"TSA: Airport Screeners Weren't Tipped Off"

Thursday, December 6, 2007

TSA: Airport Screeners Weren't Tipped Off
Airport Security Report


The head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) denies that
agency officials intended to tip off airport security screeners that they
were 
being covertly tested last year. 

An April 2006 e-mail sent by a TSA employee to airport security officials
across the country described an undercover Department of Transportation
(DOT) 
test of screening checkpoints. But TSA Administrator Kip Hawley said the
message was sent not as a tip-off, but out of concern that al-Qaida or other
terrorists might be posing as transportation officials. 

The incident, now under investigation by the DOT Inspector General, was the
topic of a heated congressional hearing. At issue is whether airport 
screeners have been told ahead of time that there would be covert testing at
their airports, defeating the purpose of the field tests. 

Former DHS Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin said past investigations found
cheating by screeners at Jackson-Evers International Airport in 
Mississippi and at San Francisco International Airport. Hawley said he is
not aware of any other incidents. 

The email in question warned of security testing being carried out by the
DOT and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It relayed a detailed 
description of a couple conducting the test. 

Hawley said the official who sent the e-mail found the reference to the DOT
and FAA suspicious and decided to share it with federal security directors 
at airports across the country. He said the e-mail was recalled 13 minutes
after it was sent out. 

"I would like to make it very clear that the matter is under investigation
now, but there is nothing I have learned...that would indicate 
that there was any intent on anybody's part associated with that e-mail to
tip off on covert testing. 

"We do over 70,000 electronic tests every day on our workforce. We do 2,500
bomb component covert testing at every checkpoint. That means every 
checkpoint, every shift, every day at every one of the 450 airports that we
have," said Hawley, adding that testers try to smuggle actual bomb
components 
past transportation security officers (TSO). 

Hawley's defense of his agency's diligence came as the General
Accountability Office released an unclassified version of a report that
shows 
that undercover investigators successfully carried all the bomb components
needed to damage an airliner through airport security checkpoints several
times this year. The government agents were able to smuggle detonators,
liquid explosives and liquid incendiary components past TSOs.


 Do you have an opinion about this story?
Share it with other readers in our CAA Discussion Forums

http://www.californiaaviation.org/dcfp/dcboard.php


*****************************************