Mr. MICA. Thank you, gentlemen. We appreciate you giving us that concise statement. Let me just ask a quick general question of all of you. Can you think of any airport in the United States or around the world where you would not fly because you have concerns about security?

You do not have to name it here. Yes? I would like that provided for the record and a list of any of those that you can think of that you feel—I do not think it ought to be revealed.

HIGH-RISK AIRPORTS

In the testimony last year we came across a number of airports where we had concerns. We did not want to highlight it for obvious reasons. But if you can sit here and think of airports around the world that are not safe and you personally as experts may not want to travel to them, then we would like to know about them and we would like to get them checked out as quickly as possible. Ambassador BORG. Let me make a quick response. There are a number of airports around the world which may not be safe, may not have adequate security standards. But the threat at many of these is not what it is or has been in places like Athens and Rome. Most of your Third World airports do not have the sort of security that we are talking about. But they do not have the threat.

Mr. MICA. So you would say then that there are not any for which you have concerns? Or there might be. If you have concerns, I do not think it ought to be stated here which airports they are. We would like to know which are at the top of the threat list and which ones you think there might be some security problems with.

EXTENT OF INFORMATION GIVEN TO PILOTS

Next question. Are pilots, Civil Aviation pilots, in America or anywhere else in the world, given information that there is a problem at a given airport and that they have the option of not landing or flying that particular route when that information is not known to the Government or the country or to the public?

I am talking about what came out last year, the black star airports, where there were apparently some airports that some pilots had an option to not fly to because of security problems. I understand others had safety problems, too.

Mr. Scocozza. Mr. Chairman, with respect to American pilots flying to any one of what may be 180 airports throughout the world, there are no-there may be an independent private association blacklist. I believe there was a blacklist of some sort that was done by a pilot organization. But in terms of the 183 airports that we have prioritized from most important to monitor and perhaps less important to monitor, we are not aware of any advisories to any pilots that would not be a matter of public information. Mr. MICA. Is the blacklist still being used?

Mr. Scocozza. I really do not know. We can probably provide the committee with information as to the source of some

Mr. MICA. Mr. Noble, you are shaking your head. Do you have knowledge?

STATEMENT OF RICHARD NOBLE, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CIVIL AVIATION SECURITY OFFICE, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION

Mr. NOBLE. The blacklist you are referring to is put out by ALPA, the Airline Pilots Association. I am not aware that it is currently in use.

THREAT ASSESSMENTS

Mr. MICA. It is no longer in use to your way of thinking. Let me just ask you then currently, on a worldwide basis, can you give us some indication of what you feel this threat is? Do you feel that there are certain areas that you would place on the highest level of threat and concern and have concerns over right now, as opposed to other areas?

Mr. Scocozza. As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Chairman, we have been working very closely with the Department of State, who helps us with risk assessment and threat analysis, which is not our expertise. Our expertise is the safety and security measures at the airport itself.

We have prioritized 183 airports, some of which may only receive one airplane every 3 or 4 months on a charter basis. We prioritize them in terms of risk upon guidance from the Department of State. The security checks that we do at those airports at the top of the list, is much more frequent than the security reviews we do at the bottom of the list.

So there is a priority which we could provide within a closed session or on a confidential basis. But the Department of State is really the best source for providing the committee with the actual risk and threat assessments in the individual countries.

CRITERIA USED FOR THREAT LIST

Mr. MICA. I wanted to ask you about the criteria that you use to develop that list. But I am about to run out of time. Criteria, and also are there any countries that come to mind that are not cooperating? You mentioned there was not much support for an international coordinating committee.

Are there any countries that we have approached that just have not cooperated? Then the criteria.

Ambassador BORG. We found that when we are dealing on a bilateral and strictly confidential basis we can generally get from pretty good to very good cooperation with almost every country that we have approached. Our problem on specific measures frequently comes when we are dealing in a forum where they have to stand up and appear to be counted as siding with the United States or siding with some other country they may not support on a specific issue.

At the present when we have intelligence that indicates that there is a specific problem and when we have gone to a specific country and said look, here is a problem in the field of terrorism, we think that we have to cooperate and work more closely to deal with it, we have generally found that we have been able to get pretty good cooperation.

Now, it varies. Some countries are newer in terms of the amount of time we have dealt with them on this subject. But we have found that almost everybody is at least somewhat responsive.

Mr. Mica. Thank you. I will hold my question. I see I am about out of time. Just so that my colleagues know, we will proceed with my minority member and then we have several other members who have come in and as I indicated earlier, Chairman Mineta would be with us. We are glad to have you with us here. Ms. Snowe.

SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION'S MANDATORY ASSESSMENTS OF

SECURITY OF FOREIGN AIRPORTS

Ms. SNOWE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Shane and Mr. Scocozza, could you tell me what is the status of the Secretary of Transportation's mandatory assessments of security of foreign airports that is required by the airport security legislation?

Mr. Scocozza. Excuse me, madam. What is the status of it?

Ms. SNOWE. Yes. The Secretary of Transportation is supposed to submit a report as I understand it.

Mr. Scocozza. What is the status of the report?

Ms. SNOWE. That's right.

Mr. Scocozza. It is in the draft stages. Hopefully it will be submitted to Congress within a month or two, as required.

Ms. SNOWE. Can you tell me what you think, all of you for that matter, what has been the greatest obstacle in implementing this legislation. If there have been any.

Mr. Scocozza. My own observation, Congresswoman, is the difficulty of getting something done from an international standpoint. As Mr. Shane and Ambassador Borg pointed out, when you are dealing with a bilateral partner you can move a lot more quickly because it is just two parties trying to come to an agreement on a security clause on a bilateral aviation agreement.

But when there are 32 different countries sitting in a circle in ICAO, representing 142 other countries, it is so difficult just to agree on even a simple phrase. Those are the facts of life in the international community. So from the Department of Transportation's perspective, it has been successful and we are satisfied with what we have done, but it has taken a long time.

I think it has moved with lightening speed, but it has taken close to 6 months.

Ms. SNOWE. For example, I notice in your testimony that you mention that the requirement that baggage of passengers who do not board the plane would be removed from the airplane. But that measure would not take effect until December 1987. Why so long?

Mr. Scocozza. That was the date that the ICAO Council felt was the soonest date by which they could comfortably get implementation of annex 17. I would make mention and I would be glad to provide information for the record about countries who have already implemented the positive baggage match.

Of the 142 nations, there are nations that could not implement those procedures before December 19, 1987. We felt from a security standpoint that it was not that major a factor. Most of the European countries-from which most of the travel to and from the

United States occurs-for all practical purposes are in the process of or have already implemented those positive baggage match procedures on a selective basis.

RECENT EGYPTIAN AIRLINE HIJACKING

Ms. SNOWE. Well, have we determined, Ambassador Borg, how the weapons got onto the Egyptian airliner that went to Malta? Ambassador BORG. As far as we know it has not been determined as yet. It is still under study.

Ms. SNOWE. It appears to me to be a gap in security procedures that could go on, although there is no passenger to claim it. Second, I am concerned about the backward screening of airport personnel. Is that a requirement at this time for those who handle baggage that goes onto the plane?

Mr. Scocozza. That is one of the changes to annex 17.

Ms. SNOWE. Has that been implemented by most of the countries?

Mr. Scocozza. That has been implemented by a number of countries. But it will be officially ratified by ICAO on March 19, 1986. That is one of the areas that I was telling you that was frustrating because we implemented that back in November by an emergency regulation. It was difficult to expect other nations to implement it as fast.

But we are satisfied that within the ICAO family they were able to make it an international standard by March 19, 1986. I would also mention, which is in my longer testimony but not my shorter testimony, that at ICAO, we were very successful last month, January, in getting ICAO to implement a monitoring program to see if a country was actually adhering to the standards that are being implemented.

There are seven regions throughout the world which will have the responsibility of reporting to ICAO's general council about the individual country's implementation. So if there is no passenger bag match in a critical airport or a critical country, we will know that, and we will have to act accordingly.

SCREENING OF ICAO EMPLOYEES

Ms. SNOWE. What about the screening of ICAO personnel?

Mr. Scocozza. That will be part of the recommended practices in annex 17 after March 19, 1986. A lot of countries have already done it, like the United States. But after March 19, 1986, it will be an international standard.

Ms. SNOWE. Are we constantly investigating how the weapons got onto the Egyptian airliner? What has been the progress?

Ambassador BORG. We do not have the results as yet. The basic standoff is between the Greeks that say it must have come onboard from Egypt, and the Egyptians who say no; it did not come onboard here, it must have happened in Greece. And we are trying to sort it out.

ALLIED RELUCTANCE TO FORMING INTERNATIONAL COORDINATING

COMMITTEE

Ms. SNOWE. Can you also explain the hesitancy, Ambassador Borg, of our allies and other nations from joining an international coordinating committee, which this committee and the Congress has determined to be one of the more effective ways we could address the issue of terrorism and our strategy to fight terrorism worldwide?

Ambassador BORG. Again, it comes down to the simple question of countries being prepared to band together and set up an organization that is going to effectively deal with the problem of terrorism.

There are a number of international conventions, Hague, Montreal, Tokyo, which many countries have signed. But getting countries to adhere to these conventions is another question. Likewise, we deal with the Summit Seven countries, our presumably six close allies around the world. And we have attempted to work through them on a variety of relatively simple civil aviation and other antiterrorism measures, but without great success.

They have been very, very reluctant. Last year we did not even succeed in getting the summit to issue a statement on terrorism. If there is a major terrorist incident, as there was in London before the London Summit in 1984, we get momentum and we get some action.

Unfortunately, one country in a group of seven is able to block any effective action and the others are always reluctant to say, let's do it without them. Let's cut that country out and let's try to get together and act without that state.

We are looking at the possibilities of other groupings. We have talked with countries like Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, about closer international cooperation in a coordinating committee mechanism. But again, we are trying to bring in the Summit Seven countries also because we feel it is critical that countries like Britain, France, Germany, and Italy be included in anything that is going to be effective.

Ms. SNOWE. Thank you.

Mr. MICA. Chairman Mineta.

Mr. MINETA.1 Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you very much for giving us this opportunity to be part of this joint subcommittee session. I would like to also thank the Foreign Affairs Committee for their cooperation during the time we were developing this portion of the International Security and Development Cooperation Act having to do with aviation security.

NUANCES OF ICAO LANGUAGE

I would like to ask Secretary Shane, how does the ICAO model aviation security language for bilateral agreements differ from what has previously been included in most U.S. aviation agreements?

1 Norman Y. Mineta, a Representative in Congress from the State of California.