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95–114 2004

AVIATION SECURITY: PROGRESS AND

PROBLEMS IN PASSENGER BAGGAGE SCREENING

(108–51)

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON

AVIATION

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

TRANSPORTATION AND

INFRASTRUCTURE

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

FEBRUARY 12, 2004

Printed for the use of the

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

(
COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin, Vice-Chair

SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan

JACK QUINN, New York

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

SUE W. KELLY, New York

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana

ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey

JERRY MORAN, Kansas

GARY G. MILLER, California

JIM DEMINT, South Carolina

DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska

JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina

ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois

DENNIS R. REHBERG, Montana

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

SAM GRAVES, Missouri

MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas

CHRIS CHOCOLA, Indiana

BOB BEAUPREZ, Colorado

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas

MAX BURNS, Georgia

STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

VACANCY

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia

WILLIAM O. LIPINSKI, Illinois

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JERROLD NADLER, New York

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey

CORRINE BROWN, Florida

BOB FILNER, California

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD,

California

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania

NICK LAMPSON, Texas

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington

SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada

BRAD CARSON, Oklahoma

JIM MATHESON, Utah

MICHAEL M. HONDA, California

RICK LARSEN, Washington

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York

JULIA CARSON, Indiana

JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania

MIKE THOMPSON, California

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine

LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee

(II)
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AVIATION

JOHN L. MICA, Florida, Chairman

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

JACK QUINN, New York

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama

SUE W. KELLY, New York

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey

JERRY MORAN, Kansas

JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois

DENNIS R. REHBERG, Montana

SAM GRAVES, Missouri

MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota

BUD SHUSTER, Pennsylvania

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas

CHRIS CHOCOLA, Indiana, Vice Chairman

BOB BEAUPREZ, Colorado

STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

VACANCY

DON YOUNG, Alaska

(Ex Officio)

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa

WILLIAM O. LIPINSKI, Illinois

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey

CORRINE BROWN, Florida

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD,

California

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania

SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada

BRAD CARSON, Oklahoma

JIM MATHESON, Utah

MICHAEL M. HONDA, California

RICK LARSEN, Washington

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia

BOB FILNER, California

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota

(Ex Officio)

(III)

(V)

CONTENTS

TESTIMONY

Page

Berrick, Cathleen A., Director, Homeland Security and Justice Division, U.S.

General Accounting Office ................................................................................... 11

Blank, Tom, Assistant Administrator for Transportation Security Policy,

Transportation Security Administration ............................................................ 11

Gittens, Angela, Aviation Director, Miami-Dade Aviation Department ............. 39

Hauptli, Todd, Senior Executive Vice President, American Association of Airport Executives ..................................................................................................... 39

Jensen, Tom, President and CEO, National Safe Skies Alliance ........................ 39

Null, Randy, Chief Technology Officer, Transportation Security Administration ........................................................................................................................ 11

Plavin, David Z., President, Airports Council International, North America .... 39

Walker, Randy, Director, McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas, NV ...... 39

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES

Berrick, Cathleen A ................................................................................................. 53

Gittens, Angela ........................................................................................................ 93

Hauptli, Todd ........................................................................................................... 133

Jensen, Tom ............................................................................................................. 110

McHale, Stephen J. (submitted by Tom Blank) .................................................... 119

Plavin, David Z ........................................................................................................ 133

Walker, Randy ......................................................................................................... 144

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Blank, Tom, Assistant Administrator for Transportation Security Policy,

Transportation Security Administration:

Responses to questions from Rep. LoBiondo ...................................................... 129

Responses to questions from Rep. Tauscher ...................................................... 130

Oberstar, Hon. James L., a Representative in Congress from Minnesota,

statement recognizing the service of David Schaffer ........................................ 131

ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD

Air Transport Association of America, statement ................................................. 150

Letter to Hon. David M. Stone, Acting Administrator, Transportation Security

Administration, from Senator Reid of Nevada, Senator John Ensign of

Nevada, Rep. Jim Gibbons of Nevada, Representative Shelley Berkley of

Nevada, and Representative Jon Porter of Nevada, February 9, 2004 ........... 156

Consumer Electronics Association, Gary Shapiro, President and CEO, letter,

February 11, 2004 ................................................................................................ 158

Las Vegas Review-Journal, Frank Curren, ′′Travelers Endure Airport

Gridlock′′, January 12, 2004 ................................................................................ 160

Photographs from McCarran Airport ..................................................................... 162

L3 Communications, statement .............................................................................. 165

(1)

AVIATION SECURITY: PROGRESS AND PROBLEMS IN PASSENGER BAGGAGE SCREENING

Thursday, February 12, 2004

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON

AVIATION, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:09 a.m. in room

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John L. Mica [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.

Mr. MICA. Good morning.

I would like to call this hearing of the House Aviation Subcommittee to order.

Today, we have two panels of witnesses on the subject of ‘‘Aviation Security: The Progress and Problems in Passenger Baggage

Screening.’’ The order of business will be opening statements by

members and then we will introduce our panelists and hopefully

move the hearing along. We appreciate your joining us. I will start

with my opening statement.

It has been more than two years since Congress passed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. That Act established the

Transportation Security Administration and set some very tight

deadlines in which to set up new passenger and bagging screening

systems. Secretary Mineta, Secretary Ridge, Deputy Secretary

Jackson, Admiral Loy and everyone at TSA, the Department of

Transportation and Homeland Security who helped meet those

deadlines should be commended for their work and hard efforts to

meet the mandates imposed by Congress.

Unfortunately, in the rush to meet its congressionally mandated

deadlines, I am afraid TSA created a monolithic bureaucracy that

unfortunately has shown an inability to adapt and keep pace with

the ever changing demands of our aviation industry. The airline industry fortunately is finally on the rebound and many fear now because of the structure and problems we have had with TSA that

the Transportation Security Administration as currently structured

and manned is not capable of handling the projected growth that

we are now seeing in returned commercial passenger traffic.

In some areas and airports we have had reports that checkpoint

lines are growing. Screener attrition rates and vacancies for those

positions are climbing. At numerous airports, TSA screening positions remain unfilled. Training and background checks are, in some

instances, missing and key airport hubs are left in limbo.

For example, TSA has only 2,250 of the 2,405 screeners authorized for Los Angeles International Airport on its payroll. Hundreds

of TSA screeners are unable to report to duty due to military leave,
2

sick leave, maternity leave or injured on duty status. I visited Los

Angeles Airport during our past recess and I was told that on any

given day, LAX has had a screener shortage of 20 to 25 percent.

You may recall LAX was one of those airports at which we had

some threats during the holiday. So it is a concern when you have

that number of screeners and professionals missing.

In addition to its 45,000 screeners, TSA has deployed a small

army of management and support personnel. That doesn’t mention

the dozens of contractors and subcontractors that make up their

new bureaucracy. The huge TSA bureaucracy has created layers of

costly administrators that unfortunately may make it impossible in

its current form to ever make TSA effective or manageable.

Airports and even the TSA-employed Federal Security directors

are clamoring for more local control. After two years, it is clearly

time for TSA to review its operations and prepare for the coming

transition which is set out in law. In November of this year, I

might remind committee members, under our TSA law, airports

will have the ability to opt out. They will still be under TSA direction, still wear the TSA uniform and have TSA training and oversight, but airports can opt out in November. It is very vital that

TSA have in place prior to November, we don’t want to get to November and try to figure out what we are going to do in this transition. It is absolutely vital that TSA have protocols and procedures

and arrangements to ensure a smooth transition.

Another thing that is a great concern to me and members of this

committee is the lack of progress on next generation screening and

explosive detection technology. That delay puts us further behind

in addressing security threats and reducing our army of screening

personnel. I was particularly disturbed to learn that some $60 million of $75 million appropriated in fiscal year 2003 on explosive detection equipment was diverted to pay TSA salaries.

It should be of concern to this committee that we are not one iota

closer to routinely screening passengers and their carry-on baggage

for explosives. I view that as one of our most serious risks and potential threats. Additionally, we continue to have problems completing the integrated checked baggage system. To date, we have

only eight fully installed systems in the entire bank of 429 airports

and not all 429 airports are going to receive integrated checked

baggage system, the in-line checked baggage systems but we are

far from even deploying those units to our 30 major hub airports,

major passenger activity airports that carry some 70 percent of the

traveling public.

To be fair, Congress has not provided sufficient funding. This

committee in FAA reauthorization did try to be more specific in

making certain that we meet our obligations but unfortunately we

have not stepped up to the plate and that has caused TSA problems. However, in some instances, TSA has still yet to settle plans

for developing those systems at our airports at this late date. I am

very disappointed in the lack of leadership in this area. The limited

investment analysis conducted so far, clearly shows that capital investment related to in-line EDS systems significantly reduces operating costs and pays for itself in just a few years. The results this

subcommittee has seen in testing of the system both by TSA, by

the Inspector General of Homeland Security and also by GAO indi-
3

cates we are getting the greatest protection of the flying public by

having those systems and the best results in detection of dangerous

items.

Unfortunately also, I have to report to the subcommittee this

morning, and I will be reading about it in the paper tomorrow,

GAO has also come up with a preliminary report on CAPPS II. I

am told there are still problems with some seven of the eight measures, that the CAPPS Program is behind schedule. We were told

by our witnesses at the table a year ago of a different timeline and

it looks like CAPPS II which is so vital to detecting bad people and

to stop harassing millions of innocent travelers is behind schedule

and deficient to date. Of course this is a preliminary report but I

am disturbed about the lack of progress in such an important area

for aviation security.

The Federal Government spent well over $12 billion on aviation

security since TSA’s inception, yet we continue to hear about failures of the screening system. Our Nation’s aviation security must

become smarter and we must make better use of our limited resources. Unfortunately, we have no other options.

With those comments, I am pleased to yield to the Ranking

Member, Mr. DeFazio.

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I share a number of the concerns you expressed. Of particular

concern to me is the diversion of the funds for the next generation

of passenger screening technology. We are using really spiffy,

1960s, early 1970s technology at most of our checkpoints. The

screeners are doing the best they can but they are not being given

the tools they need, particularly to detect what I see as new threats

which go not to checked explosives, but explosives carried on a person or in carry-on baggage. I think it is an extraordinary disservice

to the flying public that money was diverted and we aren’t pushing

ahead. I have had numerous presentations and demonstrations of

off-the-shelf technology which seems far, far superior to the 1960s,

1970s x-ray stuff we are using today. Yet somehow between the

TSA and FAA, we are not able to either test, certify or deploy that

equipment.

The other issue the Chairman raises about personnel, I would

note that our esteemed colleagues on the Appropriations Committee picked a number out of thin air and capped the TSA at the

number of employees which was not warranted or justified by the

needs of the agency or the need to fully protect the traveling public,

driven only by budget imperatives of the Administration and the

whims of the appropriators.

That is not wise but beyond that it seems there are still significant management problems at TSA in terms of recruiting, training

and having ready positions for people to back fill when there is attrition. I would note the attrition is a tiny fraction of what it used

to be when we had the private loophole ridden system out there.

We are alarmed here at say 16 percent, but many airports were

well over 100 percent in the bad old days. I expect we will be holding hearings later this year about both the potential up side and

down side of going back to private screening companies and what

processes might be followed to get to that point in time.
4

Also I am particularly concerned that the GAO report points out,

as we had a GAO report two years ago, that we had a number of

EDS machines in airports that were not at that time being fully

utilized because the airlines could save money by not utilizing

them and having enough personnel to utilize them. They weren’t

in-line systems, so they were a bit inconvenient but still today, we

are underutilizing this technology because of either misallocation of

personnel, resources or actual lack of personnel. I am hopeful that

the witnesses can address that concern.

Bottom line, I think we have a work force that is much more professional, much more consistent than what we had previously but

we have enduring management problems and allocation problems,

perhaps some funding problems and I hope all the witnesses will

be honest today. As one who worked with the Chairman and others

to create this agency, I want to see it succeed because if doesn’t

succeed, people will die. That is not an acceptable alternative.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. Thank you.

Other opening statements? Mr. Porter?

Mr. PORTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding this important hearing today which I think is vital to this country and to my constituents in the State of Nevada. I also want to

especially thank you for inviting Randy Walker is Director of Aviation at McCarran International Airport which, by the way, is one

of the busiest airports in the country and allowing him to testify

with his firsthand experiences in Las Vegas with TSA. Randy holds

perhaps the most vital job in southern Nevada. I will fight, as I

have told him and many members of our delegation would agree,

we will fight for whatever his recommendations are to this committee.

Mr. Chairman, every year more than 23 million people arrive in

Las Vegas, Nevada by air. The entire economy of my district and

the State I represent is driven by keeping our air links with the

rest of the country open. After New York and Washington, no city

was more affected than Las Vegas after 9/11. We cannot afford another 9/11 or even the perception that another is possible. Keeping

the flying public safe and keeping the public confident of our ability

to keep them safe is essential.

At McCarran International Airport we have an able Federal Security Director, Mr. Jim Blair, who has had many years of experience in security and in the Las Vegas community who commands

more than 800 screeners. I am confident in their commitment, the

screeners and Mr. Blair and their ability to keep us safe and I am

committed to keeping our flying public safe as we are proud to

work with the Nevada delegation, Jim and Randy, to fight the prior

proposed cuts in screeners at McCarran and to get Federal funding

for the in-line baggage screening.

The flying public is safe but my constituents are not safe if TSA

cannot also accommodate the flying public in a manner that encourages people to travel. Recently, and I am sure Randy will testify to this later on this morning in more detail, a major trade

show, the Consumer Electronics Show, one of our largest conventions, had to advise its members to leave early to avoid security

delays. Lines stretched the length of the airport and literally hun-
5

dreds of people missed their flights, hundreds missed their flights.

Many participants in this event said they would not fly to Las

Vegas again. Other large events have had similar failures and

imagine if only five percent of our visiting public chose not to come

back to Las Vegas or were afraid to fly to Las Vegas, that could

be close to a $500 million hit on our economy, our bread and butter.

Every day for the TSA, the screening shift system should look

better, tougher, more secure and safer than the day before. The

customer must have a consistent experience. I know many members of this House and the other House and staff travel a lot. We

experience the different airports. There is a serious inconsistency.

As a flier myself, I have determined I don’t know what to expect

until I get to the security gate. I have no idea what to expect because every airport is different. I know as members we have heard

from constituents that have had individual problems.

Even at McCarran, we have to hire people to watch the security

people to make sure our customers can get through the gates. The

TSA experience is really the chamber of commerce, the better business bureau, the welcome wagon to every community in the country not just in Las Vegas. That is why it is so important that the

flying public has consistency and can feel safe.

My colleague, Ms. Berkley, who is here today and I ask you, Mr.

Chairman, to look into these matters. I have joined with my colleague today in contacting Admiral Stone to resolve these issues.

Again, I will fight for whatever combination of extra screeners we

need, new technology, new procedures, better training and passenger education is needed. I hope the Federal TSA absorbs the

lessons of this hearing today.

I appreciate all of you being here. Thank you.

Mr. MICA. Thank you.

Now we will get a double hit from Nevada. Ms. Berkley?

Ms. BERKLEY. I would say Nevada is ably represented today.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. DeFazio, for holding this

hearing. The number of people attending this hearing on a day that

Congress is not in session is testament to how important this issue

is to the American flying public.

Few communities, as Mr. Porter stated, are more dependent on

their local airport than Las Vegas. With nearly half of southern

Nevada’s 35 million annual visitors arriving through McCarran,

the airport is the life line of the community and the cornerstone of

our local economy. Hotels, businesses, jobs all rely on an efficient

passenger friendly airport system.

Since the beginning of the new year, wait times at McCarran

Airport security checkpoints have grown increasingly longer.

Checkpoint lanes that had been consistently processing approximately 3.5 passengers per minute have slipped in recent weeks to

an average of 2.8 passengers per minute. Visitors who come to Las

Vegas to vacation or to attend conventions stay for about two or

three days. If they are forced to wait in lines at the airport lasting

two hours or more which for some is longer than their actual time

in the air, they are going to think twice about returning to Las

Vegas for our wholesome family entertainment.
6

To help illustrate this point, I would like to share with you the

situation at McCarran Airport during the Consumer Electronics

Show last month and my colleague, Mr. Porter, has already alluded

to it. Approximately 130,000 people attended the Consumer Electronics Show and passed through McCarran. Many passengers reported waiting in lines for up to five hours. This was a flyer that

was put out during the CES show and for those of you who can’t

read it, it says, ‘‘We hope you had a great 2004 International CES.

If you are leaving by plane, please be aware that the Las Vegas

Airport authorities are advising us that security lines are up to

three or four hours long. Please plan ahead accordingly and have

a safe trip. We apologize for the inconvenience.’’

On that Sunday approximately 110,000 people passed through

McCarran, many passengers reported waiting in lines at least up

to four hours. Convention organizers passed out this flier encouraging them to plan accordingly. After the event, I talked with the

president of CES, Gary Shapiro. He told me that people who were

stuck in these lines were frustrated. Obviously he didn’t need to

tell me that. Many said they were not going to attend next year’s

convention.

To an economy that relies heavily on tourism and the convention

business, this would be a tremendous financial blow not only to our

major industry but to the hundreds of thousands of southern Nevadans who depend on our tourism-based economy. We must find

a solution to this problem. We spent millions of dollar securing our

airplanes and the area from the checkpoint to the gate but we must

also consider the security risk of having thousands of people standing in line waiting to pass through security. This provides yet another possible target for a terrorist attack.

One possible solution that should be examined is giving the Federal Security Directors at each airport flexibility so they can meet

the unique needs of the airport. They are on the ground, seeing

what is happening at the moment. They should have flexibility so

they can address the situation as they see it.

I am very pleased that Randy Walker, Director of the Clark

County Department of Aviation, is here to testify today. I have

known Randy for many, many years. He is well respected in our

community. His commitment to the Las Vegas community is extraordinary and well known. He has worked hard to meet the demands placed on the aviation community since September 11 by

being both innovative and proactive. McCarran expects to have the

initial phase of the in-line baggage screening facility up and running by the middle of this year. This system is the first of its kind

in the country.

I also would like to acknowledge the efforts of Jim Blair, the Federal Security Director at McCarran, who has worked closely with

Randy and the rest of the delegation to improve the situation at

the airport. He should be given the flexibility to address

McCarran’s unique needs.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding this very

important hearing. I look forward to listening to the testimony of

our witnesses today.

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Other members?

Mr. Beauprez?
7

Mr. BEAUPREZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As you are well aware, I represent the area immediately surrounding Denver International Airport. With the participation of

this committee and the committee staff, and NTSA representatives,

I held a meeting or summit we called it in Denver last July to address security wait times which had gotten quite excessive. As my

colleagues Mr. Porter and Ms. Berkley both expressed frustration

about Las Vegas, we had similar frustrations in Denver.

I think I actually have some good news to report. Certainly I recognize that around the country there are challenges. What came

out of the Denver International Airport experience was surprise,

surprise, the left hand wasn’t talking to the right and very well,

just not communicating and sharing passenger load information

and some of the kind of basic numbers and anticipations of when

most of the people are going to be coming through these screener

checkpoints.

The long and short of that experience is that TSA, as we all

know, was resizing—and more importantly, reshaping—their work

force at about that same time, converting from essentially a 100

percent full-time work force that was consistently staffed throughout the day regardless of passenger loads because frankly they

didn’t have passenger load information to one that incorporates the

use of a lot more part-timers, cross training of employees so that

baggage screeners at times when need be could be called up and

open additional screener lanes, some reconfiguration of how passengers were simply moved through the airport and very small

steps were taken. Most importantly, the shaping of the work force

changed so that when the airlines said we expect more passengers

to be coming through the airport, TSA knew that, staffed up,

opened more check lanes and surprise, people are being moved

through the security check lines much faster.

How much faster? Well, DIA has adopted a standard of ten minutes as the expected or the acceptable wait time. In excess of 90

percent success, those wait times have been managed to be less

than ten minutes.

Why do I say that? I wanted to thank the committee staff and

you, Mr. Chairman, for making that opportunity available to TSA

personnel for likewise participating and the airlines as well. We

had United, Frontier, our largest carriers, out there as well as

other airlines represented, the management of the airport, and

good cooperative effort in getting it done. The real point is it can

happen. I am hoping perhaps our witnesses today can give us some

assessment as to whether or not that experience which, frankly,

wasn’t rocket science but simply getting the right people together

to talk, share information and work together for the desired result,

whether or not that is happening in other places around the country.

I have experienced frustration at other airports too, including the

one nearest this building at Reagan and the unpredictable nature

of getting through those security lines frustrates us all.

Lastly, I would thank both TSA as well as this committee for our

experience in getting one of the Letters of Intent, of putting that

to use and we do have one of the six eventual modules open for our

in-line baggage screening in Denver. It is my understanding it is
8

working very well. I look forward to having in the near future another look see at how that progress is occurring out there.

Long story very short, I think we have learned much at DIA

about not only the right sizing and body count but the right shape

of a work force, we are still struggling a bit in finding an adequate

number of part-time employees, but the exchange of information

and having everybody realize airlines, airport management, TSA

personnel realize that we are in it together, that when good people

have a common purpose, they can actually accomplish the mission.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. Thank you.

For the Washington report, Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate this hearing. I was sure there would be one after the

time we have been out, given the reported concerns.

I do want to say to our witnesses that I think I can say without

fear of contradiction that we all recognize how complicated your job

is as you have had to start from nothing and build an entire agency. I hope you will understand our questions and concerns in that

context of appreciation.

I apologize that there are three hearing going on, all of them important. I did want to be here to make an opening statement. Of

course Dulles airport has been a site of repeated cancellations. I

am pleased that we are canceling flights rather than raising alerts.

That says to me that there is so kind of targeted security going on

and we need more of that.

There is concern though about why these flights are being canceled. I think it makes far better sense for TSA to say something

about why rather than, for example, let the press speculate that

there may be all kinds of bioterrorism, something people are not

particularly prepared to hear. That may not be the case but nobody

knows what the case is and I am sure you are being prudent in

canceling the flights, although I say that understanding what that

must mean to whether people are going to take flights at all from

Europe and certainly from Paris and London to Dulles if they can’t

depend upon the frequency of the flights.

Nevertheless, I have no criticism whatsoever of that because I

am sure you are doing what the security information indicates you

should be doing. If there is some kind of threat of bioterrorism in

airplanes, then you need to say there is and what you are doing

to counter it if that is the threat that is coming forward. If it is

not the threat, then you need also to say that. People expect that

there is some kind of explosives effect but the press is out here saying what it thinks. We want to hear what TSA thinks.

I am concerned about different levels of screening at different

airports. I think there may be perfectly good reasons for that but

people who travel from one airport to another and see certain kinds

of things are required in some airports and not in others, they wonder whether or not some airports are safer than others. They may

have to do the machines. I want to know if that is what it has to

do with or does it have to do with something else. There needs to

be some explanation.

Finally, you are surely aware that in December, the President

signed the FAA reauthorization. The Chairman and I have spoken
9

about this matter and though I am not here, he has said to me that

this is something we need to follow up on. In mandatory language,

Section 823 required, ‘‘The Secretary of Homeland Security shall

develop and implement a security plan to permit general aviation

aircraft to land and take off at Ronald Reagan Airport,’’ two and

a half years after 9/11. It is disgraceful that given the fact that

general aviation says we will do whatever Homeland Security says,

that at this stage you surely know what to do, that you know no

matter how stringent are the requirements, they can and will be

met. The notion of not opening general aviation at the airport of

the Nation’s capital sends a terrible, terrible message about our

ability to keep ourselves safe.

We had a secure briefing on this. It could not have been more

unconvincing. Essentially, it was all about star wars, worse case

scenarios. If you want to apply that to general aviation, you had

better start applying it to all aviation. In any case, you have no alternative now because this committee, the House and the Senate

have spoken and I hope since I have to go to another hearing that

the Chairman or others will follow up on where you are on developing that plan.

I thank you very much for coming. I apologize for not being able

to hear testimony that I think is absolutely critical. Once again, I

thank the Chairman for holding this hearing.

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentlelady and I share her concerns about

the lack of opening Ronald Reagan and will announce to you that

I hope we will do a field hearing at Ronald Reagan in the near future and will also do a closed hearing. The commitments that were

made have not been followed through and we need to make some

further progress.

Thank you. It was worth coming for this morning.

Mr. Menendez from New Jersey.

Mr. MENENDEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you

for calling the hearing. I want to associate myself with many of the

remarks you made in your opening statement.

I want to just give another element of experience in this regard.

Newark International Airport, one of the top 15 in the Nation, top

in the region, which I represent is an example of failures of the

TSA. In May of last year, I sent a letter to Admiral Loy outlining

several issues that needed to be addressed at Newark Liberty

International Airport and almost a year later, little has been done

to address my concerns.

Clearly inadequate staffing is part of our problem. Recent press

reports cite that TSA is short about 100 full-time screeners to fully

staff the bomb detection machines and other security posts. Despite

the 2003 deadline, TSA has acknowledged that it is not yet electronically screening 100 percent of luggage for explosives. It is my

understanding that at Newark Airport the TSA frequently is able

to only staff 14 of the 23 bomb detection machines. So I would love

to hear what is the reason for this grossly inadequate staffing. It

is clearly unacceptable. It is clearly unacceptable when one of the

flights that took place on September 11 came out of Newark International Airport.

Secondly, we gave authorization to the TSA for the ability to hire

part-time screeners at Newark. I don’t get the sense that has been
10

used to its utmost flexibility we have given TSA, in order to try to

meet the challenge.

A second issue that we raised that still remains unaddressed is

that passengers at Newark routinely experience peak period

screening wait times that far exceed the TSA desired standard of

ten minutes. I know this is a fact as someone who has traveled

through the airport every week, sometimes multiple times. During

peak travel periods, line waits at Newark check points extend well

beyond 30 minutes and at times can be up to one hour. Now we

are coming into March, the beginning of a peak travel season, and

I would really like to see how we are going to deal with that.

Existing security checkpoint configurations contribute to the

longer passenger screening line waits and TSA has not upgraded

all of the many screening points in the three passenger terminals

to meet the current TSA standard configuration. The new standard

configuration includes an enlarged holding area that has been observed to increase screening capacity by as much as 20 percent.

Why have we not done that?

Finally, in May, I along with several of my colleagues in the New

Jersey delegation warned that unless aggressive action is taken

now, that was in May of last year, the delays and inconvenience

experienced and the risk will get worse as the attrition occurs, as

many of the CTEX and ETD machines continue to remain idle and

it appears that our worse fears as stated last May have become

true.

This is unacceptable. One of the top 15 airports in the Nation,

top in the region, incredible density with a history of September 11,

it is simply not acceptable.

I look forward to the testimony, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. Thank you. I want to associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from New Jersey.

I think there are no further opening statements at this time, so

let me introduce our witnesses. Our first panel is Mr. Tom Blank,

Assistant Administrator for Transportation Security Policy, TSA,

accompanied by Dr. Randy Null, Chief Technology Officer, TSA and

to give us some of the background and information relating to the

GAO report released on February 12 and this particular topic of

progress and problems in passenger baggage screening, Cathleen

Berrick, Director, Homeland Security and Justice Division, U.S.

General Accounting Office.

Welcome to our panelists. Let me say before I recognize you, I

guess Mr. Blank is going to testify and you are back-up. You are

very fortunate today that Congress is in recess because you have

only heard a sampling of what I hear every day when I go to the

floor. Unfortunately, members of Congress, almost 95 percent of

them, fly into Washington, our Nation’s Capital or the surrounding

areas every week, so they see firsthand what is going on. I have

been deluged.

This hearing is going to be followed, gentlemen, and you can tell

the Acting Administrator, with a meeting of a sampling of two

dozen airports. I only have two picked out today to testify. We have

Las Vegas and you heard a little of that story but we are going to

have about two dozen airports in for a roundtable in Washington

for a Congressional session in the next few weeks. We are going to
11

have to do that soon because we have so many problems at so

many airports that you are only getting a sampling both of members today and from two airports. I would just prepare you in advance for that.

Mr. Blank, you are welcome and recognized.

TESTIMONY OF TOM BLANK, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR

TRANSPORTATION SECURITY POLICY, TRANSPORTATION

SECURITY ADMINISTRATION; RANDY NULL, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION; AND CATHLEEN A. BERRICK, DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY AND JUSTICE DIVISION, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Mr. BLANK. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Congressman

DeFazio, and members of the subcommittee.

Today, my colleague, Mr. Null and I would like to focus on TSA’s

extensive efforts to develop new aviation security technologies and

the progress we are making in improving and measuring screening

performance.

TSA has established an aggressive research and development

program to develop and deploy new security technologies. The

President’s 2005 budget request, $99 million in funds dedicated to

TSA’s applied R&D and next generation explosives detection systems programs. Technology can help make TSA’s screening operations more efficient, less costly and most importantly, more effective. I would like to invite the members of the subcommittee to

visit TSA’s state-of-the-art research laboratory in Atlantic City,

New Jersey. A number of screening and other security technologies

are under development, including an explosives detection portal for

passengers to determine if explosives are being carried on an individual’s person, document scanners to detect trace amounts of explosives materials on items such as boarding passes and scanners

for better screening of casts and prosthetic devices. We are also developing explosives detection systems for carry-on baggage and improving technology for screening liquids.

TSA is hard at work to develop the next generation EDS for

checked baggage screening to increase throughput, improve detection capabilities and lower false positive alarm rates. At the same

time, we are working with vendors to develop systems that will detect explosives in smaller amounts and occupy a smaller footprint

in airports.

To date, in Jacksonville, Florida, the airport’s state-of-the-art, inline EDS system is piloting an on-screen alarm resolution protocol

that could be deployed at more airports this fall. We are also piloting a baggage tracking system in Jacksonville using the latest in

radio frequency identification technology.

To date, six letters of intent have been issued for in-line checked

baggage screening systems and we anticipate issuing additional

LOIs as funds allow. To boost airport terminal security, TSA has

awarded $7.9 million to airports to support a wide array of surveillance, sensor and other technologies. In addition, our Airport Access Control Pilot Program will test state-of-the-art technologies in

partnership with airport operators who have volunteered to be par-
12

ticipants. We expect to initiate and complete ten airport access control projects by the end of the year.

In addition, TSA has made significant progress in carrying out

its screening improvement plan. Today, 98 percent of all checkpoint

security lanes are equipped with x-ray machines with a 2400 image

threat, image protection or TIP Library. TIP for baggage screening

is under development as well. This new system continuously exposes screeners to the most current threats including improvised

explosive devices. TIP is an excellent tool for evaluating individual

screener skills so that we can focus directly on areas needing improvement. Deployment of the TIP system will help us collect and

analyze significant amounts of performance data that have not

been previously available to us.

Network connectivity has been established in 71 airports and

TSA is moving forward to deliver connectivity to all airport locations to bride the gap. Until this achieved, TSA has launched a secure TIP data collection and reporting website. Federal Security Directors will have access to performance reports based on February

TIP data including reports at the individual screener level. To

maintain and improve screening performance TSA also places a

strong emphasis on recurrent screener training and supervisory

training.

Over 550 inert modular bomb sets and weapons training kits

have been deployed to airports. We have established an excellence

in screener performance video training series and production is underway on a series of web and computer-based screener training

products. Our on-line learning center is now available to screeners

and we have sent more than 2,000 screening supervisors to introductory leadership training. That is about two-thirds of the full supervisor work force.

While using every means to enhance screener skills and equipment, TSA continually tests and challenges screeners. Special operations teams use intelligence reports and training on advanced

screening technology to create challenging protocols to test checkpoints and checked baggage. These teams provide immediate feedback on the results of their tests and other data affecting airport

security. Tests are reenacted in post-test interviews to share results and guidance with additional screeners and FSDs. TSA covert

testing has increased nationwide and over 50 airports have been

tested in just the last three months. Since September 2002, the

overall pass rate for checkpoint testing has steadily improved. This

is a three to one increase in this kind of testing over FAA.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and with that, I will suspend for any

questions you may have.

Mr. MICA. Thank you and we will now hear from Cathleen

Berrick with GAO. Welcome and you are recognized.

Ms. BERRICK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman DeFazio

and members of the committee for inviting me to participate in today’s hearing to discuss airport passenger and baggage screening.

My testimony today is based on our preliminary observations

from our ongoing reviews of TSA’s passenger and baggage screening programs and research and development efforts. In particular,

my testimony highlights TSA’s efforts to hire and deploy passenger

and baggage screeners, train the screener work force, measure
13

screener performance in detecting threat objects and leveraging

and deploying screening equipment and technologies.

TSA has successfully reduced its trainer work force below the

congressionally imposed cap of 45,000 full-time equivalent screeners. However, staffing shortages have hindered TSA’s ability to full

staff screening checkpoints without using additional measures such

as overtime. Difficulties in hiring part-time screeners and a sometimes lengthy hiring process have also contributed to staffing shortages. TSA has initiated several efforts to try to correct screener imbalances including hiring a consultant to study screener staffing

levels and establishing a national screening force to fill in when

necessary.

Regarding screener training, TSA has made considerable

progress in strengthening its basic recurrent and remedial training

programs. For example, beginning in April 2004, TSA will cross

train all newly hired screeners to perform both passenger and baggage screening functions. Despite this progress, staffing shortages

have hindered the ability of all screeners to attend developed training. At five of the large 15, Category X airports we visited, Federal

Security Directors state that due to staffing shortages, their screeners were unable to attend all required training because they were

needed to man screening checkpoints.

TSA has also undertaken several initiatives to measure the performance of its passenger screeners in detecting threat objects, including increasing the number of covert tests it conducts at screening checkpoints and enhancing and deploying additional threat

image projection systems. However, we found that TSA continues

to face challenges in conducting 100 percent screening of checked

baggage using explosive detection systems or explosive trace detection equipment. Although TSA made progress in deploying this

equipment some airports are not able to use all equipment due to

insufficient staff or not having enough equipment or the equipment

being out of service for maintenance or repairs.

Based on our preliminary analysis, we found that a number of

airports have recently reported they are not conducting 100 percent

screening of checked baggage using explosive detection systems or

explosive trace detection equipment primarily due to shortages of

trained staff.

Finally, TSA continues to invest in research and development of

technologies to improve passenger and baggage screening. The majority of these technologies are scheduled to be deployed during the

next two to five years. As CSA moves forward with its R&D program, it will be important for the to balance funding for R&D with

competing priorities and maintain their schedule while planning

for a merger with the Department’s Science and Technology Directorate.

We will continue to review TSA’s efforts to stabilize the screener

work force and enhance screening operations and technologies during the remainder of our review.

This concludes my opening statement. I would be happy to respond to any questions at the appropriate time.

Mr. MICA. Thank you.

We will start with questions but before we get to questions, I

don’t want to forget to do this. A couple of members will probably
14

leave and catch planes like Mr. Beauprez who is leaving. I want

to take a minute for members and staff that are here to recognize

the service of David Schaffer. This is probably his last Aviation

Subcommittee hearing. He has announced his retirement. He has

had some 26 years I think of total Federal service. He has been on

the committee for many years. He has been gracious enough and

he never told me until after we finished the FAA reauthorization,

maybe that forced him into retirement, but incredible public service. He has been Staff Director and Chief Counsel of the Aviation

Subcommittee even back to the Civil Aeronautics Board. He has

done an incredible job. I wish the rest of the members were here

to express our appreciation, but thank you, David, for all you have

done, for your good work and putting up with me and our committee. David Schaffer.

[Applause.]

Mr. MICA. That was the nice part about the hearing, but we do

appreciate David.

Now, unfortunately, let me turn to questions. I am disappointed

that Steven McHale, the Deputy Administrator, couldn’t be with us

today. I think he broke a limb or something and I had nothing to

do with it, and he sent Mr. Blank and Mr. Null, both qualified to

respond. We do have some very serious problems with the operation of the TSA.

As I said before, if Congress were in session, we would probably

have another two hours of opening statements, so I guess we have

been fortunate in some regard. We have a number of very, very serious problems with the operation of the screening system, some

which were pointed out by GAO.

I will give you one example. I left Orlando this weekend, and we

heard from the Representatives from Las Vegas of their experience,

and I saw long lines. This is one of our busiest, if not the busiest

week in Orlando. We have the Daytona 500, we have the spring

break and I saw the lines and fortunately I got there early. I called

the Federal Security Director and he said they currently have 124

vacancies in Orlando. I said, what is the problem and he said, well,

I have asked one interim step in Washington fill these vacancies.

What is the problem with filling the vacancies as far as training,

background checks and getting these people on-line?

Mr. BLANK. We have to make a transition to local control to solve

this problem in the long term. We stood up an agency and we needed to centralize or hiring, training and background check functions

because the infrastructure to conduct this activity at an airport by

airport basis was not in place. That is why we used the national

contractor, that is why we used a centralized control to get this

45,000 person work force in the field.

Now we are faced with a new management challenge and it is

not to build or deploy that work force but to sustain it. In order

to sustain it, we have to change our management approach and we

are committed to doing that. The headquarters focus is now becoming a focus on supporting the field rather than ordering around or

managing the field. We need and are committed to getting to a

place where a Federal Security Director is able to recruit, hire and

train that local work force because they know the local the best,

they know how to recruit and put that together.
15

Mr. MICA. I agree on that. When do you think that will be in

place?

Mr. BLANK. We are committed to getting there as quickly as we

possibly can. We are already beginning to involve the FSDs in the

current process of interviewing and selection. I know the Acting

Administrator is committed to doing it and as quickly as we can

get there, I would suspect that would take a matter of months until

we can have this outside the headquarters.

Mr. MICA. Let me ask another question. You heard my testimony

that I was concerned about diverting money from the R&D program, and I will get into some questions with Mr. Null about that,

to using that money for personnel. I am told within the last 24

hours there is a carryover of somewhere between $120 million and

some $400 million from the last fiscal year to this fiscal year. Are

you aware of that?

Mr. BLANK. I am aware there is some carry over, I am not aware

of the specifics.

Mr. MICA. I want to know before the close of business tomorrow

what the carryover is and if it is $120 million or $400 million, we

took money out of research and development and I absolutely

would be astounded about having that money when I have airports

that don’t have commitments to finish installation or even start installation of much better EDS equipment which actually once it is

installed, an in-line system will reduce the cost dramatically of personnel. Isn’t that correct?

Mr. BLANK. That is correct.

Mr. MICA. I want by the close of business, and nobody is to go

home at TSA tomorrow until I get it, an accounting of those dollars. I am just stunned to hear that.

Mr. Null, I have heard now for two years that we are going to

develop new technologies, both for passenger screening and better

EDS equipment. I believe we have in this current budget that was

just approved $155 million for development of next generation technology. How many contracts do we have ready to go to sign with

the private sector? I know TSA can’t develop anything in-house,

you have to do it with someone who has the expertise. How many

contracts do we have ready to go today with the private sector to

develop new technology?

Mr. NULL. I would have to get the exact number but we are in

the 20 to 25 contracts with 2004 funds this year and there were

approximately 10 next generation EDS last year.

Mr. MICA. I am told also that the Safe Skies Alliance, which tests

some of the passenger screening equipment, has been prepared to

deploy and test some next generation or combination of technology

passenger screening equipment. Where are we with that effort?

Mr. NULL. We certainly appreciate the Safe Skies efforts because

they are our key partner in terms of piloting new technologies.

Mr. MICA. Yes, and we are funding a large part of their operation.

Mr. NULL. Absolutely. We continue to use them.

Mr. MICA. Where are we with the next generation passenger

screening?

Mr. NULL. The components of the consolidated checkpoints are

all in our labs under evaluation, we have the latest trace portal in
16

last week that has corrected a lot of the issues. That will go into

pilot in the airports within the next two months. We will get the

latest document scanners in the next two to three months, we have

a manual one. The automated one will be in the three to four

month range. We have new shoe screeners that are in-house, we

have new bottle screening for liquid detection capability. All of

those will be going into the pilot phases in the airports in the next

three to four months.

Mr. MICA. We still do not have a set of your plans either for your

intent to contract, I don’t care who the contractors are, nor do we

have anything on your schedule on developing passenger screening

equipment, next generation.

Mr. NULL. Yes, sir. Those road maps are in process right now

and will be completed in the next two weeks. That is the commitment I have given to your staff that we will have those in your

hands in two weeks.

Mr. MICA. One of the things that also concerns me, and we had

a closed session yesterday on this but Ms. Norton spoke about it,

is the lack of coordination between our alert and what goes on at

the airports and then how it affects flights. I heard just this morning of additional flights canceled. What I heard yesterday behind

closed doors did not impress me as far as our having a watch list

together which we still do not have, an integrated watch list and

I know that is beyond some of your capability but it is still under

Homeland Security now, about development of the CAPPS system

which we are going to get a very negative report on which is also

important to identifying bad people instead of harassing millions of

innocent travelers. I am very concerned about the progress we have

made in getting an integrated watch list, coordinating with these

alerts and then having in place a system that identifies bad guys.

Do you want to respond, Mr. Blank?

Mr. BLANK. Yes. With regard to watchlists, the Terrorist Screening Center is charged with doing that integration. That is currently

housed at the Department of Justice I believe but they are working

across multiple agencies, the Department of State, the intelligence

community.

Mr. MICA. Do you have any idea when that will be in place?

Mr. BLANK. I don’t. We could provide that to the committee but

it is the Terrorist Screening Center.

With regard to the flights of interest, it is important to note that

it is not the Department of Homeland Security or TSA that is canceling those flights. These matters are being handled government

to government. We are in close partnership with our counterparts,

the Transportation Security Agency in other nations and these determinations are made really out of the context of that partnership.

If I may comment briefly on CAP II, we acknowledge and agree

with much of what is in the report from GAO. I would say, however, that what we are encouraged about is the fact that we are

taking our time to get this right. This has to be a transparent program, we have to build confidence in it, we have to have both the

American public, the Congress and privacy organizations fully understand what it is about. So taking our time in the long term we

think will be beneficial.
17

Mr. MICA. This subcommittee has been very supportive of coming

up with a passenger profiling system but we want one that doesn’t

discriminate, one that protects privacy, and so forth. We are going

to be three years into the process and there is nothing except a bad

report that is coming out tomorrow on the progress of that. Furthermore, the whole system doesn’t work until we are able to identify bad people, so we don’t have a watchlist, we don’t have a passenger identification system in place and we don’t have coordination between our alerts. Again, it appears to me there is a breakdown. There is no system to begin, we just don’t have this together

and it is pretty disturbing at this stage.

I will probably get another shot, I don’t want to monopolize all

the time. Let me turn right now to Mr. DeFazio for questions and

then we will do another round.

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In discussing CAPPS, which is not the subject of this hearing but

will be the subject of a subsequent hearing, I was a little surprised

Mr. Blank when you said that it is going to be a transparent program. As I understand, it isn’t going to be transparent to those who

are chosen for additional screening or denial of service. In fact, the

only parameters made available to them will be the parameters

they provided to the airline and whatever the database found won’t

be provided to them but you are going to set up some sort of process where you supposedly have an ombudsperson. It is going to be

worse than dealing with the credit card companies when they

screw up your credit card records as far as I can tell. You will have

less information available. At least they have to give you the information and then you can try and correct it, which they are very

reluctant to do. In this case, I am being told you won’t even be

given the information that was supposedly found about you and

they are you service. How does that translate to transparent?

Mr. BLANK. Transparent means a couple of things. First of all,

we will have a redress system that will allow anyone who feels

they have been singled out wrongfully to have that situation reviewed and have them cleared if there is not a reason to be concerned about them.

Mr. DEFAZIO. But they won’t be able to look at the data that actually denied them the service. They will be able to complain to

someone who will say I will go look at it.

Mr. BLANK. We very likely will not have the data because we are

not creating a database that we are going to maintain. It will be

a one time risk score. We will have the information technology well

overseen by experts as well as privacy experts will oversee to see

that we are in accordance with all Privacy Act requirements.

Mr. DEFAZIO. We will get into CAPPS at another hearing but I

think the flip side of dealing with CAPPS is there is a very small

percentage of people that constitute a very large number of passengers on an annual basis. They are the highest revenue passengers for the airlines, they are critical to the future of the industry, they are people generally conducting business who don’t just

fly occasionally. We have been asking for three years to set up

some sort of a trusted traveler program so that you can move those

people out of the potential suspect list through a voluntary background check which they pay for themselves which would be man-
18

dated and conducted by the Government or under contract by the

Government, given biometric or other non-counterfeitable cards, we

could have had that in place now while you are still struggling

with CAPPS. I am disturbed that we aren’t making any progress

on that. Are we making any progress on that?

Mr. BLANK. We are making progress.

Mr. DEFAZIO. What is the progress? Tell me what is the

progress?

Mr. BLANK. We are committed to undertaking a pilot program

this year. We have a proposal for one that is being reviewed at the

Departmental level.

Mr. DEFAZIO. What is the pilot program?

Mr. BLANK. Our approach to this has been to say that we have

a wide area of responsibility in credentials. CAPPS II is one of

those, the transportation worker identification credential is one of

those. Those are both inherently governmental and with regard to

registered traveler, we don’t feel the Government is in the position

to be offering retail type of credentials the way airlines do with frequent flyer programs. So our pilot program envisions working with

people that have expertise in retail credentials, which are the airlines, to be able to see how this works at a checkpoint in a set

number of paired cities.

Mr. DEFAZIO. As I understand, the airlines are extremely reluctant and I totally disagree with the approach. I would put the approach at the individual level. It would be like my concealed weapons permit. For a concealed weapon permit, I pay for and undergo

an FBI background check which is certified by my local sheriff and

then I am issued the permit. I am thinking of something much

more along those lines. The airlines, after being burned on participating and providing passenger data for CAPPS II are not going to

want to participate in this program, and it seems like a particularly bizarre and baroque way to get there.

If you put out a call for any and all frequent fliers who want to

apply who would pay for their own background check tomorrow,

which could be conducted by the FBI, the Government or under

contract to the Government to be issued a Government-backed ID

like mine which is State-backed in terms of a concealed weapons

permit, you would have probably a million volunteers tomorrow. No

bureaucracy, no nothing and you go out and conduct the background checks and you set up the system. I think the approach

here is particularly arcane but let us get to a couple other issues.

I would like to ask a question about the issue of what I see in

terms of the checking of baggage. Apparently because of either lack

of personnel or lack of equipment, we aren’t meeting the 100 percent of the time mandate and apparently there are some discrepancies in the reporting between those confidentially reported airports and those that GAO found that are not meeting the requirements. Is that correct?

Ms. BERRICK. Yes, Congressman DeFazio. First of all, we looked

at TSA’s information management system that they use to collect

data at the airports and some of the data they collect is related to

electronic screening of checked baggage. We found there were a

number of airports that weren’t conducting 100 percent of electronic screening, using explosive detection systems or explosive
19

trace detection. The primary reason was a lack of staff. Other reasons included lack of staff that had the appropriate training, some

airports are still reporting they don’t have enough EDS or ETD

equipment and some of the equipment was inoperable because it

was undergoing maintenance or repairs. So there were still some

airports that were not reporting.

In terms of the discrepancies with the monthly report that TSA

provides to Congress, we spoke to TSA about that and their response was that their report to Congress focused on the deployment of the equipment rather than the utilization. So that is why

they said they weren’t picking up some additional airports that we

found.

Mr. DEFAZIO. I will be discussing that with the Chairman and

I hope we could ask that in the future the reporting be on whether

or not it is being conducted, not whether or not we have acquired

the theoretical capability of doing it. I think that would be a more

useful measure on a month to month basis on how the airport is

actually performing.

If they aren’t doing the electronic screening, is one of the ways

in which an airport can let flights go and clear them the positive

bag match?

Ms. BERRICK. Yes, that is one.

Mr. DEFAZIO. May I ask, in an era of frequent daily suicide bomb

attacks, what good does it do us, in fact perhaps the terrorists

would be pleased to know that their bag was on board and hadn’t

been misloaded on another plane or lost in the airport to explode

in the baggage handling area. What do we get out of positive baggage match in the era of suicide bombers?

Ms. BERRICK. That is definitely the vulnerability with positive

bag match.

Mr. DEFAZIO. Could I ask Mr. Blank and Mr. Null, do you think

it is time for Congress to repeal the authority to let flights go because we are now assured that the baggage of all the passengers

is on board?

Mr. BLANK. I would like to respond in this fashion. I would like

to say that we do not agree with the GAO finding with regard to

how many airports are not using 100 percent. The primary source

of the GAO data is our performance management system which is

raw data and it is not instructive unless it is analyzed. You may

have an instance in real time where a machine is not being used

because it is down for maintenance. That may be reported in there.

Mr. DEFAZIO. I am somewhat supportive here, but would you

agree that the standard should be not whether the theoretical capability exists, but rather on a monthly basis the standard was

met? Is that a fair measure?

Mr. BLANK. That is certainly a fair measure.

Mr. DEFAZIO. No matter what the cause, whether the machine

is down, whether the people are sick, the electricity was off, whatever. Would you agree that ought to be the reporting standard?

Mr. BLANK. I would agree that ought to be the reporting standard but if a machine is down for one day out of a month for maintenance purposes or because the screeners were sick that day and

couldn’t be deployed, then it ought to be on that monthly report.
20

Mr. DEFAZIO. It could say for 29 days we met, for one day we

didn’t, here are the reasons, right? That doesn’t seem to be too

much of a burden to me.

Mr. BLANK. No, but that data is the data that GAO reviewed to

make its finding so that data is available.

Mr. DEFAZIO. I think we need to parse through that and get

more meaningful reports but beyond that since we can’t go into the

specifics of the reports in public session anyway, what about the

idea is it time for Congress to rescind the authority for the TSA

to allow positive bag match to be considered as screening baggage

for explosive purposes to prevent destruction of an aircraft in midair?

Mr. BLANK. No, I would not say it is time to do that.

Mr. DEFAZIO. So you haven’t been watching the news, you

haven’t noticed the suicide bombings that are going on?

Mr. BLANK. The purpose of what we are doing is trying to deter

attacks and we are trying to disrupt what a terrorist might choose

to do.

Mr. DEFAZIO. And I would be deterred if I were a terrorist and

I packed a bomb if I knew they were going to be assured that the

bomb was on the plane I was on and I am a suicide bomber? It

seems to me I would be encouraged.

Mr. BLANK. What we don’t want you to know is precisely what

methods we are using to deter you. If we have a situation where

a machine say was broken and we used PPBM as an alternative.

Mr. DEFAZIO. But what does positive bag match have to do? Perhaps if a machine is broken, you are going to have to manually

search the luggage. What does positive bag match in an era of suicide bombers get you? I know you want to create randomness, you

want to create uncertainty. I agree with that. If one of the random

and uncertain factors is the fact that you are going to be associated

with your luggage and your bomb, in an era of suicide bombers it

makes no sense. We are going to have to have the other backups

there. I know we don’t want to delay planes and that is the imperative here. No, my imperative is not to blow up planes, so if we are

going to have to have more people and when the machines break

down, we are going to have to manually search the baggage or have

more machines out there so there is a backup machine, we are

going to have to have more dogs out there, but positive baggage

match gets you nothing. I can’t believe you won’t admit that. It is

not a part of an arsenal.

Mr. BLANK. It is a risk mitigation method and we can debate as

to how effective it is but it is risk mitigation.

Mr. DEFAZIO. For non-suicidal terrorists. It works for non-suicidal terrorists. That is good.

Ms. BERRICK. I just wanted to add to an earlier comment by Mr.

Blank. In terms of the PMIS data, we do agree that there are questions about the reliability of that data. For purposes of this testimony, we actually based our analysis on reports that TSA’s Aviation Operations Division conducted based on the PMIS data which

they believe is much more reliable but we will continue to look at

the reliability of the system.

In terms of days that the equipment wasn’t being used, we included in our testimony data that the airports that weren’t in 100
21

percent compliance, it ranged from one day being out of compliance

to 371 consecutive days.

Mr. DEFAZIO. I know my time is up and the Chairman has been

very generous, but may I yield to the Ranking Member of the Full

Committee.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I understand the thrust of the gentleman’s inquiry and I think it is entirely appropriate, that the passenger who

actually is on board and to assure that the luggage is on board, but

there is a benefit to assuring that a bag does not board without a

passenger.

Mr. DEFAZIO. That is correct.

Mr. OBERSTAR. So I don’t think the gentleman wants to leave the

impression that positive passenger bag match is without value. It

has a very specific value to assure that no bag boards without a

passenger but the gentleman’s point is quite relevant.

Mr. DEFAZIO. And that being used as a substitute for EDS.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Against a suicidal bomber, that is quite appropriate and we may have to search all those bags by hand.

Mr. MICA. Will the gentlemen both yield? If you have 100 percent

electronic detection systems in place, you can put on all the bags

in the world and it wouldn’t matter, whether the passenger is on

or not.

Mr. OBERSTAR. But it is a lot better if the passenger is not on

board.

Mr. MICA. My concern is now is a passenger getting on board like

a Richard Reed except strapping explosive to himself or herself

with duct tape and a non-metallic fuse like Richard Reed did in his

shoes, go through any metal detector domestic or most abroad and

self emulate himself, the plane and all the passengers.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I quite agree but by the same token I feel much

better about keeping the bag off the plane if the passenger isn’t on.

Mr. MICA. If we have 100 percent detection and you have seen

some results of that.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Even if we have 100 percent.

Mr. MICA. I don’t see where it matters but I have been more

than generous. How did I get sucked into that debate?

[Laughter]

Mr. OBERSTAR. It was of your own volition, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. I try to self discipline myself.

Mr. Porter, you have been waiting patiently.

Mr. PORTER. Thank you.

I appreciate the responsibility of TSA in balancing the risk, making sure that passengers are safe and I also appreciate where you

have come in a short time, but if we set aside technology for a moment, we are probably never going to have enough money and

there will always be a complaint we are not spending enough

money on technology, so let us take a moment and talk about people, your staff and what I mentioned earlier about consistency.

That senior citizen or that handicapped person or the business

traveler or the tourist, they just want to know from day to day

what they should expect, whether the terrorist level is orange,

green, blue or pink, or whatever color. They just want to know

there is going to be some consistency.
22

There are two acronyms that people hate the most, that is IRS,

HMO and I hate to say it but TSA is moving up to the top. I would

suggest that you find some what that if you are in Des Moines,

Iowa or Sioux City, Iowa or Las Vegas, Nevada that the traveler

can know there is going to be consistency no matter what the terrorist level is or the attitude or mood of the current airport is.

What plans do you have in place right now to add some consistency? Technology separate and aside, you need more technology. If

you look at what the IRS has done, one of the most hated acronyms, as taxpayers we will still fill out the same form and Congress prior to my being here was trying to make it easier for people

to file a tax return, you can go on-line, go to the computer, fill in

the forms or even more simple, certainly not the security degree

but if you take a McDonald’s, there is a consistency all over the

world when you go to buy a hamburger. They have new regulations

all the time, health concerns and scares, but there is a free flow

to that customer every time they go to fill out an IRS form or to

McDonald’s. What plans do you have in place for consistency?

Mr. BLANK. First of all, all the screeners that are out there receive identical training, they are all screening and conducting their

operations to a nationally approved set of SOPs. One of the things

we think will I improve consistency is the fact that we have completed or just about completed putting what we call a TIPS Program out there, a threat image projection program so that we will

begin to have consistent training and consistent experience across

our system.

The other thing we have done is get an on-line learning center

up and operating so that we can continue to train more. There are

some 350 programs available to screeners and FSDs to improve

and get more toward consistency. I think most importantly we have

now up and operating a website so that the performance information from the TIPS system is available to the FSD. That means

that an FSD at an airport can now say, let us check how the checkpoint operations are going at 4:00 p.m. when there is a peak or at

8:00 a.m.. If he begins to see that there is a problems, there are

long lines there, there are reports of security breaches, whatever

the problem is, he can analyze that almost down to the individual

screener and identify where there is a performance problem which

would indicate a consistency problem, recommend training or whatever the anecdote to the problem might be.

So I would say what we are doing is getting better information

real time about what is going on at checkpoints into the hands of

FSDs whose responsibility it is to administer that consistency.

Mr. PORTER. That all sounds good and I appreciate that, but

what are you doing for the passenger so he knows he is taking off

his shoes at every airport or not or you can’t take a rolled newspaper through because it looks like a weapon? What are you doing

on the doorstep for the flying passenger to understand what they

should expect at every airport?

Mr. BLANK. We have a website that tells them what to expect

when they come to the airport. You would find it would recommend

that they approach the checkpoint and take off their top coat because that is going to be a problem, you are going to be required
23

to do that. We would recommend that shoes come off. Passengers

don’t always do that, we don’t require them to do it.

Mr. PORTER. How about some signs? There’s a list so everyone

knows?

Mr. BLANK. We do have signage in airports and perhaps we need

to go back and assess whether or not we have adequate signage but

that is something that we do. Another thing we would like to be

able to do but we are not always able to do is have a greeter, have

somebody who is on the public side of the checkpoint as you approach say, please take your shoes off, take your coat off, here is

a bin.

Mr. PORTER. Excuse me. That is what we are doing at McCarran

right now and Randy is going to talk about it later. That is something we are doing.

Another question, we mentioned again the Las Vegas challenge

with the 130,000 people who showed up for CES which we want

everyone to come back. We want 200,000 people. At one time there

was close to 2,000 people waiting to get into security. We have

learned around the world that folks waiting to get to security areas

are now targets for terrorists.

We received letters and comments from the CES and I am sure

you have heard from other trade associations around the country

because it is not just Nevada, but what plan do you have in place

to meet with those trade organizations and special events groups

that can help you help them which can help the flow of traffic? Are

you working with trade industries now that are impacted?

Mr. BLANK. We are open to doing as much interaction with the

private sector as we can. We routinely interact to a significant degree with the transportation associations, aviation, airport and that

sort of thing but we are open to any advice or input any association

might want to give us.

Mr. PORTER. Let me give you some advice and then we can move

off this question. I would suggest that you create something as an

outreach to these organizations because you are well aware of what

has happened at these different communities and with tourism,

one, two and three in every State in the country depending upon

air travel, I would suggest you put together a program and outreach that could be a partner with you to make your jobs easier.

Mr. BLANK. We will do that, sir.

Mr. MICA. Thank the gentleman.

Ms. Berkley?

Ms. BERKLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Both the Chairman and the Ranking Members took a more global view of the challenges we have with the TSA and the needs that

we have for the flying public. I would like to take a more parochial

view, given the fact that our Las Vegas Airport Director is here.

Let me focus on McCarran Airport for a minute, if I may.

Las Vegas’ McCarran Airport has increased its checkpoint capacity by 13.6 percent, while its passenger growth has increased only

3.6 percent. Starting in January of this year, the lines in front of

the enlarged checkpoints ballooned compared to last year. Can you

give us a reasonable explanation of why that has occurred?

Mr. BLANK. I would say it is because of a number of factors. We

have a number of challenges at Las Vegas and I must say that they
24

are challenges our partners are working well with us on. Director

Walker, the carrier community, and so forth. We do not have at

this time as many people as we should have, staffing, and we are

moving to remedy that. We are moving to get the in-line system in

place that will relieve some of the congestion in lobbies. We applaud Director Walker and McCarran because they are paying out

of their own pocket to expand checkpoints so that we can have

more lanes open. That is clearly a problem there in our view and

I know there is construction underway on the second level to fill

in what is an open space that should allow us to enhance processing as we get some configurations changed around.

I was at McCarran on Monday. I did have the opportunity to review some of the throughput numbers. While we all have our challenges, it is not acceptable to us, the screeners there are processing

about 250 people a hour on average. That is a very high throughput rate as we look across the system. I know there is some debate

about throughput but from what I saw over this past weekend, I

know there were long lines, but the throughput is very high.

We have a number of challenges from a number of perspectives,

not only the high nature of the traffic there, it is a high origin and

destination airport. There is growth there, we recognize that and

the lines are not acceptable to us.

Ms. BERKLEY. I am not sure that growth is the issue here although we are almost back to 9/11 numbers. We had significant

growth from the fall to Christmas without lessening the number of

people that went through the checkpoints. It was in January and

I am wondering if there isn’t some other compelling reason that

has slowed us down.

Mr. BLANK. Congresswoman, there may be. I am unaware of it

but we would be pleased to doublecheck and report back to you.

Ms. BERKLEY. All right. Let me ask you something. You said, and

I think we all agree, that we have a personnel problem, not enough

personnel. How soon will you be remedying the personnel shortage,

do you think?

Mr. BLANK. We are working with FSD Blair to get together a

pool of applicants. The Assessment Center is very close to being

able to be opened and that should begin the candidate flow, the

interview and hiring process very shortly.

Ms. BERKLEY. Months? Weeks? Days?

Mr. BLANK. I am not certain whether it is months, weeks or days

but again, I would like to take that and get back to you.

Ms. BERKLEY. I would appreciate that. You of all people I don’t

have to tell that each airport has its own unique needs. Federal Security Directors are on the ground and they know what is going on,

Washington often doesn’t. Don’t you think we should give them a

little bit of flexibility to balance the risks on both sides of the

checkpoints and accommodate accordingly?

Mr. BLANK. Yes.

Ms. BERKLEY. How will we go about doing that because now I

think we are inflexible? Here are the rules and we have to follow

them.

Mr. BLANK. Most of our programs whether they be security directives or security programs do contemplate alternative means of

compliance which is to say that if Director Blair wanted some flexi-
25

bility, he ought to propose to us and ask us to review it and approve it. If there is some additional flexibility he thinks he needs

that would fix the problem on the ground, it doesn’t reduce security

below what we think it needs to be, we would be very open to looking at that.

Ms. BERKLEY. Without going into any privileged information,

what do you think the effects of implementing the TIPS Program

is at McCarran? Do you think that may be increasing the lines?

Mr. BLANK. No. I think actually that will help because it is going

to help Jim Blair identify where his weak performers are, whether

that is a crew, whether that is an individual screener and it should

help him a great deal to make efficiencies and improvements in individual performance.

Ms. BERKLEY. I am going to be interested to hear Mr. Walker’s

assessment of the program.

Let me ask one more question that may lead to other questions.

During the peak periods at McCarran, and my colleague has spoken of this, thousands of passengers are crammed into tight lines

in front of the checkpoints. I have been on those lines and I have

observed others on the lines. Aren’t we creating a very large potential new target for terrorists? We are spending so much money protecting people in the air and we have literally thousands of people

standing in line at the airport?

Mr. BLANK. That is of concern to us and we recognize that can

present its own security situation. It would be unfair to generalize

but much of that congestion, I believe, is at Terminal D at

McCarran and we would hope some of that would be relieved by

the construction project that is going to fill in the open area so that

you wouldn’t have quite the congestion at Terminal D that we now

have which I believe is one of the worst parts of the problem.

Ms. BERKLEY. D is bad but I can tell you I have been on the C

gate lines and it took longer to get through the line than it took

me to fly to Burbank, substantially longer, almost twice as long. I

can tell you that line stretched out to almost the parking lot as

well.

Thank you very much.

Mr. MICA. Tell Mr. Stone I don’t want any members of Congress

being escorted through any fast lanes either.

Mr. BLANK. Will do, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Pearce?

Mr. PEARCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Blank, how many passengers are screened daily approximately in the United States?

Mr. BLANK. About 1.8 million.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, when you get the response to the

$400 million carryover figure, I would like to have a copy of that.

Yesterday, I think our office referred to you Gavin Stiner with

Corporate Clipper who had a software program we had inquired

about for different purposes where they can track specific individuals biometrically with photo ID in the air. It seemed like it had

application for the frequent flier program or whatever.

Mr. BLANK. Members of my staff met with the gentleman yesterday. I haven’t had a readout from that meeting because I was here

giving a briefing.
26

Mr. PEARCE. There was also some comment yesterday in the

hearing that software didn’t exist to check enough people in a timely enough fashion. The last time I was in my district, I bumped

into somebody who had a program they were showing me that

would check one million photo IDs per minute. So the fact that we

have a passenger manifest that we cannot check in a timely fashion, sometimes I wonder just how adequately we are looking in the

field for those solutions that could really speed up things quite a

bit.

As I look at the question of the diverted money, were any bonuses paid during the year the monies were diverted?

Mr. BLANK. TSA has paid one round of bonuses in two years that

it has been up and operating.

Mr. PEARCE. So we are taking money away from the detection

equipment and we are paying bonuses. Were those bonuses up and

down the line or just to management?

Mr. BLANK. Up and down the line.

Mr. PEARCE. Do you know the total amount for the bonuses that

were paid during the year they were paid?

Mr. BLANK. I do not. We will get that.

Mr. PEARCE. I would appreciate that information, if you would. I see here you have about $1.5 billion for long term installation

of explosive detection equipment that Congress has appropriated.

What percentage of that money has been used?

Mr. NULL. Of the $1.5 billion, about $1.1 billion of it has been

committed or obligated and used. The other $400 million is allocated for the LOIs that are in existence and the ones that will be

following on as well as the continued expansion efforts because the

traffic is increasing, so we are having to make capacity adjustments associated with that.

Mr. PEARCE. How much additional money through the Airport Improvement Program have you accessed besides the $1.5 billion?

Mr. NULL. It was about $380 million.

Mr. PEARCE. Has any of the money in that $1.5 billion or the

$380 million been diverted into salaries?

Mr. NULL. No, sir.

Mr. PEARCE. Into anything else?

Mr. NULL. No, sir.

Mr. PEARCE. Who made the final decision on diverting funds

away from the explosive detection equipment? Who made that decision?

Mr. NULL. I am not sure I know who.

Mr. BLANK. I am sure that would have been Admiral Loy in conjunction with Senior DHS officials and very likely there would have

been full Administration coordination on that.

Mr. PEARCE. What is the percentage of management to screeners?

Mr. BLANK. I don’t know the percentage but there is approximately 2,000 or so headquarters staff, 45,000 screeners and approximately 1,500 FSD staff.

Mr. PEARCE. That would be all my questions, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. Thank you.

Former chairman of this subcommittee, Mr. Duncan, the gentleman from Tennessee.
27

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I had to be at another committee mark up and hearing so I was

not here for the testimony. I will be very brief. In fact, what I really want to do, as I know you did, is I want to say this is my 16th

year on this subcommittee and during all of that time, I have had

the privilege of working with and receiving the benefit of the work

done by David Schaffer. He has decided to leave, I know, and go

on hopefully to bigger and better things but I want to commend

him for his dedication to this committee and particularly for the

work he has done on this subcommittee.

We worked very closely together during the six years that I

chaired this subcommittee and I guess I received credit for many

good things that he did was able to do. I also occasionally received

the blame for some things that he had done too but that is part

of it I suppose.

He is much too young to retire and I think he should be ashamed

of that and for leaving us but I do want to say I think this country

is a better place today and particularly the aviation system of this

Nation is better because of David Schaffer. I did want to commend

him.

I will say very briefly that the TSA has an extremely difficult job.

I am told by staff that 50 to 60 percent of the revenue for the airlines comes from 10 percent of the passengers. I do think surely

there should be some way we could come up with this trusted traveler program so that we can speed up the efficiency and convenience for the passenger traffic in our airports. I hope you will continue to work on that.

There is one little thing that I have gotten curious about. We

have been given almost unbelievable statistics about the TSA confiscating during one month 161,463 knives, 265,468 sharp objects,

1,780 box cutters. Those are almost hard to believe. I was told by

one person that you auction off some of these things and I was told

by somebody that probably is a little more in the know that all

these items are just dumped or destroyed in some way. That is

about 2 million knives a year. I am wondering what happens to all

that stuff?

Mr. MICA. Could I interject? I had read that TSA spends several

million dollars having someone dispose of them. Is that correct?

Mr. BLANK. That is correct, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. Surprised, Mr. Duncan?

Mr. DUNCAN. It looks like that could almost be a source of revenue if it is handled right instead of costing the TSA money. I think

you should look into some possible ways to change that. I have people in Tennessee who can make a lot of money off that. They would

probably pay you instead of you having to pay somebody. That is

almost ridiculous.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. That is the difference between Washington and Tennessee, Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Oberstar and then Mr. Baker.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize to the witnesses for ducking in and out and trying to conduct other committee business as well as my own district business.
28

This is a very important overview of TSA and an appropriate

time to take stock and assess what TSA is doing. We have conducted years of work on aviation security going back to when I

chaired the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee in the

1980s and held the first hearings , the Committee on Aviation Security Matters and subsequently serving on the Pan Am 103 Commission with my then colleague, John Paul Hammerschmidt from

Arkansas. We crafted what became the Aviation Security Act of

1990, pressed vigorously for the incoming Clinton Administration

to do a top to bottom review at the five year point and finally got

their attention just on the eve of TWA 800 to appoint a blue ribbon

commission to completely overhaul the law and see what we needed to do. Then came September 11 and we accomplished in the

Transportation Security Act almost all of what we tried and

couldn’t accomplish in the 1990 Aviation Security Act, incorporating in the TSA Act the recommendations that our commission set

forth.

The result is I think vastly better security than we have ever

had in the United States or any place else in the world except perhaps for Israel, which conducts aviation in a state of war. The information that I have seen from TSA is that they have confiscated

some 10 million prohibited items. If we had been doing that kind

of thorough search prior to September 11, it might never have happened, TSA has also confiscated 1,500 firearms and, as I think Mr.

Duncan referenced, 54,000 box cutters, and made a thousand arrests: it is a remarkable accomplishment. We have a highly

trained, far more dedicated and zealous work force among the

screeners. Everywhere I travel in the country, I make a point to

stop and talk to the screener work force with the TSA head of security. But, I think the work of that force is being undercut by the

Appropriations Committee putting a cap on staffing without any

reference to the real world, without any hearings or any understanding, without any consideration of the impact this arbitrary

cap is going to have on the security at our airports, including the

ability of screeners to manage the explosive detection systems.

There are disturbing reports of equipment that is not being properly used because TSA does not have enough people to handle it

because of the arbitrary cap.

We have had the discussion already about screening checked

baggage but we also need to discuss the matter of screening cargo

that goes on board passenger aircraft, that is a serious matter that

still needs to be addressed. The gentleman from Nevada just returned and has been through Las Vegas airport. Your folks are just

overworked, overwhelmed. It was clear when I was out to speak at

a conference in Las Vegas, I came in at night and left the next

morning: peak period is just overwhelming. They simply don’t have

enough people to handle that workload. They were working courteously, efficiently, effectively drawing people from various points

to come in and help with the overload and then you have all those

selectees who were standing in line. The selectee line was almost

as long as the non-selectee line. My hat is off to them. They were

sweating working that line doing the best job they could.
29

This arbitrary limitation on numbers of people is just not appropriate. It is a tribute to the TSA work force that you have been

able to accomplish the job you have under those limitations.

The other thing I have learned and I talked with Admiral Loy

about this; that is, the role of Federal Security Directors having the

resources and authority they need to get the job done at the airports. Admiral Loy has assured me that there will be an ongoing

conference of the Federal Security Directors to get their input.

They are the people on the front line, in the trenches working with

the screener work force, know the needs and ought to be consulted

first. Mr. Blank, can you tell me what steps have been taken to

support the very pivotal role of the FSDs?

Mr. BLANK. We have great regard for the FSDs and we agree

with you wholeheartedly, Congressman, that they are our people on

the front lines. They need to be supported and we need to be listening to them and supporting them. What have we done to make that

a reality? We do have an advisory council of FSDs which meets regularly here in Washington. They meet privately without management and then management receives their input. We take that as

an obligation and work on what they tell us in terms of additional

intelligence they need, additional management flexibility that they

need.

In addition, over the past couple months, we have taken to starting off our day as senior leaders with what we call an OPS Intel

briefing. We go over every single incident that happened across the

system the day before, so we know about disrupted passengers and

we are focused on a prohibited item that got through, why was a

terminal evacuated, and that puts us in very close consultation on

a daily basis with what an FSD is out there managing on a daily

basis. We have started to enhance the interaction and to really put

our focus on that field as opposed to on other matters.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Does that include enlarging or enhancing the

FSD’s authority to manage personnel within the FSD’s region of responsibility because often they have more than one airport under

their jurisdiction and are not in a position to determine whether

they can move people from one facility to another or shorten or adjust those hours. Is that also being included?

Mr. BLANK. Yes. They now have the capability to be able to do

that and to say we want to get to where they have more control

over hiring, where they are doing the training themselves and overseeing and are responsible and accountable for that. That is the

management approach we are shifting to now that we are stood up

and are trying to sustain a work force and sustain an agency rather than build one.

Mr. OBERSTAR. So that you are avoiding the appearance of an

overload of personnel at an airport that may have four daily flights

and an underserved airport that has three or four times as many

flights?

Mr. BLANK. Yes.

Mr. OBERSTAR. The recently passed legislation had Mr. DeFazio’s

language which we generally supported in the committee to authorize increased funding to accelerate development of new screening

technologies and yet GAO says TSA reprogrammed money earmarked for research and development. Why was that done?
30

Mr. BLANK. We have had ongoing resource constraints as we

have stood up and tried to get ourselves to a place where there is

a baseline budget that is annualized and as we have done that, we

have had very difficult internal debates about what to prioritize.

Those matters that were absolutely mandatory that were statutory

in nature such as screening by Federal employees, such as moving

toward the baggage checked by electronic means, we determined

those had to be the priority.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Is that the reason for reprogramming the $61

million GAO reported from research and development to other activities?

Mr. NULL. That is correct.

Mr. OBERSTAR. What are you going to do to replenish the R&D

fund?

Mr. NULL. The 2004 budget had no reprogramming at all, so I

have $155 million this year for my R&D budget.

Mr. OBERSTAR. But you then you have already lost a year of research initiatives because of the reprogramming I suppose because

you didn’t have enough money in the area to which you reprogrammed the funds?

Mr. NULL. We slowed down, yes, sir.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Although there was a good deal of debate about

this and difference of viewpoint, there was provision in the reauthorization bill to fund a letter of intent for in-line installations but

of the $500 million that was authorized, only $250 million only was

provided in the 2005 budget. Why is that?

Mr. BLANK. Our position is that the LOI is a very useful tool. We

have used it eight times. We are in the final stages of discussion

about numbers seven and eight with the Congress and as we go

through and prioritize our resources, look at what it is expected of

us, the determination and our current position is that for the balance of 2004 and 2005, it will be very difficult for us to see our way

clear to go beyond these eight LOIs that we have used.

Mr. OBERSTAR. But the airports organization tells us that we can

expect as many as 60 airports seeking LOIs and at the $250 million level you are not going to have enough money to respond to

those needs. Do you differ with the airports on how much equipment is needed?

Mr. NULL. In terms of the general cost and estimates on both

cost and equipment needed, we do not disagree with that. In terms

of the percentage of airports or the number of airports that actually

should go in-line, we think we still need to do some adjustment on

understanding the return on that investment and whether the efficiencies are there for that large a number. We know that the top

30 or 40 we have done some assessment that says there is potentially good return there. Beyond that still needs work to be done.

Mr. OBERSTAR. The budget also reduces the Federal participation

from 90 percent to 75 percent. Why was that done?

Mr. BLANK. I think it is a fundamental policy difference over

what the fair split between the public and private sector or the airports and the Federal Government ought to be.

Mr. OBERSTAR. That is why we have these hearings. I see the

Chairman is getting restless but I think it would be useful to pursue further why that is happening.
31

Mr. MICA. We can come back. I just want to give Mr. Baker a

chance. He has been waiting patiently.

Mr. OBERSTAR. May I patiently compliment David Schaffer?

Mr. MICA. Yes, go ahead.

Mr. OBERSTAR. On his long years of service. He is a voice of continuity, a constructive, thoughtful mind in the field of aviation law.

Along with David Heymsfeld, there isn’t a piece of aviation legislation in the last 20 years that doesn’t have David Schaffer’s fingerprints on it and his wise, seasoned legislative craftsmanship in his

very understated but steady and thoughtful way. After 26 years in

Federal Government, 6 years with the Civil Aeronautics Board, he

is a gem for this committee, a treasure for our staff and emblematic of the quality of staff we have been proud to honor on our committee. I ask unanimous consent to include in the record a more

fulsome account of Mr. Schaffer’s service.

Mr. MICA. Without objection.

I don’t know if you were here earlier but he did get a standing

ovation. We will add that for the record and with your comments

and the fact that Mr. Oberstar, the Ranking Member of the full

committee, stood in your honor.

Mr. Baker, waiting patiently.

Mr. BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I really just wanted to make an observation and comment, not

really expecting a response today. On several different occasions, I

observed instances where there appears to be by the structure of

the rule or regulation within the agency an inability of the screener

on duty post to be able to make appropriate adaptation to the circumstances at hand.

There was a young mother traveling with two children. The children went through the magnetometer first without any thought by

anyone of the consequences. The mother alerted because of something she was carrying in the diaper bag and she was isolated into

the screening area while the children were left alone on the other

side of the wall. The children became a bit concerned about what

was happening, she did not travel in the company of another family

member and it was up to frankly other travelers to give some temporary comfort to the children while the screening was concluded.

Secondly, there was a senior person traveling by necessity with

a cane, went through the magnetometer, it was fairly evident this

fellow was not going to break and run to the plane and fling himself through the passenger door. He was seated, had difficulty

physically complying with the screener’s requirements to be physically examined. The difficulty in this instance was it was a small

airport, there was only one person doing the handwanding. It took

considerable time and folks were a bit frustrated that level of attention was given to someone who obviously was going to have difficulty even making it to the plane.

In a third instance, I was waiting behind a gentleman having

been identified as a potential felon and he was being screened. In

the course of the screening, the screener, the person who happened

to be a constituent and myself engaged in casual conversation. At

the conclusion of the conversation, I remained lawfully behind the

designated line and was approached by the screened passenger and

we shook hands. He then was told he would have to be rescreened
32

because I could have passed an explosive device to him undetected

by the screener. It could have been easier for him to grab his hand,

check me out or some intermediate step beyond a full fledged security screen again but he had to sit down, take off his shoes and go

through the whole thing.

All I am requesting is that some authority be granted at the site

to a person or persons who could view individual circumstances,

make judgments as to the necessity of complying with the apparent

well intended regulation that would facilitate much more rapid

movement of passengers through the security constraints.

In all these cases I was told by personnel they had no authority

to relieve any of the people from the obligations, they were required to do these things or else they would be written up and have

negative comments in their employment file which I certainly understand their position. I don’t expect to see something happen

overnight but merely to get on record with the agency that in the

field flexibility given to a few, well trained individuals would be a

great aid in facilitating travel.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BLANK. What I will say is that at this point in our development, we are seeing 1.8 million a day and with a work force of

45,000, trying to get some consistency across that many human

interactions is a difficult task which is why we at least for now require pretty strict adherence to our SOP book is probably laying

out there at all those checkpoints.

Having said that, where we could see ourselves going is putting

the kind of flexibility you are talking about in the hands of perhaps

a screener supervisor who would also be there and with the proper

training and the proper judgment and experience, we might be able

to get to a place where we have that kind of flexibility.

We recognize that some of these instances can be frustrating to

people. We also recognize there is a need to continually deal with

special circumstances which might be a mother traveling with children and we do have a group at TSA that meets to adjust SOPs

or advise screeners of a special circumstance, whether that be a

physical limitation or other circumstances, if that happens enough,

produces enough confusion or a customer dissatisfaction that we

need to address it.

Mr. BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. We will start a quick second round.

Just to set the record straight, there were some comments made

about how great the current system is. Mr. Null, you are the technical person. Do we have any passenger screening equipment or

equipment that a passenger walks through with their bags that

will detect plastic weapons, all plastic weapons?

Mr. NULL. We have imaging systems that will allow us to do

that. The problem with the imaging systems we have available to

us today are the privacy problems we are trying to work our way

through.

Mr. MICA. If I have concealed a plastic weapon that won’t set off

a metal detector, can I not walk through any of the metal detectors?

Mr. NULL. Metal detectors will not detect plastic, that is correct.
33

Mr. MICA. In fact, we don’t know for certain that on September

11 they walked through with those items, they can still do that

today.

The second point is box cutters were not a prohibited item by the

Federal Aviation Administration on September 11. I will just state

that for the record neither with your or FAA. While I am not free

to reveal the detection rate of TSA who have actually been testing

the system, TSA has tested it, GAO has tested it and the IG has

tested it. I can tell you the results are much better than where we

were before, what I saw right afterwards.

The other point is our friend ‘‘boxcutter boy’’ proved what I can’t

talk about from the results of our testing the system, but box cutters can and have gotten on aircraft today. To follow Mr. Oberstar,

the cost of this in-line system, if we have another 60 airports, we

are probably looking at in excess of a $10 billion requirement for

equipment. Would you say that is a ballpark figure, Mr. Null?

Mr. NULL. I think most of the estimates we have done or have

seen in other sources are for the top 60-64, we are looking at about

anywhere from $3-$5 billion worth of installation. That does not include equipment which would be probably another $1.5-$2 billion.

Mr. MICA. It took Great Britain seven years and $4.5 billion to

do 38 installations out of 41 airports. I think if we use that as a

rule of thumb, we will probably see it will be closer to $10 billion

rather than $7-$8 billion and probably take just as long based on

I don’t see Congress coming up with that kind of money.

We have five airports that I was able to get as test programs

where we have private screeners with Federal supervision. There

is a bearing point study now reviewing progress of both those airports and others. When do we expect that report to be completed,

Mr. Blank?

Mr. BLANK. The end of March.

Mr. MICA. That is on schedule?

Mr. BLANK. Yes, sir.

Mr. MICA. One of the problems we had with the CAPPS system

I am also told is the problem of airlines not being willing to give

data to the agency or afraid to because of suits, and so forth. Do

we need to deal with that legislatively and are you going to have

a recommendation?

Mr. BLANK. I think what we have under consideration is compelling the airlines to give us that data, all airlines. That way we

avoid some of the problems individual airlines have had where

there has been marketplace backlash because they provided data.

We are looking at ordering it to do testing and we are looking at

a rulemaking that would compel it be provided to us on a long term

basis.

Mr. MICA. We also gave you in TSA’s legislative authority the

ability to put a rule in place without long delay. If you can’t put

the rule in place and the counsel advises authority, we need to

know about that.

We still have no biometric standard that has been agreed upon

for passenger identification, crew identification, trusted traveler

identification, law enforcement officer, Federal officer identification, is that correct?

Mr. NULL. That is correct.
34

Mr. MICA. We still have more than several hundred people who

can carry weapons on board an aircraft and no standard ID or biometric measure, is that correct?

Mr. BLANK. I can’t testify to the precise number but what I can

say is that out of the universe of people who travel armed, over 90

percent of them are Federal law enforcement officers that have

Federal credentials. We are taking steps to train our screener work

force to be familiar.

Mr. MICA. I am told that some State and local people can just

appear with various identification and letters and also board aircraft. Is that correct?

Mr. BLANK. They would have to go through the established procedure of getting the document and coming to the checkpoint with

the document.

Mr. MICA. Finally, two things. One, we have heard about the

great job TSA is doing in employing people but I am running 20

to 25 percent vacancies at some airports. Congress has authorized

the positions and funded the positions but TSA is unable to fill

them. Systemwide, what is your guesstimate as vacant positions

today and can you give us some exact figures in a historical context

during say the last year?

Mr. BLANK. I don’t have that information at hand.

Mr. MICA. Would you submit that to the committee?

Mr. BLANK. Yes.

Mr. MICA. Again, as of yesterday, Orlando had 124 vacancies

going into our busiest season and vacancies at Las Vegas and other

airports. That is not acceptable.

Finally, San Francisco Airport was here yesterday and they are

about 80-85 percent in-line, check screened baggage and I have

seen the results on that and anyone who flies out of there and goes

through that system and checks their baggage, the detection is

awesome. Fifteen to 20 percent of that airport is not done. I am

told they have been passed over for the balance of their funding or

haven’t received it.

Can’t we sort of finish the job and if I find out we have $100-

$400 million left over from last year not going into these projects,

we are going to have a wet hen as chairman. What is the story?

Mr. NULL. First of all, we have not had authority to go beyond

ten LOIs, so we have not been able to do an LOI with them. We

currently are working to try to cover that through another vehicle

in our funding but that is still under assessment.

Mr. MICA. Mr. DeFazio?

Mr. DEFAZIO. Mr. Larsen asked to speak. I would like a second

round after him.

Mr. MICA. Go ahead.

Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I will start off by echoing the Chairman’s last comment about not

enough screeners in place with the advent of the anticipated heavy

travel season. The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport certainly

anticipates a travel season that will require you all to supply more

screeners so that we can fully accommodate the travelers.

Obviously in the last couple of weeks, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, TSA has been in the news and it has been unfortunate news. The unfortunate news is there have been allegations
35

of bribes given to managers to help screeners with promotions taking place at the airport, TSA folks and I understand an internal

affairs team was sent out there and now has returned.

I think the most important question I can ask given the fact that

your IA team has to go through results and you have to go through

your process and so on, what kind of timeline can we expect to hear

back? Unfortunately, this happened at Seattle, it is unfortunate it

happened anywhere because there are enough challenges TSA faces

to make the system work but then to have these allegations out

there and have 200 plus people sign a letter to me and other members of the delegation saying you have to stop this from happening.

What is your timeline on getting the report done and how do you

expect to report back to the committee in addition to your supervisors?

Mr. BLANK. Congressman, we could better advise you early next

week as to why that IA team has been out there as you stated.

They have returned and are working to compile their findings and

assessments. It is my understanding that the senior leadership of

TSA is to be briefed on what they found at least in a preliminary

way early next week. At that point, we will have a better idea of

what it is we are dealing with and what the time frames we are

dealing with might look like.

Mr. LARSEN. After the briefing to the senior leadership team, we

will be out next week presumably in our districts. Do you anticipate them being able to contact me and other members of our delegation next week to talk that over, are you going to release this information? How is that going to work?

Mr. BLANK. It will be depend on what is found. We have to be

careful in a legal proceeding which this very likely will be as to

what legal processes are required to be put in place and I can’t

guarantee that we will have anything public to be able to say because we don’t know what we are going to find, we don’t know

what requirements are going to be put on us as a result of the findings. We can certainly communicate with you and tell you where

we are. It may be to say that given legal considerations, privacy

considerations there is not a lot we can say but at least we can be

responsive in that fashion.

Mr. LARSEN. Thank you. That is a fair answer and I appreciate

that. We are obviously considering the 200-plus folks as well that

signed the letter and they wanted to see some action as well. That

is a fair answer and I appreciate that very much.

With that, Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Mr. MICA. Thank you.

Mr. Porter, you had another question?

Mr. PORTER. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We spent a lot of time today talking about passengers and I

think that is certainly a priority as with our safety. I know at another time we will talk about airlines but there is one I would like

to bring up today and that is the start-up airlines. Some of the

major carriers are having challenges every day staying in business

but also there are some start-ups that are trying to get into the

transportation business, single hubs, single routes, they share some

unique experiences but many of the disruptions that happen to the

smaller carriers literally can put them out of business as we talk
36

about a percentage of a few travelers not being able to catch their

planes, revenues. Do you have a program in place where you are

working with some of the smaller, start-up airlines because they

certainly don’t have security staff and the personnel that the larger

airlines have?

Mr. BLANK. We would certainly be willing to do that. Obviously

they are a regulated party. They would be subject and have to implement what we call the Aircraft Operators Standard Security

Program, so we would provide that to them. We would assign them

a principal security inspector and be more than pleased to sit down

with them and share with them what the expectations are and

walk them through what it would take to be in compliance.

Mr. PORTER. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. Mr. DeFazio?

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank the panel for its patience. I had to run to ask questions

in Homeland Security.

One thing I see running through the concerns and reports and

it will certainly come up later when we talk about the potential for

private conversion at the airports is the lack of flexibility that

FSDs have. I guess I would ask GAO to briefly address that as a

potential root cause for some of the problems we are having with

personnel. We have gone into the hiring problems in Washington,

D.C. and then ask either Mr. Blank or Mr. Null to address it.

Ms. BERRICK. We have gotten back input from Federal Security

Inspectors that they do feel they don’t have enough input into both

the hiring process and other processes within TSA. They feel if

they had more authority to act on their own and individually at

their airports that security would be better served. In fact, we are

going to be doing some additional work for Mr. Oberstar to look

into this further.

Regarding training, Federal Security Directors have complained

that they don’t have much input to the training process, specifically

they don’t review applications or interview applicants. They felt if

they had more input to that process, their airport would be better

served. I know TSA Headquarters has started a program where

they are starting to get more input from the Federal Security Directors and we will continue to look at that.

Another area is training, Federal Security Directors stated that

in addition to doing standard training that TSA provides, they

wanted to do some additional training on their own but weren’t

permitted to do that because they had to follow the TSA standard

training procedures. Those are some of the things we have heard.

We are getting ready to do a survey of all 158 Federal Security

Directors to collect additional information but it has been a concern

we have heard so far.

Mr. BLANK. We support enhanced flexibility and control by FSDs.

We are taking steps to allow them to have certified trainers on

their own staffs so that the training can be conducted in the airport

instead of by a contractor. We see ourselves beginning to move

away from that somewhat. We want them to have a hiring control,

we think that is the ultimate answer to these lowered screener
37

numbers and get away from the large assessment centers and assembling of candidate pools and that sort of thing.

That is where we think we have to be able to go in order to sustain our operation.

Mr. DEFAZIO. How long do you think it will take you to get there,

the agency?

Mr. BLANK. We are beginning as we speak to authorize the FSDs

to begin to do the things we are talking about. I will be happy to

try to get a more firm timeline but as we speak, this is where we

are going and what we are doing.

Mr. DEFAZIO. On the body scan, just a question. I met with a

vendor and they recognized privacy problems and said, it is easily

remedied. We don’t have to show the person’s actual body, all we

have to do is show where on the body the object is and we could

use stick figures, we could use cartoon figures, we could use ideal

figures so people would feel really good about themselves, whatever. What is the privacy hangup if we don’t have to expose the actual body to see there is a suicide belt under their clothes?

Mr. NULL. We will be evaluating a number of those. One concern

that we have is that some of the ways in which you obfuscate or

eliminate parts of the body potentially can eliminate threats. A

part of our assessment is to make sure that we don’t lose detection

capability as the result of those privacy algorithms. We certainly

have options, we think there are some that will get us where we

need to be but we have some evaluation and detection work that

needs to be followed to validate those algorithms.

Mr. DEFAZIO. The object would still be displayed, just not the

real life sensitive areas, with what they showed me but I am glad

to see you are addressing that and hopefully you will move quickly.

Finally, a question I always ask and I asked Secretary Ridge and

he wasn’t certain of the answer, so I will ask you. Are we now

screening all of the vendors most of whom we don’t know who they

are, many of whom may or may not be citizens or legal or illegal

members of the work force in this country who file in and out of

our airport concourses through security on a daily basis? Are they

now being screened?

Mr. BLANK. No, they are not and let me elaborate. We have a

number of regulatory approaches to security. One is an airport security program. In the airport security program, an individual airport is given authority to do the badging and to provide the access

to the sterile area. Many airports across the system for ease of operations are in a position of allowing sterile area access with an

airport-issued badge that would require a background check. That

is authorized under an airport security program.

TSA has a security directive in place issued in late December of

2002 that says those individuals must be screened.

Mr. DEFAZIO. That is just airport employees, not McDonald’s?

Mr. BLANK. It includes the McDonald’s employees.

Mr. DEFAZIO. But the airport doesn’t conduct the screening as

they tell me of the McDonald’s employees, they depend upon

McDonald’s to screen McDonald’s employees. Since McDonald’s and

other people are regularly employing illegal aliens, I wonder how

much screening they are really doing.
38

Mr. BLANK. Let me tell you the position of the agency. The position of the agency is that those vendor employees should be

screened every time they go from the public area into the sterile

area to go to work, just the way an airline captain should be.

Mr. DEFAZIO. So are they?

Mr. BLANK. They are not at this time.

Mr. DEFAZIO. So how do we get from should to will?

Mr. BLANK. Because we have to assess the impact of what we are

going to do. We had a hearing here this morning where we discussed wait times and shortages of staff and so forth and we are

going to start on Friday to do an economic analysis of the impact

if we put many more people through the physical checkpoint

screening. If we find it is not going to be disruptive, we are going

to enforce our regulations and require them to go through.

We want to make sure that we are doing something that is not

going to be disruptive or doesn’t make sense or hurts the economies

of those vendors that might be inside the sterile area. We are trying to find the right balance acknowledging that we have something we want to fix. We do support screening of those vendor employees.

Mr. DEFAZIO. If I can, I will tell you what doesn’t make sense.

That an airline pilot has to go through security every day and they

have tight schedules. Many of them miss out on rest time and they

could use a little more sleep but no, we are going to make them

go through security. Flight attendants, they are going to go

through security. But you have the virtual unknown of vendors in

the airport who don’t have to go through because it might be disruptive. I don’t think if one of those people was involved in an incident either carrying something through, since I have observed airport employees going through a security area where they just

flashed an ID and were wearing heavy winter coats which could

have concealed anything, AK-47, whatever, that the American people are going to think that this was a very good system because

they have been standing in line but these other people who we

don’t know who they are for the convenience of the vendors or

whatever are going through.

In any case, we will look forward to that evaluation and report.

If the evaluation is that it would be disruptive, then we need to

hear what it would take to make it non-disruptive in terms of additional resources no matter what the Administration thinks about

how much money we should spend on security.

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman.

I thank the witnesses. As I said this is an off day. We are going

to reconvene with the airports about two dozen of them. I think

that is for March 24, so prepare yourselves for that. The 24th is

only a sampling of those having problems. We will hear from a few

in the next panel. If the TSA reps could stay you really need to

hear the rest of the story with the sampling of witnesses, I would

appreciate it.

Mr. BLANK. I have a prior commitment, Mr. Chairman, but we

can certainly have the staff stay.

Mr. MICA. I will let you go only if you promise to take the testimony of each of those and read it.

Mr. BLANK. I promise to do so, sir.
39

Mr. MICA. I probably should have had the second panel first so

you could hear the rest of the story but we will proceed. I will excuse this panel. Mr. Stone and Mr. McHale and others I expect to

be at the 24th meeting. We will hold it in the morning, late at

night, whatever fits their schedule but we are going to hold it.

We have additional questions too. We have only scratched the

surface. We will be submitting them to TSA. We don’t need that

many people from TSA to leave all at once. It looks bad, folks.

Let us call the second panel. The second panel is Mr. David

Plavin, President, Airports Council International; Mr. Todd

Hauptli, Senior Executive Vice President, American Association of

Airport Executives; Ms. Angela Gittens, Director, Miami-Dade

Aviation Department; Mr. Randy H. Walker, Director, McCarran

International Airport, Las Vegas; and Mr. Tom Jensen, President

and Chief Executive Officer, National Safe Skies Alliance.

We appreciate your patience. Again, you are fortunate that there

weren’t more members of Congress in town today because of us not

having any votes because you probably wouldn’t get on until 3:00

or 4:00 p.m.

Again, welcome and let us start with Mr. David Plavin, President, Airports Council International and work our way down. If

you have lengthy statements or additional information you would

like to be made a part of the record, please submit it. Even though

you have been patient, I would like to try to have you adhere to

our five minute rule. We will get your message to TSA and other

members.

Mr. Plavin?

TESTIMONY OF DAVID Z. PLAVIN, PRESIDENT, AIRPORTS

COUNCIL INTERNATIONAL, NORTH AMERICA; TODD

HAUPTLI, SENIOR EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, AMERICAN

ASSOCIATION OF AIRPORT EXECUTIVES; ANGELA GITTENS,

AVIATION DIRECTOR, MIAMI-DADE AVIATION DEPARTMENT;

RANDY WALKER, DIRECTOR, MCCARRAN INTERNATIONAL

AIRPORT, LAS VEGAS, NV; AND TOM JENSEN, PRESIDENT

AND CEO, NATIONAL SAFE SKIES ALLIANCE

Mr. PLAVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I do indeed have a statement that I would like to submit for the

record.

Mr. MICA. Without objection, the entire statement will be made

a part of the record.

Mr. PLAVIN. My task is made easier by the panel that preceded

us because many of you have asked some of the questions on exactly the subjects I want to emphasize. I have four basic areas I

thought it would be worth identifying as themes that may be relevant for your consideration today.

The first is the EDS installation issue. Our testimony has a list

of airports and an estimate as to what it would cost to do proper

EDS installation at that number of airports. I think it is illustrative of the fact that we are talking about numbers well within

the range that you identified earlier today.

I think the LOI issue which Todd Hauptli will talk about a bit

later is clearly an issue of vital importance to us. We hope sincerely

that we look seriously at equipping airports with EDS. One of the
40

reasons EDS is so critical is because it is not only a better technology but it is also much more cost effective. We have seen some

examples. In Lexington, Kentucky for example, we identified the

fact that a $3.5 million investment up front is actually saving comparable numbers on an ongoing basis in the staffing requirements.

So at the very least, the EDS installation is critical to make more

effective and efficient use of the resources we have.

It is also critical that we get them out of the lobbies where they

exist today. I think Ms. Berkley, you made the point earlier that

we think there are safety and security considerations just having

that kind of crowding in the lobby. That is another reason we think

that is critical.

The second major issue is the issue of maintenance. We haven’t

really talked much about that but I think it is pretty clear that as

warranties expire, as equipment we do have installed gets very

heavy use and as they are being used in ways they probably

weren’t designed to be used, they are breaking down and are not

available at a fairly high rate.

We think it is very important that some attention be identified

to fund and to implement maintenance programs so that they can

be available, and that is a high priority for the operators of the system.

We talked a bit about new technology, we talked a bit about the

need to invest in new technology, the new to implement new technology as a way of saving money but also to improve the quality

of our screening. I would urge that we also look seriously at the

fact that other parts of the world have been doing this for a number of years and doing it in a way that gives them confidence in

the quality of their security. I think the fact we are willing to learn

and be guided by some of their experiences is not a very helpful

sign.

The fourth area is one that has also been identified earlier and

that is the issue of flexibility. Flexibility on staffing, flexibility on

procedures, flexibility on ways of doing business. This is not to say

we ought to do anything of this in a way that compromises security. The TSA has done a good job in identifying screening procedures, screening practices, but I think there is an opportunity to

take advantage of the fact that we have different facilities, we have

different layouts, we have different requirements, we have different

passenger loads, different flight patterns. All of those things will

require a level of flexibility that the Federal work force clearly does

not permit in its current configuration. We really need to look or

seriously at ways of making people available when the peaks occur,

whether they are daily peaks in the morning or evenings, whether

they are weekly peaks, whether there are seasonal peaks.

I would submit to you that one of the reasons we haven’t had

more problems right now is because we are still 13.5 percent below

where we were at our peak of passenger activity in the year 2000.

We have had some sort of cushion, we are also at the off season.

As the spring and summer months appear, we will have considerable growth over what we have today. If we can’t figure out a way

to provide the flexibility to allow the people who are making hiring

decisions, making the deployment decisions to get people there
41

when they need them, the lines that we are experiencing now will

be short by comparison to what we are going to experience.

Finally, I thank this committee for having taken it upon itself to

include in Vision 100 a sizable number of provisions. We would

hope obviously that they can be funded in a way that allows them

to be realized. I think the important point is most of the people on

the committee have identified the serious issues that need to be addressed. We would hope with the other speakers today we can add

some level of precision to that understanding. Thank you.

Mr. MICA. Thank you for your testimony.

We will now hear from Mr. Todd Hauptli, Senior Executive Vice

President of the American Association of Airport Executives.

Mr. HAUPTLI. Thank you.

I want to focus on three points on the baggage side. Point one,

shockingly, we need more money. As has been discussed today, $1.5

billion has been made available so far. It is a $5 billion problem

as we see it, we are $3.5 billion short. We appreciate what this

committee has done to make funding available through the LOI

mechanism but we have a long way to go. As both the Chairman

and Ranking Member indicated, as we get more in-line equipment

in place, we will have lots of efficiency benefits to the entire system.

Second point, on letters of intent, the representatives from TSA

have talked about how there are eight LOIs in place. Our testimony indicates that there is a need for probably 60. I don’t sit before you today with perfect vision, it might be 60, it might be 65,

it might be 70, it might be 45 but what it is not is 8 and it is not

10.

The Office of Management and Budget has dictated to the Homeland Security Department and TSA that they will not issue anymore LOIs or grudgingly may issue one or two more LOIs. OMB

and the Administration need to be educated on the fact that putting more systems in place that are in-line in nature will save

money for the Federal Government, not cost money to the Federal

Government over the long haul.

Third point, local matching share, in Vision 100, you in our judgment wisely moved forward on providing a greater Federal share

for these security projects. Collectively the aviation industry would

have preferred 100 percent Federal share but got 90 percent on

these projects and that was very important to us. No army of TSA

lawyers, and they do have an army, can change ‘‘shall’’ to ‘‘may’’

without your acquiescence.

For my dramatic reading of the day, Section 605 of Vision 100,

Federal Share, ‘‘In general, the Government’s share of the cost of

a project under this section shall,’’ not ‘‘may’’ but ‘‘shall be 90 percent per project at a medium-large hub airport and 95 percent for

a project at any other airport.’’ It also goes on to talk about ‘‘shall

revise letters of intent issued before the date of enactment.’’ This

is the retroactive provision for those airports that already had LOIs

in place.

The law is not a matter of convenience. The issue is not that TSA

or the Department is going to just ignore that. They have put forward a proposal in their fiscal year 2005 budget to change that and

revert back to the 75 percent. We don’t agree with them, but that
42

is okay. The Administration, the Executive Branch, proposes and

Congress disposes. I am sure you will give that every consideration

but until such time as you change the law, they are required to

fund those at 90 percent. Today, airports are being told that in-line

for LOIs, they will get 75 percent from TSA, not 90 percent. There

are airports today that have LOIs in place that are seeking reimbursement that are being told by TSA that they can expect 75 percent, not 90 percent. That is totally unacceptable.

Last point, you stole our thunder a little bit. We were going to

collectively do a kiss to David Schaffer. Randy Walker had even imported Wayne Newton and show girls from Las Vegas for a little

number that we had lined up. We will save that for another time

but on behalf of the entire aviation industry, and I want to say for

the past 15 years me personally, we want to thank David Schaffer

for his excellent work. He has forgotten more about aviation than

I will ever learn.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Hauptli.

Let me call on Mr. Porter, if he would be so kind as to introduce

our next witness.

Mr. PORTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The next guest is a friend of mine probably for over 20 years,

Randall Walker, we call him Randy. He is head of one of the busiest airports in the United States of America and numerous other

airports around the Clark County area.

In 2002, there was almost 500,000 aircraft operations, takeoffs

and landings that took place at McCarran and as I mentioned earlier, close to 50 percent of all of our visitors to Las Vegas travel

via McCarran Airport. Over 10,000 people are employed at

McCarran, including airline employees, concession personnel, contractors and nearly 1,000 Clark County employees under Mr. Walker’s leadership. The airport generates close to $260 million a year

and has a yearly impact on our local economy of almost $25 billion.

I think we are going to find today Mr. Walker has not only areas

of concern but also some suggestions of how to make it better for

those TSA folks here today. I believe Mr. Walker has provided

some photographs of McCarran Airport shortly after the Consumer

Electronic Show that was mentioned. I think it graphically shows

the challenges we have had in the Las Vegas area.

I welcome Mr. Walker.

Mr. WALKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Porter for that

introduction. I appreciate it.

The lines are back. That is the problem that we have. We had

these long lines at the end of 2001 and 2002. We didn’t sit around

and wait for somebody to do something about it, we did a lot on

our own to make sure that the lines went away. We expanded our

checkpoint lanes from 12 to 25, adding the last three this last year.

We are now constructing new floor space to add more lanes at our

own expense. We have added our new speed check common use

check-in kiosk to help take the band off the ticket counter so those

not checking bags don’t have to go to the ticket counter. We have

added cameras to the checkpoint. We have developed automatic

doors that are tied to the security checkpoints. If an alarm goes,

we can seal off the terminal and with our cameras, we can deter-
43

mine how far penetration went. We don’t have to dump the entire

terminal so we have a lesser impact on those passengers already

screened.

We have already done the things that were suggested by two of

your colleagues, the one from the Denver area that talked about

getting everybody together to talk about what the peaks are going

to do. We did that a long time ago. We actually have ten minute

intervals to show what the seat capacity and demand is going to

be on a daily basis. We share that with the TSA and the airlines

provide their information.

We have already done the lane configuration your colleague from

New Jersey talked about. We couldn’t wait for the TSA, we did that

with our own money. We looked at what they were doing in Baltimore and it kind of scared us because we thought they were taking

more space than they needed, so we developed our own. We constructed our checkpoint lane and then had them come out and take

a look at them and they decided they would work so they stayed

in place.

We did all that in 2002 and the lines became tolerable. I won’t

say they were great but they were tolerable. Then all of a sudden

in January, the lines just ballooned again. We added three checkpoints in 2003. That was an expansion of 13.6 percent lane capacity. Our passengers only went up 3.6 percent, so the lanes should

have gotten shorter but got much, much longer. We tried to figure

out why that was. We were very perplexed.

We went out and started examining what was happening and we

came to several conclusions. First, I want to tell you what we did

is rather than complain, we wanted to do everything we could to

make the lines as efficient as possible, so we sent all of our senior

staff, including myself, out to the checkpoint to manage the front

of the lanes, what we call front-end loading. We actually are there

handing the passengers a bin, directing them to what to do so they

are more prepared when they get to the checkpoint.

What we found is people are not prepared when they get to the

checkpoint. They are still taking their shoes off, they are still taking their beepers, they are still getting the change out of their

pocket. If you add ten seconds of delay to 65,000 passengers in a

peak day, that is 150,000 seconds and you do the math, that is a

lot of hours of additional wait for everybody.

So we were talking to the customers, seeing what was happening

and one of the things we have concluded is in spite of all the public

attention to this, people are still not prepared when they come to

the checkpoint. One of the big reasons we find is that they are confused as to what the rules should be or what the rules are because

every airport is different. Do I have to take off my shoes, do I have

to put my shoes in the bin, do I have to put them directly on the

belt, can I put my coat in the same bin as I put my shoes, et cetera.

What happens is they wait until right before they go in the magnetometer until somebody tells them what to do or they play it safe

and put everything in a separate bin. My shoes go in a bin, my coat

goes in a bin, my change goes in a bin and now I have five bins

for one passenger and that increases the processing time for each

passenger. That is because they are so confused, they don’t know

what to do.
44

I will give you an example of two conversations I had in the last

week. One was with an investment banker who does a lot of investment banking work for us. I had dinner with him last week and

he was telling me an experience and his colleague had in an airport. They were walking through a magnetometer, he knows his

shoes don’t ring because he is an experienced traveler, somebody

the airlines like, a frequent business traveler that books his travel

on short notice. The TSA employee said, you need to take off your

shoes. He said no, I don’t, they don’t ring. He said, yes, you need

to take your shoes off and he said, no, I don’t, they don’t ring. Finally, the guy let him come through, he didn’t ring and he invited

him into the lane where you get the extra special attention for not

following his suggestion.

His colleague that was behind him made a comment, that is ridiculous. He also got invited into the special lane and he told me,

I will never not take my shoes off again even though he knows they

don’t ring. So that is just adding more processing time that is absolutely unnecessary.

My marketing manager, who flies all over the country and all

over the world on an annual basis, gave me the same story in another airport. I had a similar experience personally in Providence,

Rhode Island where I knew my shoes didn’t ring but yet it was

easier to take them off than argue with the TSA employee that I

shouldn’t take them off. So customers are confused and so they do

the prudent thing for themselves that adds more processing time

for everybody behind them. Then you multiply that by 65,000 passengers and you have a real problem.

The second part I haven’t mentioned is the throughput reduction

we had in our lanes. We on a regular basis send our staff out to

measure a number of hours period of time the throughput of each

of our checkpoints. What we found from 2003 to 2004 is the

throughput capacity of our checkpoints has dropped, same number

of lanes, expanded number of lanes by 13 percent, all of the lanes

are managed by the TSA in the peak times and yet the throughput

dropped. Why is that? What happened?

Our analysis is as follows, what we can find out because TSA

hasn’t been very helpful in describing what their process changes

have been. One of the things that happened is they turned on TIPS

at all the airports. They have described to you what TIPS is. Of

course if you are an employee who now knows there is a software

program that is going to measure your effectiveness, you are going

to be much more efficient at your job which means you are going

to take more time which slows down the lanes. That probably is

not a bad idea in and of itself.

If you step back a couple of years, one of the things that happened at our airport is we used to have free flow of the bag belt,

and the operator would just stop the bag when they saw something

that was questionable so they could take a better look at it. TSA

decided to stop that, now each image must stop for five seconds.

That adds a lot of extra processing time.

When we complained about that, they explained our staff is new,

we don’t have measurements to determine whether they are effective, we need to do this. It sounded reasonable so we kind of left

it alone. Now that TIPS is in, now they have a mechanism to deter-
45

mine the effectiveness of the screener, they still make you stop the

bag, every bag. So if you have a bin with a coat that is clearly identifiable to a screener that there is no problem, they still have to

stop that for five seconds to look at it. That is the rule and they

will be in trouble if they don’t do it.

What the TSA needs to do as they implement these new procedures is go back to the old procedures and see which ones can be

eliminated because they now have a system that can actually monitor the effectiveness of the screener and get rid of the old rule they

had that is creating some of the delay.

Some of the members have touched on the trusted traveler program and CAPPS. CAPPS was fully implemented at the beginning

of the year. As Mr. Oberstar mentioned at our airport, sometimes

the CAPPS line can be as long as the regular line and those all

have to have special attention, be handwanded and their bag

searched. We could certainly get CAPPS-II where we have fewer

people who are being subjected. So those are some simple things

they could do.

The other thing they should do is give the FSD the flexibility at

every airport to manage the system in real time. If you look at

these pictures we have provided you, Mr. Chairman, unfortunately,

I can tell you at each point how long the line is. The W.H. Smith

store, if the line is there, that is about 40 minutes. This particular

lines goes beyond that. This was probably a hour and a half to two

hours. This was not after CES, this was just last Sunday.

Mr. MICA. I don’t want to cut you off but if you could conclude?

Mr. WALKER. Yes, Mr. Chairman. In conclusion if you could give

the TSA, if the TSA could give the FSD the authority to manage

in real time to make sure the rules are implemented to protect people on both sides of the checkpoints so we don’t have this security

problem in front of the checkpoint. As we now know, the terrorists

have figured out they can walk people up in front of a checkpoint

like we have seen recently in the news, I think that would be more

secure for everybody. The GAO and the IG should come out and

criticize the FSD for taking that authority and balancing the risk.

Mr. MICA. Angela Gittens is Director of the Miami Dade-Aviation

Department.

Ms. GITTENS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the

Subcommittee.

First, I would like to ask permission to submit to you additional

information.

Mr. MICA. Without objection, so ordered.

Ms. GITTENS. Secondly, I know I speak for all the airport directors here when I emphasize that airport proprietors have a maximum stake in the safety and security of air transportation. We

know it is the cornerstone of our business since commercial aviation cannot exist as a form of mass transportation without that

safety and security. Obviously the dramatic decline in air travel

after September 11 was tragic proof of that fact. So this will not

be a debate on the vital interest we share to constantly rachet up

the level of safety and security in our air transportation system.

Although I will be talking about the frustrations specifically of

Miami-Date County in dealing with the Transportation Security

Administration, I would like to acknowledge up front that we have
46

a great deal of respect for the tremendous challenge that TSA confronts and the prime risk that TSA has made in short tenure and

the fact that we have worked very collaboratively and cooperatively

with the MIA Federal Security Director and his staff as team members in an integrated mission and will continue to do so. We commend them for the job that they do.

My purpose here today is to highlight the barriers we see as

keeping the TSA from being responsive to the security needs of

Miami International Airport. We are very concerned the Federal

Government is retreating from the commitment it made to the communities of this Nation in the wake of the vicious attacks on September 11.

The most pressing issue for my community I would like to discuss is the explosive detection system installation at MIA. Congress, as you know imposed a December 31, 2002 deadline for permanent installation of EDS equipment in line with the baggage

sortation systems. To accomplish this on an interim basis, the TSA

installed equipment in the passenger lobbies and baggage make up

areas of MIA. It was clear to all that our mostly 1960s vintage terminal facilities could not long tolerate such an arrangement but we

understood that we just had to make do in the short run. At MIA, we are in the midst of a $4.8 billion capital improvement program. That includes construction of two new terminals,

north and south. The construction program has entered its peak

phase with expenditures of over $1 million a day. We are having

to cancel and defer projects that this community wants including

the intermodal commuter facility that we have talked about, Mr.

Chairman, that is part of Miami-Dade County’s overall transportation system because now the airport must fund the permanent

installation of EDS equipment in-line since the TSA has reneged

on its commitment to pay for this. For Miami-Dade County this

constitutes over a $200 million unfunded Federal mandate we can

ill afford but we can no longer defer because we have an ongoing

construction project. The longer we wait, the bigger the ultimate

bill since as we know in construction, time is money.

We have been working with the TSA on a Memorandum of

Agreement and Letters of Intent. In a conference call the day after

Thanksgiving, I think Randy was on that same call, then TSA Administrator Admiral Loy proposed to us the MOA LOI process. Airports have expressed themselves willing to finance the substantial

EDS installation costs by allowing the TSA to leverage its resources by spreading out the payment over several years. In this

way, the TSA could achieve its mandate at more airports in a

shorter period of time. We agreed to do it this way.

Over a year has passed since that conversation and a second congressional deadline has come and gone and yet MIA still does not

have approval of an EDS in-line design and a funding commitment

from the TSA. Considering we were not placed in the first group

of airports, even though we are the Nation’s third busiest international gateway, have the highest number of foreign visitors of

any airport in the Nation, have long been considered an airport

with very special security needs due to our particular market characteristics is no less now, we are very confused as to what possible

criteria the TSA can be using.
47

We now hear that the Office of Management and Budget has prohibited TSA from entering into any further LOI agreements so

even though Congress has passed appropriations for the TSA to install EDS equipment, although we can contemplate that Congress

will pass appropriations in the future, we know the threat and the

need remain, the LOI Program is effectively suspended. With the

suspension of a program that was conceived as a convenience to the

TSA and a way for the TSA to hasten achievement of its mandate,

the TSA now walks away from its mandate. You will forgive me if

I say we feel that the Miami-Dade County community has been

dumped on.

Along with other members of our community, I have personally

traveled to Washington on numerous occasions over the last two

years to make sure that TSA knew how important the EDS request

was to Miami-Dade County. I have met with every TSA Administrator and many senior executives, I have always been assured that

our message was received but received no commitment. On other

occasions, our audience expressed surprise that we had not already

gotten our LOI or our MOA given the importance of our airport

and we were assured due attention would be given our request.

After all the TSA leadership changes, meetings and conversations, I am sorry to report to you that MIA is on closer to receiving

funding for EDS installation than we were when the TSA was created in November 2001 with the signing of the Aviation Transportation Security Act.

You have heard here about the importance of McCarran to the

State of Nevada. The importance of MIA to the State of Florida and

to Miami-Dade County is no less. Ninety-five percent of the visitors

to Miami-Dade County arrive by air. Without its aviation assets,

the community is subject to losing $18.6 billion in economic impact

and more than 237,000 jobs.

Some recommendations. With respect to the permanent in-line

installation, Congress must act to clarify TSA’s ability to obligate

funds for airports at which TSA has determined that an on-line solution is the only effective means of accomplishing the intent of

ATSA. There appears to be a debate within the Executive Branch

to the fiscal, statutory or policy basis for the LOI/MOA Program.

Congress should address this and provide a viable means to reimburse airports for this unfunded mandate.

If a dedicated source of funding is needed for an LOI program,

Congress should provide it. If the answer is additional funding,

then we urge Congress to include an earmark for terminal modifications for in-line EDS in the supplemental spending bill.

Also, I want to urge you, as Todd said, to maintain the 90 percent Federal share. It is an appalling betrayal of our community

that the Federal Government commits to taking on a responsibility,

then asks for a 10 percent local match for the Federal Government’s responsibility, then asks for a 25 percent match or in our

case, a 100 percent match as though baggage screening has become

a local responsibility.

Lastly, I think we need to take a cold, hard look at what it is

going to take to protect our Nation’s air transportation system

without undoing the air transportation system’s main job, to serve

as the economic engines of the economies of our communities. It is
48

not too early to look back at ATSA with the TSA, the Department

of Homeland Security, the local communities and the industry and

start making such adjustments as may be necessary to secure not

just a place or a plane, but the process of air travel.

Thank you very much.

Mr. MICA. Thank you very much for your testimony.

Let me recognize, finally and patiently, Tom Jensen, President,

National Safe Skies Alliance

Mr. JENSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We have submitted written testimony along with a list of our

members.

Mr. MICA. Without objection, the entire testimony will be made

a part of the record.

Mr. JENSEN. Thank you.

I would like to take the opportunity now to comment on some of

the issues that have been raised and that you have raised, Mr.

Chairman, in the testimony here today. One of these issues concerns the need for in-line screening of checked baggage. We have

been working with Lexington, mentioned earlier by Mr. Plavin. We

participated in helping to design that facility and also have performed testing in that facility to make sure the kind of system set

up there can be a model system that can be used in other mediumsized airports across the country. We feel we have moved forward

some in that particular area.

I also want to comment on the concern about McCarran. We have

undertaken a project in Atlanta in checkpoint optimization for

which we have set up certain rearrangements to two of the checkpoint queues there to make measurements to see if we move people

better through that kind of configuration than the configuration

presently being used. That effort is ongoing but as a result of the

effort we have in Atlanta, Seattle has asked us to come and conduct a similar thing there. We do have a crew that has been working in Seattle for three weeks now taking the necessary measurements needed to make some determinations as to how that checkpoint can be speeded up.

We also have been involved with trying to improve the means by

which resolution of alarms can be made in checked baggage using

on-line protocols rather than having to search bags. So we have

done testing at Boston, San Francisco, Jacksonville and Orange

County. We are in the process of providing the data necessary to

change those protocols, and hopefully the TSA will be able to make

it possible to move baggage through with on-line corrections or online resolution of alarms rather than having to do it manually.

The question was raised earlier about the viability of using full

body screening. As you know, Mr. Chairman, Safe Skies tested for

some three months whole body screening at Orlando Airport and

even with the nearly hysterical news coverage of that effort, we

found that 78 percent of those people that came through voluntarily were happy to be screened by that kind of device. So it is not

as big an issue as perhaps has been reported. We think continued

screening and improving the equipment will make it possible to

solve that problem.

I would also like to comment on Dr. Randy Null who gave a

laundry list of things that are underway right now in answer to
49

your question with regard to what is being deployed into the field.

I would like to say we are getting prepared right now—we had

meetings even yesterday at TSA—to begin testing those specific devices that were mentioned.

I would like to turn to one other issue included in my written

testimony regarding the ATSC, a group of several devices put together and tested in that fashion. We did those tests at Stanford

Research Institute, an organization in California that can do live

explosive testing. We tested that equipment there, and a report has

been completed and submitted on that. We think there are some

things to learn from the work we did there.

Mr. MICA. Thank you. I want to thank each of the panelists for

their testimony.

Ms. Gittens, I don’t recall and maybe I missed it, what kind of

penalty do you face if you don’t get this matter solved?

Ms. GITTENS. Because the construction is ongoing, between the

two terminals we are talking about $150,000 a day in delay claims

by the contractors.

Mr. MICA. Just for the record, did you say $150,000 a day?

Ms. GITTENS. Correct.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Jensen, you heard what Mr. Null testified today

and I heard your comments. Please advise the subcommittee on a

continuous basis of the progress with these commitments to next

generation testing. Could you do that?

Mr. JENSEN. We will be delighted to do that.

Mr. MICA. No further questions.

Ms. Berkley?

Ms. BERKLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I also want to echo the Chairman’s thanks to all of you. This has

been a very enlightening panel and I appreciate the input. It was

superb.

If I could ask Mr. Walker a few questions, if I may. Your testimony mentions the front-end loading project to assist passengers

prepare for the checkpoints. Can you tell me who is paying for this

service and how much the service costs?

Mr. WALKER. We are paying for it with airport funds and now

that we have the system down with testing with our senior management, we are entering into a contract with a private company

on an annualized basis, about $600,000 a year.

Ms. BERKLEY. Just for the record, you are paying for it and it is

$600,000 a year?

Mr. WALKER. Correct.

Ms. BERKLEY. Thank you. I understand that you as the director

of the airport are not responsible for the TSA. I know I receive

phone calls regarding the long lines and the various problems, then

I call you and we talk about them, but can you tell us what other

procedures you have deployed at the airport to help reduce delays

at the TSA-manned checkpoints?

Mr. WALKER. Some of the things I mentioned were we reconfigured the checkpoints and used a configuration that was a little different than the TSA to squeeze more lanes in, we were able to go

from 12 to 25 lanes. We had established before the front-end loading, processes where we have helped the passengers get organized

before they got there but it wasn’t quite as efficient as what we
50

have now. We have worked with the TSA to get all of the equipment they need, any cameras, anything they need, we have put in

at our expense to make sure that checkpoint is as efficient as possible.

Ms. BERKLEY. Is the TSA staffing level a problem at our airport?

Mr. WALKER. Yes, they are. The last I checked, they are about

150 staff down. They are trying to hire some part-timers but that

has become a little more problematic than they had anticipated in

terms of the length of time and the turnover is extremely high with

the part-timers. That progress hasn’t been as good as I think they

had hoped. They have authorized overtime at airport. All of our

TSA employees are working 50 hour weeks to be able to staff the

checkpoints at a peak time, so that has helped.

It is not that they haven’t addressed the issue but yes, it is a

problem and you can’t work people 50 hours a week forever.

Ms. BERKLEY. So you are saying we are 150 people down?

Mr. WALKER. The last I checked it was about 150 down.

Ms. BERKLEY. And we are going to be adding new lanes?

Mr. WALKER. We are going to be adding six new lanes in October.

Ms. BERKLEY. Then how many more down will we be with six additional lanes?

Mr. WALKER. We should get 100 or so more to manage those

lanes if they were to properly staff them during peak times.

Ms. BERKLEY. Obviously I know these photos, I know this airport

very, very well. Looking at the photos, can you describe the experience that passengers go through from the moment they arrive at

the airport until they actually board the airplane?

Mr. WALKER. Assuming ticketing is not a problem, when they

come up the escalator, this particular line to the D gates, they will

probably encounter this line shortly after they come up the escalator and will have a two to two and a half hour wait based on this

line to get through the checkpoint and it snakes through.

Disneyland couldn’t do any better in providing a serpentine line to

keep people up to get to a ride like the rides in Disneyland. Every

time you turn a corner, you think you are almost there and you

have another distance to go. It is a long line. They stand there, get

very frustrated but what are they going to do, they have to catch

their plane.

Ms. BERKLEY. Again, I want to thank all of you for your input.

Mr. Walker, I enjoy working with you very much. You do an excellent job and I appreciate all that you do on behalf of the community and the airport.

Mr. WALKER. Thank you.

Mr. PORTER [ASSUMING CHAIR]. Mr. Walker, I think this is Nevada’s lucky day because if we look at the committee, two members

of the Nevada delegation and my senior member to my left, certainly now is your chance.

On a more serious note, the comments that have been expressed

today by members of the panel and members of the elected body

are although at times specific to our communities, we represent

what is happening across the country.

Mr. Walker, I actually have two questions before we conclude.

You mentioned many of the challenges that McCarran has had and
51

is probably reflective of other airports, but as your Congressman,

what should we be putting in the budget right now to help you

with your needs at McCarran Airport?

Mr. WALKER. I think the most important thing for us is for the

TSA to have the ability to buy the equipment that is necessary

both from the baggage screening side—we are fortunate we have

a LOI, so we are putting in with Federal help our baggage screening system and are under construction as we speak. Unfortunately

for Ms. Gittens, she doesn’t have the same thing in Miami and that

is problematic for her and for a lot of other airport directors. So

solving the problem in one airport like Las Vegas does not necessarily make the whole system efficient. Our customers have to

come from some other airport, including Miami, so it is important

that is efficient on both sides so that they are not discouraged to

take a plane to our community because they don’t want to go

through their own airport. It is important that we have the equipment and can solve this problem at both ends from our perspective.

Also, the number of employees is a problem. This 45,000 cap or

whatever the number is that Congress put on, not this committee

but the Congress put on the TSA is a little problematic if you want

them to do everything you have directed them to do. Either you

need to be more realistic in what your instructions are to them and

what their duties are or you need to give them more manpower,

one or the two, because there are other things they are directed to

do that they haven’t even started yet. I don’t know how they are

going to do that with 45,000 people when they can’t even manage

what they are supposed to do with the cap today.

Problematic in that is they need to get their hiring process solved

because I wouldn’t give them more authority to hire more people

when they can’t hire the number they have been authorized to

have. I think it is incumbent upon them to show they can actually

manage what you have given them. Once they can do that, I think

if you don’t add more people to the system as the traffic grows back

to pre-9/11 and beyond, there is no way we are going to be able to

accommodate that growth in a reasonable fashion. We will discourage people from flying and the system won’t grow if we don’t get

this fixed.

Mr. PORTER. Mr. Walker, assuming for a moment that nothing

changes, what will happen to our community?

Mr. WALKER. In my opinion, as the reputation of coming to our

airport or any other airport similarly situated, that you are going

to have to spend that type of time in line, people will not come,

people will find an alternative way to spend their leisure time.

Maybe they will drive, maybe they will stay home or whatever they

want to do besides stand in line for two or three hours on their way

home. I think from an economic standpoint both from individual

communities and the airlines as well, which are not exactly at the

top of their financial strength at the moment, if we want to make

sure they are successful, we have to be able to encourage people

to fly. What we are doing now I think is discouraging people to fly

based on the fact that the experience is inconsistent and many

times miserable.

Mr. PORTER. Thank you, Mr. Walker.

Ms. BERKLEY. Thank you, Mr. Porter.
52

I think it is important to note that two-thirds of Nevada’s congressional delegation is sitting here today.

There is one other question that I wanted to ask you because I

posed the question to Mr. Blank and I said I would be interested

in your answer as well. Could you explain to us what the effect of

the implementation of the TPS Program is at McCarran Airport?

Mr. WALKER. Reduction in our throughput. It is very logical. Employees now know that there is a software tracking their effectiveness and they are going to be judged on the results of that tracking. So far, they are much more cautious about how they examine

which has slowed the whole process down. That is not to say that

TPS is not a good thing, but we need to examine, as I said, the

other rules in effect before we had TPS that were justified. Maybe

those need to be reconsidered so at the same time we are slowing

down the process one, we can speed up the process on another.

That is what I don’t see the TSA doing, examining the old rules

they instituted in 2002 before they had some of the new software

and justified because they didn’t have any way to track the employee, so they need to balance that. They need to be looking at the

entire system and making the changes simultaneously, not after

the fact.

Ms. BERKLEY. Thank you very much. Thank all of you very much

for being here.

Mr. PORTER. I would like to note that for the record, there were

some items presented earlier the attendees would like make sure

are added to the record, the photographs from McCarran, also the

letter from the Consumer Electronics Association Mr. Gary Shapiro

would like to add for the record, and also important to note, representing part of Las Vegas, these challenges are not every day. It

is a great place to visit and be a part of our community.

Also, the record will be kept open for two weeks for additional

comments.

I thank you all very much for your presentation and being with

us today. Thank you all very much.

[Whereupon, at 1:20 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned, to

reconvene at the call of the Chair.]
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