THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2001 -- These days, news of Massport, the state-government body with authority over the airport from which two jetliners were hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, dominates the pages of the Boston Herald. And Massport is not just a local story; it has become a national, if not, international embarrassment. It even came up this week on ABC’s Politically Incorrect in a debate between Middle East expert Daniel Pipes and Alec Baldwin. All of this is bad news for Governor Jane Swift, and today’s front-page scoop by reporter David Guarino makes matters even worse.

Guarino reports on what " Massport’s top brass " (including aviation director Thomas Kinton) were really doing on September 11: they were attending a high-priced junket in Montreal, Canada, where delegates toured the charming Old City and Mont-Tremblant. Worse, the Massport team left Virginia Buckingham and Public Safety Chief Joseph Lawless to deal with the aftermath of the attacks — a task they mishandled. Finally, a frantic international effort involving three state police forces — the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the US Border Patrol, and the American Embassy in Ottawa (thank you Paul Cellucci) — was necessary to get the bigwigs back to Massachusetts that day. A Massachusetts State Police aircraft flew the big shots the remaining leg of the trip from New Hampshire to Logan.

And that’s not all. In a related piece, the Herald reports that interim security chief John DiFava, the Governor Jane Swift found to stand in for Lawless, is himself leaving before a permanent replacement can be found in early December.

In the more than two months since the terrorist attacks took place, Kinton, the Massport aviation director, has largely escaped scrutiny. The Herald story marks the first time since the Phoenix called attention to the matter that anyone has looked into Kinton’s role in security lapses at the airport. Everyone in town seems to have embraced the notion that since Kinton is the only true aviation expert at Massport, he must be the best person to fix its problems. Nobody is asking what responsibility he had for security at Logan. And after all, Kinton, not Buckingham, was Lawless’s boss.

What the Herald story does — as only a tabloid can do — is to show that the airport’s highest officials are just as ensconced in Massport’s cozy world of patronage as everybody else. Perhaps in order to claim the Kinton trip was more than hackery, Massport flacks told the Herald that the aviation director actually made a presentation at the four-day " Airports Council International Conference and Exhibition " although he wasn’t listed on a program as a presenter. The alleged subject of the presentation? Customer service and public safety — in retrospect, evidence that security was Kinton’s responsibility. Other sessions dealt with " Making money in the changing airport business. "

Let’s face it: until September 11, the business of Massport was business, not security. That’s why Cellucci picked Buckingham to oversee Massport. That’s why Buckingham spent so much of her time working on that new third runway for Logan. That’s why Kinton was in Canada on September 11.

Prevailing over the whole mess, of course, is Jane Swift, which is why both these stories are damaging for her. The report of DiFava’s abrupt departure exposes her post-–September 11th haste in appointing him as mere public relations (and clumsy PR at that). And, of course, the question arises, what role did Swift play in fostering Massport’s culture of patronage and profit mentality, especially as it played out on September 11?

It’s becoming clear that Swift can no longer spin herself away from Massport. Not only did she herself reap the benefits of a cushy Massport job before she ran for lieutenant governor, but Massport sits at the core of the Republican hackocracy. Just about two years ago at Thanksgiving time, Swift, then the lieutenant governor, along with Buckingham, played the showcase role at a state transportation conference at Logan Airport. Governors from the other New England states attended, as did Andrew Card, then a lobbyist for General Motors, now President George Bush’s chief of staff. The conference focused on every kind of profit incentive for Massport except security. Because Swift needed to get home to the western part of the state in a pinch, she hitched a ride on a State Police helicopter. Sound familiar? I don’t know what Swift’s potential Democratic rivals are planning to use against her, but I’ll hazard this guess. Massport will be the weight that ultimately drags her down.