JOINT MAJORITY STAFF REPORT
112th Congress November 16, 2011
The full GOP report on TSA can be read here.
Executive Summary
In the wake of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush signed into law the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA; P.L. 107-71). Most notably, ATSA created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). TSA has a vital and important mission and is critical to the security of the traveling public. To fulfill its mission, TSA employs many hard- working, dedicated personnel. It is the government‘s responsibility, however, to direct the agency‘s mission and prevent a cumbersome bureaucracy from inhibiting TSA‘s ability to address and adapt to changing security needs. Almost all western countries have evolved their airport screening systems to meet current aviation threats through federal oversight of private contract screeners. The U.S. must also evolve to provide the most effective transportation security system at the most reasonable cost to the taxpayer.
This report is an examination and critical analysis of the development, evolution, and current status and performance of TSA ten years after its creation. Since its inception, TSA has lost its focus on transportation security. Instead, it has grown into an enormous, inflexible and distracted bureaucracy, more concerned with human resource management and consolidating power, and acting reactively instead of proactively. As discussed more fully in the Recommendations section on page 18, TSA must realign its responsibilities as a federal regulator and focus on analyzing intelligence, setting screening and security standards based on risk, auditing passenger and baggage screening operations, and ensuring compliance with national screening standards.
The purpose of this report is to offer constructive recommendations for the improvement of airport screening operations and transportation security. This review of TSA‘s performance and current mission has been conducted by Majority investigative staff of the House Committees on Transportation and Infrastructure and Oversight and Government Reform. Members of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure were responsible for authoring the organic legislation that created TSA, and Members are currently preparing new legislation to reform TSA in accordance with the findings in this report.
Key Findings
I. TSA Lacks Administrative Competency and is Made Inefficient by its Massive Bureaucracy
With 21 other agencies housed within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the status and mission of TSA have gradually eroded to make the agency a tangential and inert unit within DHS‘s massive structure.
The turnover of five Administrators in less than a decade, with periods of long vacancy between appointments, has obstructed TSA‘s ability to carry out its mission.
2. With more than 65,000 employees, TSA is larger than the Departments of Labor, Energy, Education, Housing and Urban Development, and State, combined. TSA is a top-heavy bureaucracy with 3,986 headquarters personnel and 9,656 administrative staff in the field.
Since 2001, TSA staff has grown from 16,500 to over 65,000, a near-400% increase. In the same amount of time, total passenger enplanements in the U.S. have increased less than 12%.
Since 2002, TSA procured six contracts to hire and train more than 137,000 staff, for a total of more than $2.4 billion, at a rate of more than $17,500 per hire. More employees have left TSA than are currently employed at the agency.
Over the past ten years, TSA has spent nearly $57 billion to secure the U.S. transportation network, and TSA‘s classified performance results do not reflect a good return on this taxpayer investment.
On average, there are 30 TSA administrative personnel—21 administrative field staff and nine headquarters staff—for each of the 457 airports where TSA operates.
TSA‘s primary mission, transportation security, has been neglected due to the agency‘s constant focus on managing its enormous and unwieldy bureaucracy.
II. TSA is Failing to Effectively Carry out Agency Operations
TSA has failed to develop an effective, comprehensive plan to evolve from a one-size-fits-all operation—treating all passengers as if they pose the same risk—into a highly intelligent, risk-based operation that has the capacity to determine a traveler‘s level of risk and adjust the level of screening in response.
TSA‘s operations are outdated—the primary threat is no longer hijacking, but explosives designed to take down an aircraft. Today, aircraft have hardened cockpit doors, armed Federal Air Marshalls and armed pilots. Additionally, passengers and crew offer our first and most effective line of defense. These factors have drastically lowered the risk of a terrorist hijacking using a gun or knife. Consequently, TSA should prioritize its security measures to address the current threat of explosives.
TSA‘s passenger and checked baggage screening programs have been tested over the years, and while the test results are classified, their performance outcomes have changed very little since the creation of TSA.
As recently reported, more than 25,000 security breaches have occurred at U.S. airports in the last decade, despite a massive TSA presence.
Even though most of the serious terrorist attempts against the U.S. in the last decade have originated overseas, the number of TSA personnel that oversee key international departure points with direct flights into the United States is limited.
3
TSA‘s behavior detection program, Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT), costs a quarter of a billion dollars to operate annually, employing almost 3,000 behavior detection officer full-time equivalents (FTEs). TSA has invested more than $800 million in this program since 2007, and it will require more than $1.2 billion more over the next five years. In spite of this costly program, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that 17 known terrorists traveled on 24 different occasions through security at eight airports where TSA operated this program. In fact, GAO found that not one terrorist had been caught by the SPOT program, and the program has not been scientifically validated.
TSA has tested numerous pilot programs for trusted travelers, including its current PreCheck program, but has failed to develop an expedited screening program that utilizes biometrics to positively identify participants.
TSA has failed to follow congressional directives to establish biometric credentialing standards and biometric card reader standards. These standards are necessary for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to implement a congressionally-directed requirement for biometric pilot licenses.
GAO found that TSA‘s implementation of the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC), which has cost over half-a-billion dollars, has been crippled by latent programmatic weaknesses. TSA still has not deployed TWIC card-readers to many of the Nation‘s ports.
On January 28, 2011, TSA Administrator Pistole halted the expansion of the Screening Partnership Program (SPP), despite the following evidence:
III.
o An independent consultant found that ―private screeners performed at a level that was equal to or greater than that of federal TSOs [Transportation Security Officers].‖
o GAO found that TSA analytics ignored critical data relating to costs.
o USA Today uncovered covert TSA test results in 2007 that showed significantly higher screener detection capabilities at an SPP airport than at an airport where screening was provided by TSA.
112th Congress November 16, 2011
The full GOP report on TSA can be read here.
Executive Summary
In the wake of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush signed into law the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA; P.L. 107-71). Most notably, ATSA created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). TSA has a vital and important mission and is critical to the security of the traveling public. To fulfill its mission, TSA employs many hard- working, dedicated personnel. It is the government‘s responsibility, however, to direct the agency‘s mission and prevent a cumbersome bureaucracy from inhibiting TSA‘s ability to address and adapt to changing security needs. Almost all western countries have evolved their airport screening systems to meet current aviation threats through federal oversight of private contract screeners. The U.S. must also evolve to provide the most effective transportation security system at the most reasonable cost to the taxpayer.
This report is an examination and critical analysis of the development, evolution, and current status and performance of TSA ten years after its creation. Since its inception, TSA has lost its focus on transportation security. Instead, it has grown into an enormous, inflexible and distracted bureaucracy, more concerned with human resource management and consolidating power, and acting reactively instead of proactively. As discussed more fully in the Recommendations section on page 18, TSA must realign its responsibilities as a federal regulator and focus on analyzing intelligence, setting screening and security standards based on risk, auditing passenger and baggage screening operations, and ensuring compliance with national screening standards.
The purpose of this report is to offer constructive recommendations for the improvement of airport screening operations and transportation security. This review of TSA‘s performance and current mission has been conducted by Majority investigative staff of the House Committees on Transportation and Infrastructure and Oversight and Government Reform. Members of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure were responsible for authoring the organic legislation that created TSA, and Members are currently preparing new legislation to reform TSA in accordance with the findings in this report.
Key Findings
I. TSA Lacks Administrative Competency and is Made Inefficient by its Massive Bureaucracy
With 21 other agencies housed within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the status and mission of TSA have gradually eroded to make the agency a tangential and inert unit within DHS‘s massive structure.
The turnover of five Administrators in less than a decade, with periods of long vacancy between appointments, has obstructed TSA‘s ability to carry out its mission.
2. With more than 65,000 employees, TSA is larger than the Departments of Labor, Energy, Education, Housing and Urban Development, and State, combined. TSA is a top-heavy bureaucracy with 3,986 headquarters personnel and 9,656 administrative staff in the field.
Since 2001, TSA staff has grown from 16,500 to over 65,000, a near-400% increase. In the same amount of time, total passenger enplanements in the U.S. have increased less than 12%.
Since 2002, TSA procured six contracts to hire and train more than 137,000 staff, for a total of more than $2.4 billion, at a rate of more than $17,500 per hire. More employees have left TSA than are currently employed at the agency.
Over the past ten years, TSA has spent nearly $57 billion to secure the U.S. transportation network, and TSA‘s classified performance results do not reflect a good return on this taxpayer investment.
On average, there are 30 TSA administrative personnel—21 administrative field staff and nine headquarters staff—for each of the 457 airports where TSA operates.
TSA‘s primary mission, transportation security, has been neglected due to the agency‘s constant focus on managing its enormous and unwieldy bureaucracy.
II. TSA is Failing to Effectively Carry out Agency Operations
TSA has failed to develop an effective, comprehensive plan to evolve from a one-size-fits-all operation—treating all passengers as if they pose the same risk—into a highly intelligent, risk-based operation that has the capacity to determine a traveler‘s level of risk and adjust the level of screening in response.
TSA‘s operations are outdated—the primary threat is no longer hijacking, but explosives designed to take down an aircraft. Today, aircraft have hardened cockpit doors, armed Federal Air Marshalls and armed pilots. Additionally, passengers and crew offer our first and most effective line of defense. These factors have drastically lowered the risk of a terrorist hijacking using a gun or knife. Consequently, TSA should prioritize its security measures to address the current threat of explosives.
TSA‘s passenger and checked baggage screening programs have been tested over the years, and while the test results are classified, their performance outcomes have changed very little since the creation of TSA.
As recently reported, more than 25,000 security breaches have occurred at U.S. airports in the last decade, despite a massive TSA presence.
Even though most of the serious terrorist attempts against the U.S. in the last decade have originated overseas, the number of TSA personnel that oversee key international departure points with direct flights into the United States is limited.
3
TSA‘s behavior detection program, Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT), costs a quarter of a billion dollars to operate annually, employing almost 3,000 behavior detection officer full-time equivalents (FTEs). TSA has invested more than $800 million in this program since 2007, and it will require more than $1.2 billion more over the next five years. In spite of this costly program, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that 17 known terrorists traveled on 24 different occasions through security at eight airports where TSA operated this program. In fact, GAO found that not one terrorist had been caught by the SPOT program, and the program has not been scientifically validated.
TSA has tested numerous pilot programs for trusted travelers, including its current PreCheck program, but has failed to develop an expedited screening program that utilizes biometrics to positively identify participants.
TSA has failed to follow congressional directives to establish biometric credentialing standards and biometric card reader standards. These standards are necessary for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to implement a congressionally-directed requirement for biometric pilot licenses.
GAO found that TSA‘s implementation of the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC), which has cost over half-a-billion dollars, has been crippled by latent programmatic weaknesses. TSA still has not deployed TWIC card-readers to many of the Nation‘s ports.
On January 28, 2011, TSA Administrator Pistole halted the expansion of the Screening Partnership Program (SPP), despite the following evidence:
III.
o An independent consultant found that ―private screeners performed at a level that was equal to or greater than that of federal TSOs [Transportation Security Officers].‖
o GAO found that TSA analytics ignored critical data relating to costs.
o USA Today uncovered covert TSA test results in 2007 that showed significantly higher screener detection capabilities at an SPP airport than at an airport where screening was provided by TSA.
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