Washington: The Department of Homeland Security on Monday reassigned the acting director of the Transportation Security Administration and ordered the agency to revise its security procedures after screeners at airport checkpoints failed to detect weapons and other prohibited items 95 per cent of the time in a covert test.
Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, which oversees the TSA, said that he took the findings of the investigation by the department’s inspector-general “very seriously.”
He called on the TSA to retrain airport security officers, retest screening equipment and increase its use of covert testing in airports.
In the investigation, undercover agents were able to get prohibited items through security checkpoints in 67 of 70 instances, according to ABC News, which first reported the findings.
Melvin Carraway, the acting administrator of the TSA, was replaced by the acting deputy, Mark Hatfield. In April, President Barack Obama nominated Vice Adm. Peter Neffenger of the Coast Guard to be the agency’s next administrator.
Johnson directed TSA officials to revise procedures for screenings and extend training programmes beyond checkpoint officers to include supervisory personnel. He said in a statement that he would meet with executives from companies that develop airport security equipment, and receive biweekly progress reports from a newly appointed team of senior officials who will oversee the new standards.
Though Johnson said that numbers like the security failure rate in the new report “never look good out of context,” the swift and broad measures to overhaul screenings indicated what Johnson called “specific vulnerabilities” at airport checkpoints. According to the ABC News report, one undercover agent was stopped when he set off an alarm, but the TSA screener failed during a pat-down to detect a fake explosive device taped to his back.
Johnson asked the Senate to confirm Neffenger’s nomination “as quickly possible.”
