TSA Replaces Security Chief As Tension Grows At Airports

HughPickens.com writes: Ron Nixon reports at the NYT that facing a backlash over long security lines and management problems, TSA administrator Peter V. Neffenger has shaken up his leadership team, replacing the agency's top security official Kelly Hoggan (Warning: source may be paywalled) and adding a new group of administrators at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. Beginning late that year, Hoggan received $90,000 in bonuses over a 13-month period, even though a leaked report from the Department of Homeland Security showed that auditors were able to get fake weapons and explosives past security screeners 95 percent of the time in 70 covert tests. Hoggan's bonus was paid out in $10,000 increments, an arrangement that members of Congress have said was intended to disguise the payments. During a hearing of the House Oversight Committee two weeks ago, lawmakers grilled Mr. Neffenger about the bonus, which was issued before he joined the agency in July. Last week and over the weekend, hundreds of passengers, including 450 on American Airlines alone, missed flights because of waits of two or three hours in security lines, according to local news reports. Many of the passengers had to spend the night in the terminal sleeping on cots. The TSA has sent 58 additional security officers and four more bomb-sniffing dog teams to O'Hare. Several current and former TSA employees said the moves to replace Hoggan and add the new officials in Chicago, where passengers have endured hours long waits at security checkpoints, were insufficient. "The timing of this decision is too late to make a real difference for the summer," says Andrew Rhoades, an assistant federal security director at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport who testified his supervisor accused him of "going native" after attending a meeting at a local mosque and that TSA's alleged practice of "directed reassignments," or unwanted job transfers were intended to punish employees who speak their minds. "Neffenger is only doing this because the media and Congress are making him look bad."

Comments

Bonuses?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can such failures even get their pay checks, let alone bonuses?

USA, land of the corrupted.

How about declaring 'Mission Accomplished'?

[schwit1]

And have the TSA pull out?

Re:How about declaring 'Mission Accomplished'?

[mpercy]

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Heck of a job, Brownie.

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> TSA administrator Peter V. Neffenger has shaken up his leadership team

Translated: thrown his #2 under the bus in the hopes he gets blamed for the #1 guy screwing up.

More realistically, the command to slow down came from the top, to put political pressure on Congress to increase the TSA's budget. (Remember all the news stories crying about "not enough staffing" a few weeks ago?)

It's really time to disband the agency, only now it will be impossible since there are entrenched federal jobs.

Corruption + security theatre == profit

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire TSA thing seems to be a farce and a fraud, little more than security theatre as so many security specialists have described it over many years. I suspect the TSA knows this too, but they probably don't care or they'd have done something about it by now.

Indeed, their main interest in practice may be to siphon American tax dollars into contractor pockets and nothing else. Their real goal clearly isn't effective security nor dollar efficiency nor streamlining public air transport, so what explanations are left?

In an organization built upon such flawed foundations, it's almost natural that the top honchos are lining their own pockets with ill-founded bonuses. The whole thing stinks from top to bottom.

Re: Corruption + security theatre == profit

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to hijack planes anymore. Mission accomplished.

Re:Corruption + security theatre == profit

[sjames]

How many hijackers has the TSA caught? I don't seem to remember any.

Re:Corruption + security theatre == profit

[Opportunist]

Why should terrorists waste resources on hijacking planes? The TSA is quite effective at making sure passengers won't get to their destination themselves, so terrorists can use their limited resources elsewhere.

Re:Corruption + security theatre == profit

[sjames]

Yes, we accomplished that through two important changes. Cockpit doors that lock and passengers that will beat a hijacker to death rather than follow the old advice to sit quietly.

Re: Corruption + security theatre == profit

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

The acts of terrorism have already brought about a degradation of the quality of everyone's life in the United States thanks to the knee-jerk, fear-mongering and opportunistic actions of those in positions of power in the US government.

The only way to win against terrorism is to pick up the pieces, rebuild and go on living life as free individuals. Show terrorist organisations that they cannot effect negative changes within our society.

Re:Corruption + security theatre == profit

[DarkOx]

Wait hold on. Airport screening used to be done by private contractors, you know back when it was sane. TSA Officers are federal employees! They belong to a federal employee union and work for a federal agency.

Before you suggest private contracted screening allowed 9/11 consider the attackers used box cutters which were not considered contraband at the time. You or I could have placed on in the little try next to the metal detector and picked it up after we passed through without anyone batting an eye. Everyone was terrified to fly after 9/11 so the bush admin nationalized everything to make it look like someone was doing something. The TSA like the private screeners before it continues to routinely miss contraband almost as often as its tested.

The sensible approach to the TSA is shut its doors and go back to private screening with metal detectors sans the nudity scanners and pat downs. This is sufficient to deprive morons of thing they are likely to hurt themselves or others with, but would never stop a planed attack by a determined adversary. The TSA is not sufficient either as has been repeatedly shown but its is comparatively expensive and intrusive. We should rely on the real security offered by secure cockpit doors locked during flight. Stronger procedures around personnel screening and air marshals.

Re:Corruption + security theatre == profit

[Bob the Super Hamste]

That reminds me I need to patent my anti terrorist rock. basically a rock with a hole drilled through it so you can put it on a chain/rope/string and attach it to your luggage. The key part is it has to have written on it "Anti-Terrorist Rock" on one side and on the other it has written "More effective than the TSA"

Re: Corruption + security theatre == profit

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I wouldn't, as I actually understand that it is impossible for the government to stop all terrorism. However night now if a terrorist were to bomb the huge security lines that the TSA is creating and a loved one were to die in that I would consider suing the government. The reason here is that the actions that the TSA is undertaking currently are making us less safe by providing a large mass of people in a single spot so the government is actively making us less safe. I have written my useless congress critters (Kline, Klobuchar, and Franken) on this issue stating that the TSA's actions are making us less safe but they don't care. What they need are more checkpoints for people to enter the "secure" area of airports instead of fewer but that is not how things are going.

Re:Corruption + security theatre == profit

[Jason Levine]

Just to build on what you said, two other factors contributed to 9/11 more than "private security contractors let box cutters on board."

First of all, pre-911 a hijacking meant you sat down and stayed quiet. The plane flew to Cuba, the hijackers put on a grand show, and then everyone was released unharmed. It was highly inconvenient but as long as you didn't draw undue attention to yourself you were fine. So when the 911 hijackers took over the plane, the passengers understandably figured this was what was going to happen. Obviously, it didn't and when the Flight 93 passengers heard what was going on, they fought back. It might not have saved the plane, but they stood a better chance fighting back than sitting passively. Passengers all know to fight back now and indeed have prevented other attempted hijackings by doing so.

Secondly, the cabin doors pre-911 weren't sealed. Pretty much anyone could burst in and take over. Post-911, the cabin doors are sealed so this can't happen.

If we were to revert to pre-911 security (private contractors allowing everything that was allowed on September 10th, 2001) but kept the passenger awareness and the locked cabin doors, we would have all the security we need to prevent another 911. The TSA adds about as much protection as a Magic Terrorist Repelling Rock would.

$90K?

[pushing-robot]

60,000 employees, a $7.5B budget, and all they have to show for it is $90K in graft?

If they privatized that train wreck of a federal agency into a train wreck of a corporation, their top brass would be getting millions in unearned bonuses, millions more in golden parachutes, and that's not even counting the embezzlement.

Government inefficiency at it's worst.

Re:Set a ceiling

[Motherfucking Shit]

All a terrorist would have to do is watch the line and wait for it to get long enough, or know the peak times that they can get in line and just waltze right through with no screening at all.

All a terrorist has to do right now is walk up to the line at the time of their choosing, at any airport in America, and press a detonator button. Boom, lots of dead people. And yet this isn't happening. Not because of any heroic TSA screening efforts, mind you; that line is outside the secure area, and always will be by definition. There just aren't that many bogeymen out there.

Re:Set a ceiling

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think the terrorists have taken jobs in the TSA and are now engaged in a Denial of Service attack on our travellers (by not letting them get through security in time to catch their flights). Seems like we are all now (justifiably) terrified of not making our flights...

Re: After missing two flights in SEATAC...

[BlueStrat]

That's your fault. The airlines here have said for more than a year now that you should arrive at the airport at least two hours early.

No.

It's the corrupt, authoritarian, and incompetent US governments' fault for instituting the corrupt, authoritarian, and incompetent TSA to begin with.

Arrival with time enough to check in any luggage at the airline, walk through a metal detector and an explosives sniffer at the gate, and that should be plenty. Call it 20 minutes, 30 tops for a busy hub.

A requirement for arrival 2 or 3 hours early is insanity.

Strat