A Delta Airlines employee was fired after going to the airline's top officials with details of an alleged security breach at John F. Kennedy International Airport — one that came barely a week after the failed terror attack on a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day, according to a published report.
Eric Amankwah, a customer service agent in New York, says he was ordered by his supervisor on Jan. 2 to evade customs officials and deliver a suitcase to other airport employees so that it could be loaded onto an outgoing flight without inspection, the New York-based Black Star News reported.
Amankwah, 28, said he was told that Delta Airlines would be fined if the suitcase went through customs. The bag had a sticker reading "NAS," and may have been headed to the Nassau airport in the Bahamas, he told Black Star News, but said he did not know its contents.
Fearing that he had violated the law and was being set up by his bosses, he e-mailed and called two of his supervisors, seeking reassurance that he wouldn't face any disciplinary action over what he had been ordered to do.
Amankwah recorded his conversations and sent e-mails to Delta's CEO and other top executives on Jan. 5 about his "special assignment," he told the newspaper.
Returning to work that day, he says he was interviewed and suspended by Delta's director of operations at JFK. Amankwah said he had also been suspended in mid-December, and that a second suspension meant he was immediately terminated.
A lawyer for Amankwah told Fox News the details of the report are essentially correct.
But Delta Airlines spokesman Ed Stewart says Amankwah was not fired and that they very much want to talk with him. Stewart could neither confirm nor deny the rest of the story, but said an investigation is underway — and that Amankwah's supervisors are being interviewed.
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