A number of LAX security workers were fired in December after they were allegedly discovered to have been using drugs, CBS 2's David Goldstein reported Tuesday night.

On a day when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was calling the airport's security “ahead of the curve” in the wake of the attempted bombing of an airliner over Detroit Christmas day, Goldstein was confronting him and LAX officials about the firings. Villaraigosa seemed surprised and said, “This is the first I've heard about it.”

The case started when a U.S. Transportation Security Administration security agent was allegedly found to have been making counterfeit parking passes for an LAX employee parking lot, CBS 2 reported. When authorities searched the employee's home they claimed to have found a video tape showing a number of TSA agents at an “after-hours” party using drugs.

The station reported that those employees were then called in and tested for drugs, and an unknown number were fired.

Larry Fetters, the federal security director at LAX and a former Los Angeles Police Department deputy chief, argued that the employees would have been caught anyway — that random drug tests would eventually have caught such partiers.

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