WASHINGTON – Airport security remains lax despite billions of dollars and thousands of federal employees added since the Sept. 11 attacks, lawmakers were told Thursday.
A pair of government investigations submitted to the House aviation subcommittee found dangerous objects still get past security checkpoints. And they said neither government nor privately employed screeners performed their jobs well.
The findings are “pretty scary,” said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., the panel’s chairman. 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 really ought to be doing a better job for all the money we’re spending,” said Mica, who threatened to subpoena Ridge and the others if they fail to respond to his request for a meeting.
Congress created the Transportation Security Administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and ordered the agency to replace the privately employed screeners with a better-paid, better-trained federal work force. More than 50,000 screeners were hired.
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.
Homeland Security Department Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin told lawmakers that the TSA screeners and privately contracted airport workers “performed about the same, which is to say, equally poorly.”
The conclusions were based on Ervin’s own inspectors, who tried to sneak dangerous objects past screeners at airport checkpoints. Such security gaps also were found by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Its conclusions were based on the TSA’s covert testing.
Congress gave airports the option of returning to private screeners next Nov. 19, three years after President Bush signed the bill into law. More than 100 of the 429 commercial airports have said they are considering this.
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