The former director of the CIA said many security staffers in U.S. airports have not been subjected to background checks, undermining security.

James Woolsey, former CIA head, said in a recent TV news appearance that many foreigners have been hired for the position and are subjected to hiring process similar to those of agricultural workers, WND reported.

"They used to be vetted," Woolsey told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "Now, quite a few of them are foreign nationals who have just worker visas. They're treated like agricultural workers."

Woolsey's comments came during a discussion of the Oct. 31 crash of a Russian plane over Egypt that is more like a terrorist attack, WND said. A total of 224 people were killed in the incident.

British intelligence said a bomb was used to down the plane.

Two US officials also believed it was caused by a bomb, with one of them telling CNN, "it's 99.9 percent certain."

In the interview, Woolsey said there is a "reasonably good chance" that the same incident will happen to an American plane, given that poor vetting is being done on airport security staff.

He said these could do "a lot more damage in the baggage handling area of an airline than you can if you're a terrorist, than you can do in the middle of a wheat field."

However, Woolsey admitted that he did not know if the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has actually hired foreign workers.

He said a private company in charge of baggage handling to a number of airports in the U.S. has hired "lots of foreign workers that are not vetted."

"It's just not a sound policy to treat workers in a really dangerous area where they could commit ... a lot of danger," he said. "It is not right to treat them as if they're agricultural workers, but that's what the Obama administration is doing."