Guard recalls suspects at Logan

Despite doubts, had no reason to stop them

By Raphael Lewis, Globe Staff, 9/16/2001

nly four days had passed since Claudia Richey, a security supervisor at Logan International Airport, unwittingly told five hijackers to ''Have a nice flight,'' but yesterday the security supervisor said the moment would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Yesterday, Richey, who has worked for Huntleigh USA at a checkpoint in Logan's Terminal C for the last year, insisted that there was little that she or her co-workers could have done to prevent the tragedy on United Airlines Flight 175. After all, the men dressed in khakis and tennis shirts did not set off metal detectors.

But knowing that she had let them through, even after one had acted ''odd,'' has changed her life forever, Richey said. ''If all those people could be alive, I would die right now,'' Richey said, shaking her head.

Richey spoke during a break yesterday morning at a waiting area beside the Gates 11-21 security checkpoint, where two US Border Patrol agents also stood, new additions to the airport's security force.

Five of the 10 hijackers who boarded two jets at Logan entered Flight 175 through Gate 19, but Richey said the image of one man, who she now believes was one of the hijackers, awakens her at night and stirs her to tears.

Sporting a mustache and a small beard, the man did not make eye contact or utter a word to security workers when he showed up at 5:40 a.m. Tuesday. He carried no bags and had nothing in his pockets, where his hands were thrust as he walked through the metal detector, Richey said.

As Richey told the man to take his hands out of his pockets and walk through again, his face looked familiar, she said, like a police sketch she'd seen of a man accused of distributing hate leaflets in the Boston area earlier this month.

But after a co-worker said there was no resemblance, Richey said, she did what she always does: ''I told him to have a good flight.''

Hours later, Richey said, she described the passenger to FBI sketch artists. A United ticketing agent, asked to describe any suspicious-looking people he had seen that day, gave the same description: mustache, little beard, tan tennis shirt, khaki pants, and black shoes.

Richey said she has no idea whether the man turned out to be one of the hijackers who walked down the ramp at Gate 19, boarded the jet, and, about an hour after it departed at 8:14 a.m., slammed it into a World Trade Center tower.

But she does know that, at some point that morning, the men did walk past her, with mass murder on their minds.

''I still think about it every night,'' Richey said, adding that no one else stirred questions that morning.

''Twenty years from now, I'll look back and think, `I was here when it happened,''' she said. ''I know we did our jobs. But I can hardly concentrate now. It's irritating.''

Richey said she is extremely pleased that agents of the US Border Patrol, the US Marshals Service, and the State Police are now accompanying her and her co-workers at the checkpoint.

Richey, who also works part time answering phones in the Globe's advertising department, said that she and her fellow private security company workers, who work for the airlines, have been made scapegoats by the media and others searching for answers.

''It feels like there's not as much of a burden on us now,'' Richey said. ''If anything was to happen, there's more people to blame.''

This story ran on page A16 of the Boston Globe on 9/16/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.