By Calvin Biesecker
President Barack Obama yesterday announced his intention to nominate Robert Harding, a former Army general, to be the next chief of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which has been without a politically appointed leader for more than a year.
The administration praised Harding’s experience in national security and with the intelligence community as an asset to the Department of Homeland Security. Harding, who retired as a major general from the Army in 2001 as the deputy for intelligence, served in the service for 33 years.
After retiring from the Army, Harding founded a security consulting firm, Harding Security Associates to provide strategic security solutes to the United States intelligence and defense communities. He sold the company last year.
Before becoming the Army’s deputy for intelligence, Harding spent five years as the director for operations at the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he was the senior human intelligence officer, managing and supervising a $1 billion-plus budget related to intelligence collection program requirements and overseeing security to Defense Department Defense Attaches in more than 200 offices around the world.
Before that, Harding was director of intelligence for the Army’s Southern Command from 1995 to 1996, planning and executing operations to increase regional cooperation in Latin America. He also worked with other United States intelligence and law enforcement agencies on counter-narcotic operations.
In addition to praising his security and intelligence experience, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano yesterday said Harding’s work with the international community will also be an asset, particularly as TSA works with other countries to improve passenger screening standards at airport checkpoints around the world.
Democrats on Capitol Hill yesterday lauded Harding’s nomination. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Commerce and Transportation Committee that will hold a confirmation hearing, said his work with the intelligence community will be “invaluable” for the TSA job.
Jeff Sural, a former assistant administrator for legislative affairs with TSA under Kip Hawley, told Defense Daily that Harding’s deep experience and leadership within the intelligence community will be an asset in that it will continue to help the agency know how the country’s enemies are trying to operate which, in turn, will factor into how TSA conducts its counter-terrorist mission.
The question mark, though, is what type of management skills Harding will bring to the table if confirmed, said Sural, who is now with the law firm Alston and Bird. Stakeholder outreach will be a significant issue for Harding as will navigating the difficult the issue of collective bargaining rights for TSA screeners, he said. Harding will have to be a “Uniter,” bringing together people within the agency who are for and against collective bargaining, he said.
The Harding nomination follows the failure of Obama’s first nominee to run TSA, Erroll Southers, to get through the Senate confirmation process. His nomination was stalled by Republican Senator Jim DeMint (S.C.), who wanted Southers to state clearly his position on collective bargaining for TSA screeners. The nomination ground to a halt for good after it became clear that Southers had improperly accessed certain files and was censured by the FBI for that when he worked for that agency.