REMARKS
FOR
THE
HONORABLE NORMAN Y. MINETA
SECRETARY
OF TRANSPORTATION
TRANSPORTATION
RESEARCH BOARD
CHAIRMAN’S
LUNCHEON
WASHINGTON,
D.C.
JANUARY
16, 2002
12:00
PM
Thank you,
Bruce, for that generous introduction.
I had the chance to work with the Transportation Research Board, and with
many of you, during my tenure on the House Public Works and Transportation
Committee. I look forward to
continuing that productive working relationship as Secretary of Transportation.
All of us
here understand that we have entered a new era in transportation, an era in
which a determined enemy has challenged one of America’s most cherished
freedoms — namely, the
freedom of mobility.
To address
that challenge, on November 19th, President Bush signed legislation
creating the new Transportation Security Administration within the Department of
Transportation.
In just a
few months, the TSA will have hired tens of thousands of new employees to screen
passengers and baggage at 429 airports nationwide.
We will have put in place employee background screening tools in
aviation, maritime and surface transportation.
With our public and private sector partners, we will strengthen virtually
every mode of transportation based upon comprehensive security assessments.
Standing
up the TSA is, in short, a uniquely ambitious and important enterprise.
People are
the key to the success of this mission. On
that score, we are off to a great start. President Bush has named an extraordinary man to lead the TSA
as Under Secretary of Transportation for Security — John Magaw.
As a
career law enforcement and security professional with the U.S. Secret Service,
John helped protect eight Presidents. Now,
he is working shoulder-to-shoulder with me, Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson,
and my entire senior management team at DOT to recruit and retain highly
competent men and women — people
who will be proud of their service to their country, and worthy of their
Nation’s pride.
We are
looking for experience, people who are stress-tested —
individuals who can step in right away and take charge.
We are looking for maturity of judgment, steadiness in a crisis, leaders
who can in turn attract top professionals in the field.
We are
creating a flat organizational structure at the TSA with well-trained front-line
managers, and supporting them with an array of services deployed from
Washington. We will avoid regional bosses and bureaucratic bloat, emphasizing
instead front-line service delivery.
We will
have overlapping, mutually reinforcing layers of security, some of which are
seen, like screening stations, while others remain unseen, like intelligence,
undercover work and state-of-the-art technology tools.
We will
maintain a core commitment to measure performance relentlessly, building a
security regime that provides both world-class security, and world-class
customer service, to the traveling public.
To
jumpstart work on critical tasks, we initially created eight “Go-Teams,”
to work intensively on specific tasks, present decision options, and then
disband. Some of these have
successfully completed their tasks and moved on.
At
present, we have some 36 Go-Teams launched and operating. They cover a thousand details small and large —
from what uniforms the TSA security force will wear, to the procurement,
installation and maintenance of explosive detection equipment for 429 airports.
In
addition, we have teams doing detailed process maps for key assets that must be
protected in air transportation: passengers,
cargo, people working in and moving through airports, and physical assets such
as aircraft and terminal facilities.
Overseeing
all of this activity is an eight-person DOT Management Committee that I chair.
The
process itself entails consultation and participation by many outside groups —
airlines, airport executives, labor unions, screening companies, airport
vendors, airplane and security equipment manufacturers, trade associations and
experts of many sorts.
Such
consultation will begin to reach a new pitch of activity in the next month.
I have made a personal commitment to conduct a monthly briefing on our
progress with Congressional appropriators and authorizers.
We are also operating in close coordination with the White House,
especially with the Office of Homeland Security.
To protect
vital security protocols, the details of some steps we are taking must, of
course, remain classified. We will
simply not discuss certain safety-sensitive details that would make it easier
for terrorists to attack innocent people.
But, where
I can, let me offer a bit of a progress report.
Prior to
passage of the TSA legislation, DOT and FAA had already started strengthening
security measures at airports. We
have deployed a substantially expanded number of Federal Air Marshals, and are
training an even larger force. In
addition, the airlines have completed cockpit door reinforcement system-wide.
Looking
forward, the legislation creating TSA specifies more than two dozen deadlines,
reports, tasks or other such deliverables.
Inside DOT, I have given a simple mandate covering each deadline:
let’s figure out how to get it done, because they are not negotiable.
We met the
statutory deadlines for the actions required thirty days following enactment.
For the sixty-day point, which will be on Friday of this week, we will again
meet each statutory deadline. These
deadlines are a natural and important point of reference for the public, but
they do not tell the whole story of what is happening with the TSA.
As
Congress recognized in the legislation, it is simply impossible to flip a switch
and deploy more than 30,000 federal employees at once.
We will
deploy the TSA with care, terminal-by-terminal, airport-by-airport.
At the peak this summer, we may well be managing some phase of the
start-up at over 100 airports simultaneously.
Before the end of this year, we must have completed the transition to a
full federal workforce at all 429 airports.
Last
month, we announced the qualifications for the new screeners.
Following the language of the law, these new screeners will be citizens
of the United States, and have either a high school education or equivalent work
experience that demonstrates their ability to do the job.
They must
pass tough new background and security checks, including criminal history
checks. They must read, write and
speak English well enough to communicate clearly with passengers undergoing
screening. And, they must have the
physical abilities, as measured by a medical examination, and the basic
aptitudes, as measured by tough new proficiency tests, to do the work.
We will
extend a hiring preference to veterans of America’s armed forces, and to those
workers furloughed from aviation jobs as a result of the terrorist attacks.
None
of these new airline security candidates will assume their job responsibilities
until they have completed 40 hours of classroom training and 60 hours of
on-the-job training, and passed an on-the-job training examination.
We will provide more details of this rigorous training program on Friday.
The key to
our success at airports nationwide will be a core of senior managers, the
Federal Security Directors. These
FSDs are the strong front-line managers who will bring federal authority
directly to the point of service, the airport.
We have
partnered with a leading executive search firm, Korn Ferry, to manage the
recruiting and screening process of FSDs for the largest airports.
I expect that we will have the first group of FSDs hired in about a
month.
Many
first-rate firms have offered us resources to use for a number of months.
Our legal and ethics advisors have constructed a program which allows us
to accept these offers of support from companies like Fluor, A.T. Kearney,
Disney, Solectron, as well as Marriott, Intel, and FedEx.
These
Senior Advisors will work side-by-side with members of our leadership team, for
an average of six to nine months, to help design the processes and measurements
that will comprise the work of the TSA. They
will help us address questions like how to manage long lines of people
efficiently, how to empower field offices in a distributed organization, how to
best roll-out new airport operations, and many more.
I am
pleased to announce that, beginning immediately, TSA will work with the state of
Maryland to use Baltimore-Washington International Airport as a site to study
airport security operations, test TSA deployment techniques and technology, and
begin to train senior managers for the TSA.
I have
been to BWI numerous times since September 11th, just to watch and
learn. FAA has a terrific,
dedicated team there, led by Amy Becke, who has already taught me a lot.
I spoke this week to Governor Parris Glendening, who has pledged his full
support of making BWI a model. The
airlines at BWI have similarly stepped up to help.
I know
there is a great deal of interest about the requirement regarding checked bag
screening. Working with the
airlines, we have taken the necessary action to meet this requirement, using the
full menu of options provided for in the law.
Every
available EDS machine will be used to its maximum capacity.
Where we do not yet have EDS resources in place, we will use other
options outlined in the law.
On
originating flights, baggage will be matched to its passenger.
Computers will screen passengers, and passengers will be screened for
weapons — often multiple
times.
In
addition, more bags will also be subject to sniffing by trained dogs, to more
comprehensive screening by both explosive-detection and explosive trace
detection devices, to manual searches, or to a combination of those techniques.
We will
continuously upgrade our screening capability, ultimately meeting the
requirement that each checked bag be screened by an explosive detection system
by the end of this year.
We have
retained McKinsey & Co., the management consultants, to help us think
through the issues involved with meeting that December 31, ’02 deadline.
We are looking at a wide variety of innovative approaches using
technology, different ways to run the check-in process, and procurement
strategies that can get us to the goal.
In
addition to the bag screening requirement, there are several other statutory
deadlines that we will meet this week:
The FAA
has written a set of guidelines for flight crews who face threats onboard an
aircraft. We will issue that report
to the appropriate parties on time.
We will
soon begin receiving electronically transmitted foreign aircraft passenger
manifests from the Bureau of Customs.
We will
also release our screener training plan on time as well.
The plan was written with input from around the government and leading
private sector training experts.
We
consider the law’s tight deadlines as promises made to the American people,
and we will do everything humanly possible to keep these promises.
Again, let me be clear: we are
building
an airline security system staffed by dedicated and competent federal aviation
security agents, led by highly experienced senior security and law enforcement
professionals.
The system will be robust and redundant, and we will be
relentless in our search for improvements.
It is better today than yesterday;
and, it will be better still tomorrow.
Now, as anyone involved in planning a major exercise like the
one before us knows, sometimes ideas that look great on paper do not transfer
into practice all that smoothly.
In fact,
since we announced our zero tolerance policy on October 30 of last year, FAA
special agents have ordered the evacuation of U.S. airport terminals on more
than 30 different occasions, not counting a number of evacuations conducted by
airports themselves.
Some media
commentators suggest that these evacuations indicate ongoing problems with
aviation security. I believe that
just the opposite is true.
These
evacuations reflect the heightened standards of our zero tolerance policy, and
show the FAA’s willingness to take swift and immediate action to protect
travelers against any and all breaches of security. That zero-tolerance policy will continue.
While much
of the recent media attention has focused on aviation safety, the Transportation
Security Administration will work to develop heightened security procedures and
awareness across every mode of transportation including rail, highways, transit,
maritime and pipeline.
Across
every mode, we must continue to develop measures to increase the protection of
critical transportation assets, addressing freight as well as passenger
transportation.
Finally,
there is one more vitally important element of our plan that I want to mention
— you.
The
Transportation Research Board occupies a unique role in this effort.
It promotes innovation and progress in transportation by stimulating and
conducting research, disseminates vital information, and encourages the broad
implementation of research results.
At no time
since the TRB’s inception has this mission taken on more importance than it
does today. Now, more than ever, we
must draw upon your expertise to meet the extraordinary transportation
challenges facing our nation.
In times
past, when challenging and complex situations faced the United States, our best
minds have responded with advanced technology to meet our national needs.
Once again, I know we can count on you to answer the call.
Thank you,
travel safely, and God bless America.
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