Spectacular failure rates of airport checkpoint security equipment during covert testing by Homeland Security auditors was not a surprise to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which operates the screening equipment, because the agency’s own internal testing showed similar results, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General (IG) said on Thursday.
“The recent round of covert testing was not a surprise to us and it was not a surprise to TSA,” John Roth told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security. “We had been doing covert testing over the years with consistently disappointing results…And what we found after the covert testing was even a little more upsetting which was TSA does their own covert testing and those results were very similar to our results.”
The covert testing referred to by Roth was done by his office and showed that in 96 percent of instances Transportation Security Officers using Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) at eight airports failed to detect hidden threat items. The report is classified but this summer the findings were leaked to some media outlets.
The AIT systems in question are supplied by L-3 Communications [LLL] and are used to screen individuals for metallic and non-metallic threat items that may be hidden beneath their clothing.
Peter Neffenger, the TSA administrator, told the panel that the AIT systems work as designed when used properly.
Roth said that TSA never “elevated the issue” of its own covert test results so that no one else in DHS knew of the problems.
“One of the things we discovered after this round of testing and the very vigorous response that the department gave with regard to our briefing on the covert testing is that no one in DHS had ever known of this issue,” Roth said.
This was a “surprise” to senior DHS leadership, including the secretary and deputy secretary, Roth said.
In a separate hearing last week and again on Thursday to examine follow-up by DHS and TSA to the IG’s report, Roth said that TSA has consistently rejected negative reports coming from the IG’s office over the years.
“One of the conclusions or themes that I can draw from this is that there is a mismatch between risk and meeting the risk,” Roth said of TSA. “And the sort of working theory that we have is that either TSA doesn’t understand the nature of the risk or they do understand the nature of the risk and worse from that, they don’t address the risk in any appropriate way.”
Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), chairman of the subcommittee, said at the outset of the hearing that despite being only 14 years old, TSA has “become bureaucratized.” He added that “Many times TSA has not responded” to negative audit reports “and that leads me to the conclusion that TSA, while a young agency has become a very bureaucratized agency already; too slow to respond and not nimble enough to respond.”
Roth said he’s hopeful that under Neffenger’s leadership that TSA will make the necessary cultural changes to own up to its deficiencies.