Another Sad Day for Chicago's Airports and Aviation Safety

It was a sad day for aviation safety in Spring 2000 when former Chicago deputy police superintendent John Townsend took over airport security for the Chicago Department of Aviation, which operates O'Hare International Airport, Midway Airport and Meigs Field.

What Ed. knows as fact is that upon his arrival, Townsend, a hack who knew more about bodyguarding his neighbor, Mayor Richard M. Daley, than about federal aviation law, pushed out one of the world's foremost aviation security experts, Rich Kunicki, who at the time was Chief of Aviation Security for Chicago.

Kunicki is a man whose knowledge and experience defined airport security, and who had been called upon by Presidents and Vice Presidents, Congress and international airport operators to help make airports and air travel safer.

He also had a plan to make Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports safer. Long before September 11, 2001, Kunicki recognized the flaw in using cheap, untrained, unprofessional private security guards to man airport security checkpoints -- and even before 2000 he had a plan to either eliminate the "door checkers" or professionalize the corps with FBI-level background checks, mandatory college-level courses in aviation security, required continuing education and a $4 per hour wage hike -- from $8 to $12 -- to attract professionals to careers in airport security.

Townsend didn't have a plan and couldn't come up with one to save his -- or anyone else's -- life. Pushed to release a revamp of O'Hare's security nightmare in 2000, all Townsend could do was run, hide and conspire with other Chicago Department of Aviation nincompoops to rid the agency of its reformer.

Kunicki was relegated to a do-nothing job in a pitiful little office with a telephone and two desks.

Now Daley has pushed another crony into the top airport security job, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Donald Zoufal, 45, has become a deputy aviation commissioner whose job it is to work out an agreement with the federal Transportation Security Administration to get the feds out of O'Hare's airport security checkpoints and put in Chicago police officers -- probably working on overtime. Can you say: "Ka-Ching!" There's nothing like giving cops more pay to secure their loyalty for an upcoming mayoral re-election bid.

Not since the realm of Chicago Aviation Commissioner Mary Rose Loney has security been the No. 1 concern of city aldermen (certainly not that of bumbling Pat Lavar, 45th Ward Alderman and chair of the City Council Aviation Committee), airport officials or even Chicago's mayor. Kunicki was her No. 1 security guy.

But she left and the then city street-paving chief, Thomas Walker, was tapped to head the aviation department.

Kunicki's reports and proposals on aviation and airport security were buried, or their covers altered to show Townsend as their architect. Townsend ... who Ed. believes couldn't find his ass with both hands if an airport sign was pointing to it.

Ed. also holds the opinion that deputy aviation commissioner John Harris -- another former (civilian) deputy police commissioner -- is also to blame for O'Hare's failure to reform airport security. So too are Robert Rapel, the aviation department's lawyer and long long time Daley buddy. So too is department inter-governmental affairs director Michael Boland, former campaigner in the failed election bid of Carol Mosely-Braun, and agency PR mouthpiece Monique Bond, who was more concerned with the security of her own job than with the security of millions of air travelers.

Why? Because they ALL had Walker's ear and could have and should have pushed for a speedy revolution in meaningful airport security operations -- new tactics beyond remodeling checkpoint stations to make them more user friendly. But they didn't. And the major airlines -- who paid the private checkpoint security guards -- didn't want reforms that would cost them more money. Meanwhile, the mayor and aviation commissioner were focused on keeping alive plans to rebuild and expand O'Hare's passenger terminals, primarily at the expense of the major airlines.

So once Kunicki was out of the way, no one pushed very hard to reform airport/aviation security.

True, Kunicki's plan was for Chicago's airports. But O'Hare is the worlds busiest and Kunicki was an aviation security expert with an international reputation. No one will ever know whether his ideas would have taken root at Boston's Logan Airport, or Washington, D.C.'s Dulles Airport, or Newark Airport -- from which four airplanes loaded with Al Qaida terrorists and weapons smuggled through airport security took flight the morning of September 11, 2001 to wreak terror across our nation.

But Kunicki -- who was not interviewed for this article -- and Ed. know Chicago's changes would have been noticed across the world.

Sadly, there was nothing of which to take note. Not for at least another year.