Ex-CIA Chief Woolsey: Unvetted Foreign Workers at US Airports

As evidence grows that a bomb likely brought down a Russian jetliner over Egypt, former CIA Director James Woolsey said Friday that there is a "reasonably good chance" the same thing can happen to a U.S. flight because of how airport workers are being hired.

"They used to be vetted," Woolsey, who served in President Bill Clinton's administration, told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" about airport workers. "Now, quite a few of them are foreign nationals who have just worker Visas. They're treated like agricultural workers."

But such workers can do "a lot more damage in the baggage handling area of an airline than you can if you're a terrorist, than you can do in the middle of a wheat field," said Woolsey.

Woolsey said that he does not know if the Transportation Security Administration is hiring foreign workers, but told the program that a private company that has recently acquired contracts at least 12 to 13 airports, including "Phoenix, Arizona, Detroit, and so forth across the country," is hiring "lots of foreign workers that are not vetted" and has recently come to be "in charge of baggage handling areas."

And, he continued, "it's just not a sound policy to treat workers in a really dangerous area where they could commit, create a lot of danger. It is not right to treat them as if they're agricultural workers, but that's what the Obama administration is doing."

Meanwhile, Woolsey, who chairs the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that Russia's denial that a bomb brought down its passenger jet is most likely the opposite of being the truth.

"They don't like to interfere with their own narrative, but this is one where, if you listen to what the Russian government says including [President Vladimir] Putin and believe the opposite there, sort of like a weather vane put on backwards," said Woolsey.

"The opposite is more likely to be accurate than what they say, and I think the chances this was an inside job look very strong from the technical evidence."

Further, he said it is "probably pretty likely" that Russia knows what happened, as Moscow wants flights coming from Egypt to be suspended.  

"The blast in the aircraft went out, not in," he said. "It wasn't something that hit the aircraft, it was a blast inside. We know that from the ruins. All the sensors look as if there was no missile coming up at the aircraft. This is not absolutely certain but, 90 percent likely."

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