Posted on 04/22/2004 2:17:34 PM PDT by yonif
WASHINGTON (AP) - Airport security screeners perform poorly, whether they're government or privately employed workers, the Homeland Security Department's chief investigator told Congress on Thursday.
The House aviation subcommittee received reports from Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin, the General Accounting Office and a private firm. The government reports found airport security is lax and all three described the Transportation Security Administration as overly bureaucratic.
Ervin told lawmakers the TSA screeners and privately contracted airport workers "performed about the same, which is to say, equally poorly."
The report by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said its conclusions were based on covert testing of the screeners' ability to detect dangerous objects at checkpoints.
Subcommittee Chairman John Mica, R-Fla., said the situation is so serious he plans to hold an emergency meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and other key agency officials in the next 10 days to discuss ways to tighten airport security.
"We have a system that doesn't work," said Mica, who threatened to subpoena Ridge and the others if they fail to respond to his request for a meeting.
Though the specific results of the inspector general report were classified, the committee's ranking Democrat said it showed that passenger screening is no better than it was 17 years ago.
"The inadequacies and loopholes in the system are phenomenal," Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio said.
The inspector general's report, as well as a study by the GAO portrayed the TSA as an unresponsive, inflexible bureaucracy that is failing to provide an adequate level of security at airports.
Congress created the TSA after the Sept. 11 attacks to replace the privately employed screeners with a better-paid, better-trained federal work force. Lawmakers also gave airports the option of returning to private screeners next Nov. 19, three years after President Bush signed the bill into law.
Congress also ordered five commercial airports to use privately employed screeners who are hired, trained, paid and tested to TSA standards to serve as a comparison to the federal employees. Those airports are in San Francisco; Rochester, N.Y.; Tupelo, Miss.; Jackson, Wyo.; and Kansas City, Mo.
But because the TSA didn't give private contractors much leeway, they "could not effectively and immediately address problems with high attrition levels, understaffing, excessive overtime, and employee morale issues," Ervin wrote in a prepared statement.
---
On the Net:
Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.gov
Homeland Security Department: http://www.dhs.gov
Security at the airports is still a joke in my opinion (based on experiences at the Israeli airport).
These problems have been raised by Israelis:
1. Political correctness - Airports do not use racial profiling.
2. The US government desires to make people comfortable and for them to have a quick stay at security.
3. Security people are trained more on spotting phyical dangers (even as we see this has failed too) and not on mental characteristics of a terrorist. They waste time on things that should not be spent time on (like searching an old woman).
4. US Airports have not gotten much secure, security presence might have been increased, but the increase of people to PREVENT terror has not. People are ill-trained, and this will cost the lives of additional people if there is another attack on an airport.
5. Another problem is the lack of experience these security people and companies have as well.
We were singled out for the full blown search. We emptied everything, and basically got the third degree.
When I got the hotel in Friday Harbour, I was trying to put my mouse in a pocket within my laptop case. It was hitting somthing and not going fully in. To my surprise, the Benchmade knife I thought I had lost, was in the pocket.
and teach them to look for the things that terrorists were doing 20 years ago.
bump
tiny tommy Daschle</ align= "right">
From the outset, the TSA was nothing more than another bloated government bureacracy. Bush should never have gone along with this and never should have signed it.
That the TSA is failing to do the job is no surprise. I have encountered several people, ex-military, former police officers, pilots who applied to be TSA screeners and were rejected. In retrospect, those selected were chosen arbitrarily and, in many cases, capriciously by the staffing company hired to fill the initial 70,000 positions.
IMO, the sooner this embarrassing government boondoggle goes away, the better for the American taxpayer.
Last time I had to fly, I saw the screeners force an old woman to get out of her wheelchair and made her totter through the metal detector with someone helping her stand. It was shameful. Next, they were manhandling a younger woman in her wheelchair who was apparently parapalegic and couldn't be made to stand and walk through the metal detector. One screener was lifting the woman's arms and wandiing her, while another one was on the radio calling for more help. I got by with just having to take off my belt, shoes, watch, earrings, and blazer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.