REPORTERS investigating airport security were able to smuggle small knives and pepper spray through checkpoints at 11 U.S. airports during the U.S. Labor Day holiday weekend, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

　　The reporters carried utility knives, rubber-handled razor knives, a pocket knife, a corkscrew, razor blades and pepper spray through every airport security checkpoint they encountered, the Daily News newspaper said.

　　CBS News crews also tested security screeners last week, although they did not attempt to smuggle banned items through checkpoints. They carried bags lined with lead to block X-rays and sailed past about 70 percent of screeners at several airports nationwide.

　　"They're impossible to miss, and yet they just continually let it go," said Steve Elson, who used to check security for the Federal Aviation Administration and helped with the CBS investigation.

　　The Daily News said guards X-rayed and hand-searched the reporters' bags, asked them to remove their shoes and checked photo identifications, but did not find the banned items.

　　The airports included the four at which the terrorists boarded flights on Sept. 11 last year, the paper said.

　　"We have a lot of work to do," Leonardo Alcivar, a spokesman for Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, told the News.

　　The reporters disposed of the pepper spray before boarding to ensure it would not discharge during a change in cabin pressure; the other items were never removed from the bags once inside airport secure zones, the newspaper said.

　　(SD-Agencies)