FBI: Illegal items on planes for weeks

WASHINGTON -- A college student sent an e-mail to federal authorities saying he had placed box cutters and other illegal items aboard two specific Southwest Airlines flights, but it still took authorities nearly five weeks to locate them on the planes.\nAn FBI affidavit obtained Monday by The Associated Press said Nathaniel Heatwole, 20, told agents he went through normal security procedures at airports in Baltimore and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and was able to carry the forbidden items onto the planes in small plastic bags. Once aboard, he hid the bags in a compartment in the rear lavatories of two planes.\nHeatwole first breached security at Raleigh-Durham airport on Sept. 12 -- the day after the two-year anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks. He did it again Sept. 15 at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, the affidavit said.\nThe bags contained box cutters, modeling clay simulated to look like plastic explosives, matches and bleach hidden in sunscreen bottles. Inside were notes with details about when and where the items were carried aboard. They were signed "3891925," which is the reverse of Heatwole's birthday: 5/29/1983.\nOn Sept. 15, the Transportation Security Administration received an e-mail from Heatwole stating he had "information regarding six security breaches" at the Raleigh-Durham and Baltimore-Washington airports between Feb. 7 and Sept. 14, the FBI affidavit said.\n"The writer stated that he smuggled several items on his person and some in his carry-on bag," the affidavit said.\nHomeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, whose department includes TSA, said officials "will go back and look at our protocol" for how such e-mails are handled. He said the agency gets a high volume of e-mails about possible threats and that the decision was made that Heatwole's "wasn't an imminent threat."\n"This is not a good experience. This is a bad experience," Ridge said during a visit to Duke University. "But we may learn something about it that we can apply across the country."\nThe e-mail provided precise details of where the plastic bags were hidden and even provided Heatwole's name and telephone number. It's unclear whether Heatwole actually hid items on four other planes.\n"The e-mail author also stated that he was aware his actions were against the law and that he was aware of the potential consequences for his actions, and that his actions were an 'act of civil disobedience with the aim of improving public safety for the air-traveling public,'" the affidavit said.\nThe e-mail was signed, "Sincerely, Nat Heatwole."\nThe affidavit does not say what was done about the e-mail after it was received in September. The bags containing box cutters and other items were not discovered until last Thursday night, after a lavatory on one of the planes had maintenance problems and workers found them.\nThe TSA did not send the e-mail to the FBI until last Friday. FBI agents quickly tracked down Heatwole and interviewed him.\nThe TSA did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment on the affidavit.\nHeatwole, a junior at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., who is from Damascus, Md., was scheduled to make an initial appearance in federal court in Baltimore Monday afternoon.\nFederal authorities planned to charge him with bringing a dangerous weapon aboard an aircraft, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.\nHeatwole's actions exposed holes in an aviation security system that has been greatly enhanced since Sept. 11, 2001, when 19 hijackers used box cutters to take over four jets. Box cutters and bleach are now among the items that cannot be carried onto planes.\nThe TSA was created after the attacks, with the goal of replacing privately employed airport security workers with better-trained and higher-paid government employees.\nDiscovery of the items last week aboard Southwest planes that landed in New Orleans and Houston triggered stepped-up inspections of the entire U.S. commercial air fleet -- roughly 7,000 planes. After consulting with the FBI, the TSA rescinded the inspection order and no other suspicious bags were found.\nThe FBI affidavit said that in interviews with FBI agents Heatwole acknowledged writing the e-mail to the TSA to alert authorities to the presence of the bags. He signed printed copies of the e-mail in the presence of FBI agents as well as the notes found in the bags, verifying that he was the author of all three, the affidavit said.\nGuilford is a Quaker college with a history of pacifism and civil disobedience that dates to the Civil War. Heatwole is not a Quaker, but shares many of the tenets of their religion, including a belief in pacifism, according to a February 2002 interview with The Guilfordian, the campus newspaper.