As for our part, those of us who have lost our loved ones, we have taken as our own: "Life's unfairness is not irrevocable: We can help balance the scales for others, if not always for ourselves." We appreciate what the Presidential Commission has done. We realize that the legislators from that Commission have put together this legislation. We realize that this is a step forward, it is not an end. We endorse your efforts. We are here to support and we'll help in any way we can.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much, Mr. Ammerman. We appreciate very much your very well thought out presentation and your recommendations.

Mr. Hudson, welcome. We look forward to your statement.

STATEMENT OF PAUL S. HUDSON, CHAIR, FAMILIES OF PAN AM 103/LOCKERBIE; ACCOMPANIED BY ROSEMARY WOLFE AND MICHAEL LEMOV, ESQ.

Mr. HUDSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am accompanied here today by Rosemary Wolfe, step-mother of Miriam, and Mr. Michael Lemov, our Washington counsel who is a former counsel to several Congressional committees and a Presidential commission.

I would like to begin by commending Chairman Oberstar and Chairman Fascell for swiftly holding this hearing on this most important legislation to finally begin the work of tightening aviation security so we can prevent another bombing like Pan Am 103.

My name is Paul Hudson. I am Chairman of the Families of Pan Am 103/Lockerbie and the father of Melina, age 16, who was lost on December 21, 1988, along with 242 others, 16 Pan Am crew members and 11 citizens of Lockerbie, Scotland.

The Families of Pan Am 103/Lockerbie is an organization of 170 families of persons killed on Flight 103 and four families of those lost on a French UTA airliner in September 1989. Our organization's purpose is to ensure that the pain and loss that has befallen all of us will not again blight the lives of our fellow Americans.

This is the standard by which we have evaluated H.R. 5200, the Aviation Security Improvement Act of 1990. Our conclusion, unfortunately, is that this legislation will not achieve the purpose of avoiding to the maximum extent possible future terrorist bombings; that it is inadequate; in that it fails to carry out the conclusions of the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism.

And I add as an aside, Mr. Chairman, we were shocked this morning to hear the testimony of the Administration that they will not support even this weak legislation and have called for an indefinite-I believe the word is "stay" on any Congressional action. This after 19 months since the bombing of Pan Am 103.

In evaluating H.R. 5200, we have asked ourselves these questions:

Has international aviation and the American public been secured to the maximum extent possible against terrorist attacks?

Are we doing the best we can as a nation to ensure that there will be no future Pan Am 103s?

Are passengers being informed of credible security threats that risk their lives?

Have bomb detectors been installed as promised by Secretary Skinner 15 months ago in at least 40 high risk airports?

Have the perpetrators of the bombing of Pan Am 103 been brought to justice?

Has the United States taken any action against suspected terrorist organizations or nations that harbor them?

And finally, has legislation that would close the glaring security gaps revealed through the destruction of Pan Am 103 been passed, or introduced, in the United States Congress?

Our answer, in all candor, to each of these questions is no, no, and again no.

H.R. 5200 is, we believe, weak, flawed and inadequate. We call on this committee to strengthen it or else to defeat it. This bill would cancel the deployment of the U.S. Government's main initiative to detect aviation bombing, the bomb detectors known as TNAs. And even more damning, would not require deployment of any alternative devices nor require any heightened security procedures in their place. This provision alone, we believe, is an inexplicable backwards step for aviation security, and is enough to require defeat of the bill in it's current form.

The bill would also continue, and set in statutory concrete, a blanket exception for foreign airlines flying to the U.S. from complying with U.S. security requirements. Over 50 percent of the 23 million Americans taking transatlantic flights each year use foreign airlines. Last month, we saw yet another example of how an other Lockerbie tragedy could occur tomorrow.

Jim Swire, father of a Pan Am 103/Lockerbie victim and an explosives expert, carried a replica of the Lockerbie bomb aboard a British Air flight, from London to New York, without detection.

Last December, I travelled on KLM and Alitalia Airlines to and from Europe with a locked suitcase containing numerous electronic devices, the same type known to be used by terrorists in aviation bombs. And over 300 candles that could well have been sticks of dynamite. We were never questioned and our locked suitcases were never opened.

When we were leaving Lockerbie in December 1989, after attending the anniversary memorial services, a resident of Lockerbie from an area called Sherwood Crescent gave my wife a package, a present. He said to open it when we got home. We then flew on Alitalia Airlines from London to Rome, and later from Rome to Chicago.

I'd like to show the committee what was in that package. This is metal from the fuselage, nearly one-half inch thick, wiring harnesses, some other fragments. This was wrapped up in a package with some other things. We were never stopped, we were never questioned, our bags were never searched. I am told this makes a very high profile on even the standard type of X-ray machines.

[The information follows.]

Furthermore, the FAA continues to refuse to test domesticMr. OBERSTAR. Was that on both KLM and Alitalia that that occurred?

Mr. HUDSON. This was flown on Alitalia Airlines, which has the appearance, I might say, at the Rome Airport of good security. There are people with machine guns around the airport, there are only two locations where carryon luggage was searched. These were in our checked luggage, however. Whether any checks were done on that, we don't know. The bags were locked. If our bags were opened, the locks would have had to have been opened or someone would have had to come to us for the key. Neither was the case.

Furthermore, Mr. Chairman, the FAA continues to refuse to test domestic or foreign airlines for their capability to detect sophisticated aviation bombs, presumably because the test results would reveal a detection rate so low it could terrify the public.

This legislation would, unfortunately, do nothing to mandate such testing or require the airlines to increase their security to a level we could have some confidence in.

Congress has previously mandated that the FAA test for weapons and report the results to Congress every six months. Airlines that fail these tests by detecting less-and we believe it's 90 percent of the test weapons-are usually fined. This Congressionallymandated testing program has changed antihijacking security from a near sham to a system that while not perfect has deterred or prevented the vast majority of hijackings over the last five years.

Clearly, we need a credible testing program for bomb detection written into this legislation so that we have an ongoing, independent measure of aviation security against the number one terrorist weapon used to threaten and kill innocent civilians worldwide.

Absent a virtually perfect and probably unattainable level of security, Government-mandated warnings are the time-tested method by which the public is put on notice that a particular product or service carries a danger or risk. We do this for drugs, tobacco, food, beverages, consumer products generally.

However, in the case of aviation, our Government provides or allows deceptive, bland reassurances that cover up rather than reveal the true dangers and risks of air travel.

As the Pan Am 103/Lockerbie bombing revealed, our Government has a refusal-to-warn policy, of withholding even highly specific credible security threats to the lives of passengers and flight

crews.

In practice, it has been demonstrated that this FAA refusal to warn policy is really a selective warning policy, whereby those with Government or airline connections are warned but the general public is not.

Over the past year, even the current inadequate regulations have fallen into total disarray, with the State Department issuing several vague public warnings, the FAA seeking to maintain its refusal to warn policy, and several major airlines, including Northwest, SAS and Delta, issuing warnings to passengers on threatened flights, and finally with the news media publishing leaked information on such threats.