Bogdan Dzakovic's best work is airport security officials' nightmare. Until recently, he was more than willing to keep what he did to himself. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, the federal aviation security inspector (and Cincinnati native) has come forward with some of his greatest hits: a list of security lapses at airlines nationwide, years before that fateful day.

        “There really is no security that someone who is determined can't get around,” Mr. Dzakovic said during a recent visit to Cincinnati.

        Mr. Dzakovic last month filed a federal whistleblower complaint, saying that although he continually found holes in the security system, the Federal Aviation Administration did nothing.

        Here are some of the most blatant examples:

        • According to Mr. Dzakovic, his Red Team was contracted to test a major European airport; he was to send 60 fake bombs through the system in checked baggage over six months.

        “We gave up after 31 bombs, because they hadn't found a single one,” he said.

        This was in the late 1990s, well after the 1988 explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, caused by a bomb stowed in a checked bag.

        • Mr. Dzakovic said his team was to test a major domestic airport's system for allowing cleared personnel into restricted areas in 1998 and 1999.

        He said that he and his team were able to get beyond checkpoints with no identification 85 percent of the time, and this was after the federal government spent $300 million to upgrade airport checkpoints in the early 1990s.

        “We would just follow people, who would hold the doors open for us, or ride the elevator with them,” Mr. Dzakovic said. “And we could just walk up to planes, and we could have put anything on them.”

        • He also said that another airport failed “all of our tests,” and that a supervisor told him not to make a written report.

        He also claims that he was told to notify airports in advance of bomb tests, after which they would score 100 percent.

        When he didn't warn them he was coming, he said success rates dropped well below 50 percent.

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