AT LEAST THEY TOOK ACTION – AT 9:41 A.M. ET: After a devastating report about poor performance by the Transportation Security Administration, an executive has actually been fired. History is made. From Fox:
The acting head of the Transportation Security Administration was reassigned late Monday after a watchdog report revealed undercover agents were able to sneak fake explosives and banned weapons through checkpoints as part of an investigation that revealed a massive, system-wide security failure at America's airports.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced that TSA Acting Administrator Melvin Carraway had been sent to work in the department's Office of State and Local Law Enforcement. Acting Deputy Director Mark Hatfield will take over the TSA until a new acting administrator is appointed. Earlier this year, President Obama nominated Coast Guard Vice Admiral Peter Neffenger to be the TSA's permanent administrator.
Homeland Security officials confirmed to Fox News earlier Monday that TSA screeners failed 67 out of 70 tests -- or 96 percent -- carried out by special Department of Homeland Security investigators known as "red teams," as part of a DHS inspector general review.
In one case, an undercover agent with a fake bomb strapped to his back set off a magnetometer -- but the screener still failed to find it.
Before announcing the reassigning of Carraway, an 11-year TSA veteran, Johnson issued a statement outlining a series of actions he had ordered in response to the findings, including more training for all transportation security officers, re-evaluation of airport screening equipment and continued covert testing.
COMMENT: We are not safe. These tests are run regularly, and TSA always fails. Our opponents are working constantly to outsmart us, and they will do so periodically. We must look ten years or more down the line, when some of these opponents may well have weapons of mass destruction.
TSA needs better personnel policies, better training and vastly greater commitment. I suspect it will take a disaster for these things to come to pass.
June 2, 2015 |