the committee will come to order we appreciate you all being here for this oversight hearing part number two regarding the tsa airport perimeter screening i'd like to welcome ranking member tierney and members of the subcommittee and members of the audience who are here and participating with us and those of you that are watching on television today's proceedings are the second in a series of hearings designed to evaluate the status of u s airport security and the policies employed by the department of homeland security there are a number of concerns that have been highlighted to be drawn out here today first and foremost we have learned that there have been twenty five thousand security breaches at u s airports since november ofh and i do appreciate the tsa in tracking and providing that data but obviously those are the that we know about and the deep concern is what about the ones that we don't know about and the creativity and things that can happen in the future we also are deeply concerned about the tsa failing to conduct threat vulnerability assessments in order to identify gaps in perimeter screening in two thousand and nine the gao had concluded there were hpercent of these airports that had not had these threat assessments done and that number really has not changed tsa also lacks a national strategy to secure commercial airports and access control this again coming from a gao report that says that the nation's four hundred and fifty seven commercial airports have not quote been guided by a unifying national strategy end quote also concerned about  more than nine hundred thousand security badges at these four hundred and fifty seven airports and the dangers that that can lead to and the challenges that that presents we're also concerned about what's happening at some of our nation's airports for instance  the investigative reports show that at least a quarter mile of the perimeter fence is down leaving a gaping hole in security along a main jfk runway this project is hyears behind scheduling also concerned about what happened  dallas love field the fence has been breached or damaged almost twenty times in less than hyears in fact air traffic control tapes show that pilots on the ground were unsure of what to do when a pickup truck crashed through a fence and drove onto the tarmac on august nineteen two thousand hmiles of fence there built in stages over the past decade and yet no one consistent standard has happened we have spent nearlyh we will have spent nearly five hundred dollars million on ait machines i call them the whole body imaging machine by the time we get to the year two thousand and thirteen and yet these machines there are parts and gaps in that security that don't work i happen to believe that there's a better smarter way to do this that is more secure less invasive and we're going to hear some testimony today talking about the canine units and what they are able to do and i look forward to hearing that testimony we're also concerned that these ait machines or whole body imaging machines would not have found some of the weapons that were  end to the creativity of terrorists and while i have heard the press recount say that well let's remember the twenty five thousand security breaches are hpercent or even less than hpercent unfortunately we have to be right all the time terrorists only have to get lucky once a lot of what we have been participating here in my personal opinion has been security theater and has not truly done the job to secure the airports to the degree that we need to and i think one of the personal challenges that we have as a nation is how do we become more secure and yet less invasive that we don't give up every personal liberty in the name of security and we have to find that proper balance it's a difficult one knowing that the threat is real so i look forward to this hearing today we are going to also so rather than wax on i'd love to hear from the panel but at this time i'd like to recognize the ranking member of this subcommittee the gentleman from massachusetts mister tierney for his opening statement mister tierney thank you mister chairman and thank our witnesses for being here this morning as well look we understand that we are going to address some important issues here today and one of them for instance is the screening passenger observation techniques or the spot program our general accountability office has criticized that spot program saying that it lacks appropriate scientific validation the department of homeland security has released a study that it says showed spot is more effective than random screening but it does acknowledge that it didn't address whether behavioral analysis is actually an effective way to detect potential terrorists  seven hundred and fifty dollars million on it already they're asking for another two hundred and fifty dollars million i think it's pretty critical that we with that significant investment out there that we take a good look and scrutinize whether or not this program actually is effective at identifying potential threats to  security we're also going to discuss the screening of checked baggage using the explosive detection technology congress mandated hpercent screening of checked bags by the transportation security agency but it's been slow to implement those standards at airports across the again the general accountability office said that despite the regulations being in effect in two thousand and five the expositive detection technology requirements weren't put in place till two thousand and nine turning to the issue of perimeter security there have been some  highprofile breaches that we are all aware of specifically we will hear today about the tragic incident that occurred just outside of boston's logan airport where a young man fell from a plane as it approached the airport for landing according to news reports he likely gained access to the plane after breaching airport perimeter security in charlotte this is not a unique incident unfortunately we have also heard about serial security breaches by mr hronald wong who was somehow able to make it on to a plane leaving jfk airport in new york to san francisco with a stolen boarding pass the general accountability office has also raised concerns about perimeter security at our nation's airports in two thousand and nine they found the tsa had failed to implement a national strategy to address perimeter security that only a small percentage of airports had completed joint vulnerability assessments this again raised serious questions that have to be addressed so as we evaluate these incidents and the challenges it's probably important for us to take the time to understand what security functions the transportation security administration is not directly responsible for and one of those is the perimeter area they are not principally responsible for perimeter security at airports that perimeter security is primarily responsibility of airport operators while tsa's role is to ensure that the operator is adhering to an appropriate security plan that meets federal standards so as i said at the last hearing on tsa the agency has a difficult and unenviable task but it's our responsibility our role to provide constructive criticism with which you at tsa can strike the balance between security convenience and cost hopefully weighing heavily on the security aspect i hope our hearing today can help tsa do just that and i thank the chairman again for  pursuing very important issues relating to transportation security and holding a very important agency accountable having been involved with the tsa and actually picked the name for the agency and helped craft its enabling legislation some hyears ago i've had a chance to monitor its activities closely and unfortunately i become more and more concerned with the billions of dollars that are being expended some of it just astounds me we've created an agency that's actually turn i'm appalled at what's taking place recently i had the opportunity to go to our state capitol tallahassee and i left the airport to pick up a rental here's the embankment hfeet high and just to show you we're talking about airport security and perimetersh how idiotic we could be  implementation of any requirement like this but this is the parking space for rental cars this is a foot embankment you can see up here where cars go through the entrance of the airport now there's a new airport administrator he wasn't familiar with all of the details but we're going to do a thorough investigation of this this is just one instance again of a nonthinking agency i don't know of any explosive device that could possibly penetrate hfeet here except maybe a nuclear weapon i don't know how much it cost to put these barriers here but again forcing a small airport or if tsa paid for an idiotic expense not to mention the cost to the taxpayer or the airport but then of course they would never consider the economic loss to the car rental firm or to the revenue of the airport but every time everywhere i turn i see a range then i open the paper a week or two ago when i returned to washington and i look at this ad now of course the humane society is looking for a vice president of federal affairs and they have a little i'd say it's about a sixth of the page but we have a fourcolor halfpage ad for a deputy assistant administrator for legislative affairs in this and other capitol hill publications half page only total disregard for taxpayers resources could you expend money on whether it's a venture like this  my state capitol airport or in a capitol hill publication and i'm going to request too an accounting for expenditure of this money and let me just tell tsa too that if you refuse to issa and the chairman here have agreed to cooperate to get this information and we will get the data whether it's this or other activities such as you've refused to provide information to us on regarding your expenditure of your national deployment force where you can't hire people or people leave their jobs and you have to fly them in put them up at  hotels pay their expenses and pay them a per diem whether it's that issue or more than a dozen pending items we will get the information we will investigate we will protect the taxpayers who are paying the bulk of the expenses for this fiasco so thank you for holding this hearing we'll get to some issues and questions in a few minutes and i yield back mister chaffetz thank you we'll now  for all of us i know that we have spent enormously on the safety and security of the processes within our airports but this is something that the security of our perimeters  of these airports has become much more of a concern since the fairly recent incidents that involved my district the young man who was apparently  so i was able to see up close the tremendous concern generated by this the hardship on the family the concerns of all the law enforcement involved as well thorough in our examination that we're not overlooking anything and that you know as a result of this incident and some others that at the end of this process the american flying public will be safer and our communities will be safer and our airports will be more secure that's the goal here for both democrats and republicans that's our intent here and again i want to thank the witnesses assistant administrator with the transportation security administration we do appreciate your being here mister stephen lord is the director of the homeland security team at the government accountability office mister jerry orr is the aviation director at the charlotte douglas international airport appreciate you being here as well pursuant to committee rules all witnesses will be sworn in before they testify please rise if you would and raise your right hand solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give this committee will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth thank you please be seated let the record reflect that all witnesses answered in the affirmative in order to allow time for discussion we would ranking member tierney and distinguished members of the subcommittee i appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the transportation security administration's responsibility regarding perimeter security at u s commercial airports i would like to emphasize threehpoints first every airport has an individualized security plan of which security perimeter security is an important piece two airport authorities are responsible for executing the plan three tsa is responsible for approving the plan and inspecting airport compliance with the plan unlike checkpoint security airport authority people investments play the lead role in carrying out airport perimeter security tsa conducts airport inspections to enhance security and mitigate risk associated with perimeter integrity including joint vulnerability assessments special emphasis inspections and the testing of access control processes at airports tsa analyzes the results of these inspections and assessments to develop mitigation strategies that enhance an airport's security posture and to determine if any changes are required perimeterrelated airport compliance has been inspected twenty seven thousand and thirty one times over the past hmonths every commercial airport receives an annual security assessment to include all airports evaluating perimeter security including fencing nonfence manmade barriers natural barriers closed circuit television electronic intrusion and motion detection devices assessments are complete for the largest airports with the smaller airports expected to be complete by septemberhth of two thousand and eleven the results of the inspection were collaborative improvements and also violations which may result in civil penalties going beyond compliance we work collaboratively with airport operators and airport associations and in that collaboration tsa issued updated and improved security guidelines for airport design and construction as well as an  measures report which highlights best practices from airports of all sizes across the united states the innovative measures report effort was the first of its kind in working closely with airports across the nation on base lining and best practices in airport perimeter access control terminal frontages and other key areas over seven hundred measures and practices from over one hundred airports were assessed as part of this groundbreaking initiative because of that effort airports now have a self assessment module and a resource allocation tool the tool incorporates attack scenarios vulnerability scores consequence scores and countermeasure success probabilities it allows airports to baseline their security programs against other airports innovative measures that will directly inform decisions about improvements to provide the greatest risk reduction for their money at their location tsa's goal is to work with airport authorities to  stay ahead of evolving terrorist threats while protecting passengers privacy and facilitating the efficient flow of travelers and legitimate commerce tsa's airport perimeter security initiatives are one part of that comprehensive effort i member tierney and members of the subcommittee thanks for inviting me here today to discuss aviation security issues the attempted two thousand and nine christmas day attack provides a vivid reminder civil aviation remains an attractive terrorist target and underscores the importance of today's hearing securing commercial aviation operations is difficult given the hundreds of airports thousands of daily flights with millions of passengers and pieces of checked baggage  spends several billion dollars each year to help secure the system however risks to the system remain today i'd like to discuss three layers of the system first tsa's behavior detection program also called spot science according to tsa spot was deployed before a validation was completed to help address potential threats such as those posed by suicide bombers the good news is dhs completed an validation study earlier this year and found that the program was more effective than random screening in identifying socalled highrisk passengers however as noted in the study the assessment was just the first step additional research is needed is going to be needed to fully validate the program and some of the recommendations made in the latest dhs study mirror those we made in our mayh report in sum it's still an open question whether behavior detection principles could be successfully applied on a large scale for counterterrorism purposes in an airport environment i would now like to discuss some of the key findings from our two thousand  report on airport perimeter security in terms of progress we noted various steps tsa had made including implementing the random worker screening program expanding requirements for namebased background checks and developing new biometric updated assessment did not include an assessment of the socalled insider threat which tsa views as a significant threat the risks posed by insider threats will be included in the next update due later this year we also recommended that tsa consider making greater use of joint vulnerability assessments these are a key tool in the tsa tool box and are completed in conjunction with the fbi the latest data show t deploy checked baggage screening equipment this program is one of the largest acquisition programs within dhs as highlighted in the report released to representative mica yesterday t upgraded the explosive detection requirements for this equipment but faces challenges in meeting these requirements the explosive detection requirements for checked baggage machines were established in one thousand nine hundred and ninety eight and subsequently revised in two thousand and five and two thousand and ten to better address current threats however tsa's current checked baggage screening systems do not meet the two thousand and ten requirements some of the machines are operating at the for example dhs and tsa encounter challenges safely collecting data on the explosives physical and chemical properties our report contains six recommendations for improving tsa's process for acquiring these sophisticated systems the good news is that tsa has agreed to take action to implement all six of these recommendations mr hchairman other distinguished members of the committee this concludes my statement i look forward to answering your questions thank you hyears in airport management and was a small business owner for hyears before that i'm here today to testify on airport perimeter security i have been critical of the performance of the tsa since its inception am not critical of its mission i am critical of its measures in my judgment the effectiveness of the tsa is compromised by a rigid attitude of arrogance and bureaucracy in november of last year the body of a young man was discovered in milton massachusetts and was thought to have fallen from an aircraft i learned about a possible connection to charlotte in the media and therefore reached out to our federal security director he did not want tsa to take the lead and instead recommended i ask our municipal police department to head up an investigation and tsa would assist them ultimately the available evidence could neither prove nor disprove that a security breach had actually occurred at charlotte the police and tsa theorized how the young man may have accessed an aircraft they came up with a reasonable assumption about what might have happened that excludes entry through a checkpoint but the report fails to acknowledge that they could not conclusively rule out this possibility because tsa had failed to preserve their surveillance video of the checkpoints and some of it was lost i'm not saying that the young man came through a  a checkpoint what i am saying is that the tsa failed to even admit the possibility and deflected attention elsewhere this mentality serves to protect the agency at the cost of real security needs the investigation focused national attention on airport perimeter security in charlotte we have hmiles of foothigh chainlink fence with three strands of barbed wire enclosing the airport this fence meets all federal requirements we spend a half million dollars annually on maintaining the fence all from the airport budget we spend an additional hmillion on seventy five personnel with perimeter security responsibilities the fence is a deterrent it says keep out however the final line of security is the eyes and ears of the twenty thousand people who work inside the fence tsa seems to believe that airports are automatically in violation of the regulations even when they did everything they were obligated to do and it simply didn't work to me that's like saying that customs and border protection itself is violating the l each time an illegal alien crosses into the united states other examples of tsa's lack of a partnership we recently asked tsa to explain their security basis and their legal authority for directing us to do something but tsa failed or refused to respond or even acknowledge our questions tsa has conflicting roles in operational and regulatory capacities that are not kept separate having an agency interpret the rules implement actions and then judge their effectiveness lends itself to the possibility of abuse i am confident that i am not the only airport operator with significant concerns about the effectiveness of tsa an adversarial relationship between airports and the very agency entrusted to help safeguard them is clearly detrimental to the goal of safety and security so what can be done to improve our ability to focus on the real needs of our nation's airports congress should continue to support its support of allowing airports to opt out of using tsa and ensure that the bureaucracy does not throw up arbitrary roadblocks to discourage us from pursuing this alternative any entity working with airports and airlines to achieve security must do just that work with them tsa's current because i say so culture does not foster respect i also believe congress should redirect some of the available funding for airport security from tsa directly to airports the operator is most familiar with the airport's vulnerabilities and strengths and is well equipped to make effective enhancements safety and security are always our number one priority there can always be more security but the challenge is to provide better security we need to spend money where it counts on things that matter the path forward to optimal security needs to be around the country something that has tended to be the backbone of the tsa operation and influence over security at the airports at the same time the airport facility security one can easily notice that first of all there is very little consistency in our airports as far as perimeter security is concerned secondly most of our airports today are still not operation the other aspect of that is that the issue of jurisdiction is not very clear when it comes to the security operation security facility operation at the airport by law it is the local law enforcement agency or department that is responsible to do this but yet most or many of the police departments that provide that service in airports are still implementing own more as a law enforcement agency rather than a security agency and there is a major difference between the two and once again if you look at perimeter as a reflection of this problem you can see that the role that the local police department is taking on perimeter security at airports is minimal and is usually based on responding to calls rather than the early detection and the local authorities as far as the airport facility security is concerned and secondly the need for standards that will create consistent highlevel performance that w invite somebody from amtrak amtrak police to be here at the hearing regarding airport security one of the questions i think that is a legitimate one that this committee would like to explore is while the t invested hundreds of millions of dollars in whole body imaging machines and technology there are those particularly at the pentagon that have come to the conclusion that dogs are the single best way  waxing on too much more we do truly appreciate inspector parker being here and as just a bit of explanation he's going to give a bit of testimony and then we're going to have a demonstration don't let anybody in here worry anybody in here but i'll let him explain how we're going to conduct this we would just ask that anybody here in the audience stay put and if you have some sort of you know something we're glad that you're here inspector parker but we're going to do a bit of a demonstration we just ask that you kind of hang tight while we do this demonstration and appreciate the leeway here of the committee as we do this demonstration inspector parker we'll give you great leeway my name is william parker and i'm the inspector commander of the amtrak police department's k unit i'm honored to be here today and i appreciate the invitation to speak with you about what dogs can do to improve airport security and detect explosives a welltrained dog is more capable useful reliable and effective than equipment dogs do not depreciate like machines do if dogs are trained properly and if their training is consistent their skill level will increase with experience perimeter security is of great concern to airports and the transportation security administration many airports rely on surveillance beams and cameras to protect their perimeter the problem is if nothing appears on the camera after the alarm goes off you can't just assume  there someone has to respond and make sure no one is hiding from the camera a welltrained law enforcement officer with a welltrained patrol dog can find and address that threat immediately without waiting for backup on and after ks capability after as people realized dogs were effective in crowded environments where their explosive screening abilities were better in crowds than technology at amtrak trains are randomly swept for explosives before boarding we keep an explosive team present at the boarding gates to provide a detection capability and immediate response i think a dog on a jetway at boarding would improve security at no inconvenience to travelers and would provide an elevated sense of security dogs are very effective not only in detecting explosives but as a deterrent in many environments any environment when deployed properly amtrak has many challenges as airport authorities particularly the  need to secure openspace areas that intruders could use to come into our property we have been able to implement some new procedures that could be used in airports i have helped pioneer a new application of k called vapor wake vapor wake is a dog trained to smell the wake of explosives and material in the air after a person passed by that area amtrak is working with auburn university and other agencies to secure hightraffic areas or facility perimeter provided the program is properly funded and supported with a strong infrastructure that i explained to you about vapor wake technology the dog will be able to detect people that walk by it is not intrusive they will not stop anybody's path you're going to see two from my right your left we're going to have people come t door as you see the dog is like pretending she's at a checkpoint people are going to come in and the dog is going to be able to detect who came in with something on the as you see sir the dog is not intrusively hurting anybody walking as you see now that's a hit as you see that person walked by the dog is walking stop decoy as you see this is a response that the dog would give and that's a person and this individual has ankle weights on that has explosives on his ankle so you can look at him physically and not see anything but he has about hpounds of explosives on his ankle could you show the committee sir that's levi our chocolate lab as a person passes through an area you'll see a person walking through your room right there over there to your left she's going to walk and sit down we're going to have a dog come through that same area that person has already sat down th they're just trying to give it a little bit of time because in theory it's been known that somebody could walk through the area and hminutes after they have passed through the dog could still pick that up and that's a scientific fact that's already been no how can that be in two thousand and nine september two thousand and nine there was a report issued saying that eighty seven percent of the airports haven't been assessed and over that time frame we've now only moved that number to hpercent assessment vulnerability assessments are done in concert with the fbi they are done they're extensive assessments they are done in a limited number of locations but every single commercial airport receives an annual security assessment percent these are very intensive examinations focused on highrisk airports and tsa considers them the gold standard they obviously conduct a whole host of other activities and inspections and testing i mean there's quite a few things they do but you know we thought this was worthwhile to single out given the significance we do recognize you know they're difficult to do quickly and you have to get the chaffetz what i don't understand is given the imperative given the knowledge and understanding that we're only as strong as the weakest link and it may be that small airport as we saw on when that person got on a plane not at one of the major major airports initially and got into the system got behind the security line why is the tsa not demanding and working towards getting to hpercent i don't understand there's four hundred and fifty seven airports why aren't four hundred and fifty seven airports getting this this level assessment will be done with a limited number of airports not all airports will be done they will have inspections and they will have a complete assessment every year mister chaffetz i just i absolutely don't understand that i don't understand i think it's unacceptable let me move on mister orr in your testimony you said that the tsa has yet to approve this airport security program quote i think you said in your testimony we have been trying to get revisions to our approval for about a year now can you explain that a little bit more security director over a year ago heard nothing for six or hmonths got comment addressed that comment it again lay idle for a couple of months understand the request to rewrite to change the amend the security plan was in progress was initiated about a year ago there was a joint vulnerability assessment with the fbi conducted in the fall of two thousand and ten it's my understanding i don't know this personally but it's my understanding the parties agreed to let's hold off on completing the rewriting of the airport security plan until we understand the results of the joint vulnerability assessment now the joint vulnerability assessment in terms of its analysis of perimeter security was not particularly flattering and so in terms of where the amendment is in terms of for additional information help us to understand what you're talking about here and in both cases have not received that we submitted our plan our amendment we heard nothing we checked on it a couple of times they said it was in the works mister chaffetz and this is the frustration you're telling me that you have no goal to get to hpercent of joint vulnerability assessments on the four hundred and fifty seven airports you made percent of the airports could undergo that particular scrutiny every year mister lord well we don't think that it would be appropriate to do every year but perhaps on a rolling basis that's how they do now they have a target within  the conclusion that we need to spend more attention on people rather than just on items and observing behavior is one of the basic tools that can be used at the airport but obviously it is we're looking at technology from the point of view of machines that are involved or computers that are involved in the process this is not a highly technological process this is more a humanbased process but there's having the local entity be able to opt out of tsa on that and if your organization did that would you be willing to take the full responsibility and liability for failures to succeed mister orr yes sir i have that anyway  average all of them over one hundred and four thousand dollars how many of those folks were dedicated to doing the vulnerability assessments that we've been talking about here mister sammon in terms of the vulnerability assessment i would say a limited number but we can get you the or some of the people who are making over one hundred thousand dollars and maybe you could get for the record the number of people that are making over one hundred thousand dollars mister mica at mister orr's airport none of those people could check off on a security being a riskbased intelligence organization that is what he is trying to achieve and i support that goal do we have a plan from tsa that you could share with us to move toward that mister sammon i don't have a plan today but i would recommend the committee work with administrator pistole his number  forward to that and you mentioned that most of the risk is coming in from out of the united states for example orly was the shoe bomber mr hreid amsterdam the diaper christmas day bomber the london  latest contacts with the department of state and others to the committee onh because you said the threat is coming from there mister mica now whole body imaging equipment which we spent a half a billion dollars on mentioned this back inh what is the date march and that appears to be a threat that they are moving obviously they have gone from shoes to diaper to liquid to cartridges wouldn't you say that it looks i mention thish and it was also mentioned that the equipment we spent a billion dollars on can't do anything about it and tsa finally gets to july th gets recently briefed air carriers and foreign partners to equipment both by this committeeh directed by gao has been unsuccessful both in reports that have been published and also in gao reports that also look at your backup for are other alternatives to get around technology as people tend to try to designh mister mica are you aware of the hearing that was conducted by the science and technology committee where mr hbroun from georgia the chairman  validated the findings of gao mister sammon i'm not familiar with the witnesses mister mica again i had the opportunity two weeks ago to be in tel aviv at bengurion airport to see how it was done and it can be done on an interactive basis even with a large population if we go to riskbased rather than hassling innocent americans veterans military children and people who pose absolutely no risk i yield back the balance of my sammon so i would encourage you to speak to work with administrator pistole thank you mister chaffetz we try you know we try to get the senior most people to come before this committee and they refuse and that is one of the great frustrations that is no surprise to the tsa i would love to work with them love to work with them cannot provide us with the information this is the chief investigative committee of the united states house of representatives and they are going to appear one way or the other or cooperate one way or the other and i put them on notice again today committee and the homeland security committee these are issues that deeply concern me in my work with congress and i am happy you all are here i'm happy to be able to discuss this again and i'm probably the degree does the tsa coordinate with the faa for instance on spending on airport security i know in corpus christi we recently got about five dollars million from the faa to improve security but has there been any action with the tsa in determining where the multiple dollars are best spent mister sammon i think that ish since the gao report you have seen come out a number of things we have been working for several years to address the specific issue you're talking about first of all we worked with the airport community to come up with recommended design guidelines for airport planning and construction a lot of the money the airports use for planning and construction comes from the faa next we worked with the homeland security in e to develop a best practices from all of the airports mister farenthold i'm sorry i have got a real short amount of time but you are saying you're now working regularly with the other agencies to make sure the right hand knows what the left are doing is working with the airports they have a tool it is a specific computer program they can run through their system the idea is for the fses to work with the airports to come up with the optimal security spending per airport it is not the same okay and we talk about highrisk airports what is not a highrisk airport when i can get on a commuter jet at any airport in the country and end up at a hub airport and be on the biggest airliner in the world what would not airports and small airports that have gotten into best practices in terms of what are the kinds of things that are appropriate for each airport mister farenthold all right again let me go on to mister orr i apologize for jumping around i have a lot of questions and a limited amount of time you're talking about individual airline has a screening machine staffed by two tsa agents we bought three machines for the corpus christi airport and there is probably a fourth one because delta used to come in there why couldn't there just be one and a couple of tsa agents there are never that many people there why are weh do we have any clue why we are spending multipleh mister lord that is a great question tsa has an electronic baggage screening program which they are trying to move to what they term optimal solutions for each airport and essentially what that means is in many cases they are trying to remove the standalone machines and use more efficient systems or even socalled inline systems which try saying that three times fasth is why don't we follow more of the israeli model of dealing with people instead of things the answer i have gotten from a lot of people within our government is israel only has a couple of solution is not really an issue when it comes to volume and i don't think that this is the main consideration i think that the main consideration is that the israeli legal culture the environment is very different level of risk of individual passengers and responding to them with a comparable level of search and an interview as necessary is the right way and i think that an american solution that would be more comparable to the american environment can and should be developed and implemented mister farenthold thank you very much i am out of time i'm hopeful we will have a second round of questioning because i have got at least five minutes more mister chairman thank you the advanced imaging technology we have also spent another thirty million on the puffer machines that shoot air blasts at passengers and sniff for explosives but they rarely work properly tell me what the end return on investment of dogs is i mean i see some  mobility you don't have to spend money to integrate any new odor to it because a dog is a little bit better than machinery because technology we can introduce odor that you come out anything new to a dog and in two was standing there people walk through and we do it at amtrak all the time people come out on the acela with that dog at the boarding gate and people are happy to see him and it is not intrusive and the dog is working and who don't like dogs gosar the person who doesn't like dogs i don't want to know tell me the average lifetime of an active k mister parker without any medical problems we get a dog at a year old i like to have the dog work until they are about seven or eight years old because after the first two years or so that is when the dog really gets into its prime again if he is well trained and proficient training is there so you will get a good five years without adding any software to him or getting a new breed because they get all of the training that they need mister gosar now they are also very keen about detecting behavior are they not mister parker yes sir and that is why the vapor wake dogs are very important right now because they can screen people without them even being known if you come to amtrak we do it all the time and i know you know about the rush that comes through our gates and these dogs screen people and they keep on going without even being aware they are being searched mister gosar can they detect an implant a bodily implanted device well sir scientifically right now there is no data that says the dog can or cannot but given the schematics of a person's body and you know dogs can detect cancer on people's bodies tumors the dogs can detect anything that they are taught i think if the dog is taught to do that he would be a very real good asset for that mister gosar they are very innate about picking up differences in how people as you said earlier one of the biggest things mr hsammon i have seen in my limited time on the hill is uncoordination of coordination in fact i had to put a bill just to break down jurisdictional boundaries of two different agencies so it seems to me like the biggest problem that we have here airporth every airport has a plan the airport is responsible for executing a plan with their people andh mister gosar i'm going to interrupt you again who is ultimatelyh that is not it is it homeland security who oversees the whole process of these whole to say on a timely basis that you do this i mean i have seen it and just to give you a quick example i have seen a flood and i have seen an agency head from the forest service make sure that everybody is lined up in time in real perspective without delays i have seen it happen so i know it can happen so it seems to me like the buck stops with you then mister sammon so again what we want to doh and i think one of the things thath with gao is a comprehensive look at whath mister gosar i'm very aware of what government does  studies and studies and by the time you get a study out it is antiquated it seems likehthere should wait a minute it seems like there should be a minimum standard that is equating all the way across the board and it seems like we are missing the point because i think we need to be using mr hron and inspector parker's ideas within this because we have to have some minimal standards and i'm also from arizona and so i know that those numbers are not right i suspect thath well just to give you a quick  example we are talking about those that you know about security breaches they are not the ones that you're not talking about that you don't know anything about and you can't tell me that those don't occur we sit on the border and we are saying that we apprehend one in about every four i hope those aren't the same kind of numbers here because from what we have had in previous testimony there is a lot of people carrying badges out there that we don't have any recollection of and who they are and background seriously that was brought up in this committee mister sammon what you have is under about eight hundred and fifty thousand people who have criminal history background checks and terrorist watch list checks in addition to other checks mister gosar and it is inadequate that is becauseh i can point to you that we take a grandmother and strip her down who ish because it must be the grimacing that she is going through terminal cancer and that we also have another foreign national that gets through with an invalid visa the problem is that there's problems with that aspect because we are not nimble enough and we are not working at associating with local and regional sammon if you wanted toh mister sammon no no i thinkh again this efforth the tool which basically allows every airport in conjunction with the federal security director to do that evaluation of what their vulnerabilities are because they are unique there isn't one standard that applies across the whole country but you take those standards apply them based upon the vulnerabilities the attack scenarios that are possible at that airport so on and so forth for each airport to come up with an optimal solution so that every dollar that they have that they can apply to security they do it in the optimal way the best way the best bang for the buck for that particular airport that tool exists it is done in collaboration with the airports and the airport authorities we had over one hundred airports apply charlotte was not one of them charlotte is not particularly active in aaae which is a national organization which has security committees they are not active in asi which is a national airport organization that has security committees so of all of the people that worked on this charlotte's name is not in there so there are people who are working on this as a matter of fact on monday i had the ceo of dallasfort worth airport fly in with his senior staff to sit down with john pistole and our group to tell us that they are very happy working with tsa and what they wanted was to volunteer for any pilot security projects that they could have that we would work with them on so in terms of how the relationship with airports and working with local authorities it may vary across the country but there are a lot of them who put a lot of work into all of these reports to get a tool that  the best most optimal security assessments and reports and ways forward for each of the airports mister gosar well then it seems to me that you just told me that you want a nimble approach so maybe charlotte needs a little different tlc and maybe that's what you need to look at is that you're giving an individualized plan so make sure that you're elevating that to an individualistic plan as well you know be careful what you ask for there okay just because somebody to give you an example you know as a teacher a teacher only is asking you to repeat what they want you to it doesn't tell you about the knowledge about the student you have to go a little bit further sometimes and that i'm looking at is that sometimes the squeaky wheel is actually the one that is doing something a little bit different that i want to know about and i think that behooves you at the top to understand what they are doing why they are doing it as well as all the different other models  we did is go beyond compliance with this report to get the best innovative security measures from airports around the country because compliance is not sufficient mister chaffetz i agree and we will probably have this ongoing discussion but the idea that you haven't conducted joint vulnerability assessments in eighty three percent of our nation's airports is not acceptable it is just not acceptable we need to figure out how to solve that and i appreciate the followup with that as it relates to dallas i would hope that dallas would be the first ones in here they have had twenty perimeter security breaches in the last five years they had a truck that actually came out across the field as i noted in my opening statement so there is a lot that needs to be done on security with such a big airport such as dallas for instance let me go back to the dogs here my understanding of the dollars and the metrics here and again if we can correct the record here as a followup my understanding is it costs roughly about one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars per whole body imaging machine but the dogs are something like twenty to thirty thousand dollars to have a fully trained dog ready to go those aren't the numbers let us go ahead and correct the record but i am pretty darn sure those are the records but to mister gosar's point the whole body imaging machines have something that the dogs don't have they have lobbyists and what is infuriating to a person like me is i think the challenge is we have got to increase the security we have to become more secure but we can't give up every civil liberty we shouldn't be looking at every passenger naked in order to secure the airplane w we do need are these good dogs because the pentagon having spent nineteen dollars billion came to the conclusion as i pointed out with the lieutenant colonel's comments the single best way to find a bombmaking device or bombmaking materials is the  we are not putting enough emphasis on expanding the use of ks they are friendly they are noninvasive they are effective they are the single best weapon according to the pentagon in order to fight and find these explosive devices  sammon in terms of the dogs you saw here the tsa supports the amtrak program in fact we probably have supported up to about a third of the dog teams that amtrak has the dogh a fully equipped dog team with training well they don't it actually in corpus christi requires at least two actually three one to stop you going through one to listen on the radio and the one in the back thath it requires three operators for a whole body machine mister sammon they all require they are all expensive systems they each imagining machines you give me five thousand people in another room you give me one of his dogs and we will find that bomb before you find your bomb that is the problem there is a better smarter safer way to do this and the tsa is not prioritizing it and if you look at who those lobbyists were that pushed through those machines they should be ashamed of themselves because there is a better way to do this and it is with the ks and i'm basing that based on what the pentagon did that's what the pentagon did they studied all the technology all the information and that is what they are doing they are deployingh you don't see whole body imagining machines in kandahar but you do see dog teams because those guys their peopleh their lives are on the line every day that's what we should be doing and you brought it up and i will challenge it let us go look at dollar for dollar what is more expensive a whole body imaging machine which we know is not hree hours a day sir and you take a break and they work two to three hours more is how you condition the dog to work mister chaffetz let us keep going because i really do believe that the dogs are a better smarter solution  one of the challenges that the tsa is having to deal with is the fact that we have over nine hundred thousand security badges out there my understanding as i was told there are roughly sixteen thousand just at dulles airport alone what sort of background checks are they going through how often are those rechecked and how are you going to deal with the fact that we have got closing in on a million people with security badges all across the airports mister sammon there are probably eight hundred and fifty thousand badges out there that are active they go through a criminal history background watchlist check on them they are perpetually vetted from the watchlist basis in addition there are other immigration checks on those people versus when they originally apply they are redone every two years and at that time the security attack in various forms and tsa acknowledged it needed to look at that and the next iteration due later this year will include that threat mister chaffetz but mr hsammon just said he already has it mister lord well i'm not twenty five thousand perimeter breaches i would appreciateh is thish it is very difficult to get any sort of analysis of this over such a long period of time is there a monthbymonth analysis that you can share with us mister sammon i don't have it with me that is two thousand five hundred a year it could be anything from  knowledge of that situation mister sammon i'm not personally aware of that i do know that jfk and the new york port authority airports are looking at deploying stateoftheart intrusion detection technology in addition to fencing because of the kinds of things that people have talked about the fence can be cut you want to have a technology tied into camera systems that will alert cameras and patrols if there is an intrusion we deploy extensively in the subway tunnels intrusion detection in key tunnels and particularly underwater tunnels  i mean it has got to be one of the largest targets out there mister sammon jfk is mister chaffetz the committee would appreciate more understanding from their perspective of why this project is hyears behind schedule i understand there is a local component but from the tsa side that would be  much appreciated at los angeles international airport lax an airport official noted that although the current mile perimeter fence complies with federal regulations that it has been built in stages of the past decade it has no one consistent security  vary based upon where the location of the airport is what the surrounding geography is mister chaffetz are there standards for all those various components mister sammon those standards are againh what we have doneh the work i showed the committee earlier today in terms of developing what thoseh for each airport based upon their were concerned about the variety of players involved multiple layered ports multiple industry stakeholders tsa had more of an indirect oversight role and we thought it was important to come up with an overall game plan to unify the current and ninety eight standards are more stringent than anything in the world and that there is a plan to update incrementally machines that are out there in phases to the two thousand and ten standard that is my understanding m the opportunity for a second round of questioning again i want to start with the actual topic thath we have kind of gone into a whole lot of areas here perimeter security once you are within the perimeter of the airport there is a real potential of you being able to do some damage what is being done to address much more ease of access to the tarmac area from those involved in general aviation as opposed to those in commercial aviation for instance i drive into the general aviation area to board my friend's private plane and then i wander over and sneak something on a plane a commercial plane mister sammon the first thing we have done about two years anyone else on the facility if you are there mister farenthold all right it seems likeh again i am just speaking from what appears to me to be common sense that there really ought to be a focus on the ground staff that doesn't go up in the airplanes  detection you know before i was elected to congress i actually had time to watch tv and watch lie to me is this really a science that works or is it a pseudoscience you mentioned that we were able to apprehend hundreds of criminals have we seen any positive results of that in apprehending anybody with contraband at the airport mister sammon we did i believe it was in orlando several years ago a person had actually explosive material in his bags he attempted to get them onto the belt he was would like to respectfully disagree with mr hsammon on that i'm not sure he was detected through the bdo program he had such an unusual appearance i think he alarmed the passengers waiting in line and a ticket agent may  alerted locals i'm not sure that was truly a bdo behavior detection success also as i recall from reading his case file he is an iraqi war veteran suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder and wasn't on his no scientific support but i need to say that there has not been serious research into this so that by itself doesn't prove that it doesn't stand in empiric terms i think that at least those airports here in the for some reason i were to become president tomorrow and i appointed you the head of the tsa what are the top five changes you would make to improve security and improve the efficiency of the system can you list maybe five off the top of your head  the ability to talk to those very few passengers that we find as highrisk passengers based on our earlier analysis and not just search them but also talk to them and interview them to a level that would provide us with more information mister farenthold it is really interesting i did this just kind of as a thought experiment and i will just give youh i walkedh i went from corpus christi to washington d c without saying anything other than thank you to a person at the airport that was it no interaction beyond saying thank you to people who helped me mister ron this is a critical point because i think that the lack of contact between the securityh between the security people and the passengers is one of our greatest shortcomings because we just focus on items and that is doomed to failure because the technology that we have at this point is not good enough to provide us with a reasonable level of detection  challenge is to have information that differentiates people one group of people or individuals from the larger group and getting that as he said that information prior to their arrival at the airport right now we know we know their name we know their date of birth and we know kind of where they are coming from and where they are going through we can't even through secure flight track where they have been for the past three years so it ish right now we are in the situation of looking at how do we do  providing us a copy of each of the incident reports i know it is a massive amount of paper but we would like to pour through those and we would appreciate it if you would provide those to us mister chaffetz we would also like to have a briefing on this riskbased approach it is something that you had offered security inspectors or tsis as it's referred to in a lot of the documents how many of them are there and i know that they can impose civil penalties so how many civil penalties have we imposed over the years i don't know what time frame to ask buth mister sammon i think that would be a good request in terms of sammon again with the committee and all committees in congress is to support and work with administrator pistole as he goes forward with the riskbased security he is definitely focused in that direction and it is going to takeh there are going to be challenges as we referred to in terms of information how do we go forward but he definitely is going in this direction and i would say to give him the benefit of the doubt and work with him in terms of where he is trying to go i would just like to say on behalf of gao we stand ready to support the committee's efforts to oversee tsa's effort to move to more of riskbased approach i agree with mr hron we need to spend more time worrying about dangerous people compliance issues we were in full compliance with all of the regulations what i would like to see is a collaborative partnership between us and the tsa to address the real balance between the airport facility security and the passenger and bag screening operation because right now we are spending most of our efforts on the front door when the back door is not it takes a lot of time and effort in preparation of your testimony and for you being here today we do appreciate it and thank you and i wish you the best our mutual goal on both sides of the aisle is to make this country as safe and secure as possible