How secure can you really make an airport?

I read with interest this article at CNN.com regarding how airport employees with access to the ramp areas are considered by TSA to be a serious potential threat to airport security.  Now while Miami and Orlando do screen all employees who do have ramp access, none of the other airports do so. 

I often wonder how feasible it could be to ensure that level of access.  To provide an example from my personal experience, I had worked at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas for 8 years for three different companies from 1995 to 2003, encompassing both pre and post-9/11 issues of security.  For the most part, there were few areas I did not have access to, since a green badge (like I was) pretty much had the run of the entire Terminal 1 and 2 areas (this was well before Terminal 3 was even conceived; Terminal 2 was the old charter and international terminal) with the exception of certain sensitive areas related to airport operations.  After 9/11, they did start ratcheting things up a bit, but there were still plenty of spots I can get to and it was still possible to enter from the street, go into a secure door, and wind up out on the ramp.  The areas behind the ticket counters in particular were easy to slide into but that was of course if you were working for that particular airline, as employees were mostly pretty good at not allowing strangers to go traipsing through the back area where the luggage was loaded into the bag carts to be taken out to the plane.

In order to pull off such a method of screening employees, it would be necessary to block off most of the airside access and have them go through screening by TSA.  Can it be done? Yes it could, but whether it would be able to afford the cost of adding the screening equipment is another matter entirely. 

Now, obviously things would have changed quite a bit in the 13 plus years since I have worked there, but I am sure it is still almost as easy for a badged airport employee to be able to slip from the public areas to the secure side without having to be screened.  It would be interesting to see if after this report has been disseminated if things do get kicked up a notch or three.

Time will tell, I am sure.