienced Mary Carol Turano to be the Manager of the Boston Civil Aviation Security Field Office at Logan. Turano, who in a strange twist of fate died five years to the day after 9/11 on September 11, 2006, was moved out of Logan shortly after 9/11. She eventually was involved with security screener training for the TSA. The GAO has found that security screening performance is only marginally better than prior to 9/11, if at all.


August 1998-Late-September 2001: Inexperienced Manager Heads FAA's Boston Security Field Office

Mary Carol Turano is appointed director of the Federal Aviation Administration's Boston Civil Aviation Security Field Office (CASFO). This is the office that oversees security at Logan Airport, from where Flights 11 and 175 depart on 9/11. Yet Turano has little experience in airport security, and has not even begun the basic training that all FAA special agents must undergo. During her tenure, according to an agent who is assigned to Logan, staff that document security violations become frustrated, as she allows violations to accumulate without taking appropriate action. After 9/11, it is revealed that she lacks the identification badge necessary for unescorted access to secure areas. An official familiar with airport security procedures comments, "An organization does well what a commander checks, and how can you check what they do if you don't have a ramp access badge?" Turano is subsequently reassigned. [Associated Press, 9/29/2001; Boston Globe, 9/29/2001; WBUR (Boston), 10/4/2001; Thomas, 2003, pp. 61] Logan Airport's poor record for security continues while she heads CASFO (see 1991-2000)(see 1997-September 1999).

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=mary_carol_turano_1


Gripper's penchant for appointing inexperienced personnel to key positions finally caught up with him when an Administrative Law Judge found him guilty of perjury in a sex discrimination plot (http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1004/101404c1.htm). After 9/11, he went with the TSA for a while before returning to the FAA's Southern Region where he held the same position he had in New England in the lead up to 9/11, except that most all airport and airline duties had been removed.


A May 18, 1999 letter sent to the Department of Transportation Office of the Inspector General from an FAA Special Agent in Boston alleges that the dates and times of screening checkpoint tests were being leaked from the FAA to Massport and the airlines. That letter suggests that the FAA's Federal Security Manager at Logan and the Assistant Director for Aviation Security at Massport may have been invoved.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/congress/9-11_commission/030522-dzakovic.htm
http://archives.californiaaviation.org/airport/msg18931.html

Steve Luongo was the Federal Security Manager at Logan on 9/11. According to the Boston Globe, he, along with the airlines at a LAMCO meeting, disapproved of Joe Lawless' plan to have the Mass State Police conduct undercover testing of the security sceening checkpoints prior to 9/11. He was unavailable for an interview in this regard after 9/11. Luongo is now an Aviation Security Inspector/Cargo for the TSA at Tampa Airport.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/529165/posts

Willam J. Jaillet was the Manager of the FAA's New England Region Security Division before Willie Gripper. Jaillet later became Massport's number-two security director under Joe Lawless. In June 2000, he quit after an internal investigation turned up evidence of sexual harassment.