Manchester - This afternoon, at Wiggins Airport, Wes Clark laid out a plan to tighten air transport security. Clark was introduced by Maura Landry, a New Hampshire campaign staffer whose fiancee perished in the attack on the World Trade Center.

"We shouldn't have to wait for another September 11th to take every preventative step possible to secure America's skies," Clark said.

Although we've made progress since 9/11, Clark believes that America still faces too many unnecessary risks in aviation. The Bush Administration has made matters worse with its plan to cut the number of federal airport security screeners by 6,000. At the same time, the President plans to out-source another 4,000 airport security positions.

Wes Clark has a plan to strengthen air transportation security:

• Invest in more screeners and better technology. Ending cutbacks to the federal airport security screener program, maintaining this security force as a federal program and improving training programs for both screeners and screener supervisors.
• Require background checks for individuals with access to sensitive areas of airports and air operations. Require background checks of individuals with access to commercial airliners, sensitive areas of airports and air operations.
• Work to protect airplanes from surface-to-air missiles. Fund experiments to test methods of protecting airplanes from the danger of surface-to-air missiles.
• Enhance air cargo security. Expand non-intrusive inspection systems to greatly increase the percentage of air cargo that is inspected before it is loaded aboard airplanes, and set a goal of inspecting all cargo loaded aboard commercial passenger planes.