By Calvin Biesecker
The chairman of a House panel that oversees the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) yesterday said that the agency’s failure to provide a representative to testify at a hearing on a controversial behavior detection program is part of an ongoing pattern by TSA and needs to be reviewed.
“They’ve ignored our committee and others so they have a history of this and I’ll work with you and others, in fact I think I think we need to convene a panel of chairs of various committees and somehow rein this agency in,” Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said.
Mica made his comments as a guest of the House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, which was examining the TSA program called Screening of Passengers by Observational Techniques (SPOT), which relies on Behavior Detection Officers (BDOs) deployed to airport terminals to observe travelers for behavioral indicators of threats to aviation security.
Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), chairman of the subcommittee, said it was “reprehensible” that TSA declined to send a representative to his hearing despite the agency’s plans to spend over $1 billion in the coming years on SPOT.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did send Larry Willis, the program manager for the Hostile Intention Validation project at DHS Science and Technology, to appear on a panel to discuss the SPOT program. In a letter from DHS that Broun cited, DHS said it sent Willis because of the subcommittee’s “interest in scientific research, development.”
Broun responded that it is “highly presumptuous that DHS thinks it knows our jurisdiction better than we do.” He added that House rules task the Science Committee to review non-military research and development programs.
“If TSA and DHS in fact are making a claim that science and research played no role in the formation of the program whatsoever, then this program should be shutdown immediately for lacking any scientific basis and being little more than snake oil,” Broun said.
Broun said that the committee has “options” to “compel” TSA to attend, including subpoena power, which it hasn’t issued in nearly 20 years. The subcommittee will likely review the program again once a report is completed by DHS S&T validating the scientific basis for the SPOT program.
“I’m hopeful that TSA will determine that they have a valuable contribution to make to this topic in the future so that we do not find it necessary to go down that road,” Broun said of a potential subpoena.
The ranking member of the subcommittee, Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), also said she was “disappointed” about TSA’s no-show at the hearing.
“I think they lost an important opportunity to inform the Congress and the public why they believe the SPOT program is worthy of our support,” Edwards said.
Earlier this year, TSA declined to send two of its representatives to a congressional hearing to discuss whole body imaging programs because the agency did not want to be part of a larger panel. Their attendance was obtained once the committee agreed to create a separate panel just for TSA.
DHS this week also refused have one of its officials testify at congressional hearings as part of a larger panel that included non-government witnesses. Again, this was resolved when the House Homeland Security Border Security Subcommittee on Tuesday agreed to create a separate panel to allow Thomas Winkowski, assistant commissioner for the Office of Field Operations at Customs and Border Protection, to review operational issues at ports of entry.