Administrator Kip Hawley's Address at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Testimony & Speeches
April 4, 2007
Thank you, Carol [Hallett], for that introduction, and for including me in this important forum. I am really struck by the level of complexity of the problems that face the aviation industry today. There's a lot to be proud of and a lot of reasons to be optimistic as we look forward, but much complexity remains. It's interesting that the issues that you've been talking about [at this conference] are ones on which you can run the numbers and quantify what your exposure is in risk. For example, What's the risk of capacity shortage? What's the risk of new technology? And so forth.
It's striking to me because in the business of counterterrorism, we don't have that kind of numeric certainty. And our ability to plan is not based on being able to have forecasts that you can rely on and depend on.
Unlike technology risk, terrorist risk doesn't obey the laws of physics, computer science, Moore's law or anything else.
In capacity risk, you can think in terms of what kind of assets you have now, what kind of needs draw on those assets, and you can calculate where you go next. Whereas with terrorist risk, that kind of certainty-based planning based on what you predict is going to happen does not exist. This is a completely different ball game.
The terror risk is hard for us because unlike most business issues, terrorists have no deadlines. They have no borders. They have no rules. Their bankers have patience and deep pockets. They are intelligent and adaptive.
And while we are public, everywhere, and accessible -- our only glimpse of the terrorist may be that moment, perhaps only seconds, when the terrorist breaks cover to conduct an attack.
And that's not a planning horizon any of us want to deal with.
I think it was an interesting question raised earlier today: What is the threat anyway? Why are we doing this? I'm often asked—Is this threat real? What is the reason for us going through what we do? So I'll just give you an up-to-the-minute characterization of it. If you boil down all of the classified information, you come to this conclusion that I can share.
We do know of continued terrorist interests in attacking the aviation sector. We do know of attack planning. We know of attack training, and we know of the movement of people who have been trained, including in our direction. That's the threat picture. I don't know how to be any clearer than that. We all wish we could turn the clock back. But honestly, this is the world we're going to live in for the rest of our professional lives. We have to figure out a way to have effective, sustainable security that we can operate under where businesses can thrive.
We've seen the passengers come back. We saw an emergency situation this summer with the liquid threat. We got through it pretty well and went right into the holiday season without problem. So I think the system is resilient. The system is effective. Now the question is—how do we sustain it in a way that responds to a terrorist threat that keeps moving on us?
What comes next? What kind of environment do we share going forward? First, as others have noted, the flow of passengers is going to continue to increase. We're going to have more and more passengers. Along with the greater passenger demand is going to be higher expectation. As time has passed since 9/11, I think patience has gone down, tolerance for interruption in service has gone down, at the same time that the flow of passengers has increased. And finally, we're in for more scrutiny.
Scrutiny is something that happens for us any time we plan, test, train, let alone operate. We have basically real-time reviews done by the GAO or the Inspector General. Media enjoys a lot of opportunity to explore what we're doing. And frankly, two million passengers a day give us live commentary on how well we're doing. That is a condition that is not going to go away. We have to design our system to accommodate it. So how do we handle more people, faster, with better security?
Not by standing still.
We do it by being smart with our resources and denying terrorists a stationary target.
We hear passengers. We read blogs. We 'get it' in terms of the quality time that we spend together at the checkpoint, with our shoes and our baggies, and the bins, and all that. And we 'get it' that, while in our world, the checkpoint is part of a multilayered system involving partners all around the world—it's visible security, that's how we see it—we do know that passengers see it as a roadblock. As an obstacle to get through on the way through the airport.
We recognize that the security encounter that's visible to the customer is crammed into the very short moment when you go through the magnetometer. You spend time in line and then you come to the magnetometer, and it all happens at once. It's about 15 feet and 15 seconds, and it's noisy, and there's a lot of activity going on. The question it raises for many passengers—and I know because I hear from them—is, what was that all about? Am I really safe? Is this really adding to my security?
As we go forward, this is a question that I think we have to face straight on. We read in the paper about this vulnerability or that vulnerability. Sure, there are many potential vulnerabilities. You can imagine, somebody who makes up movie plots can come up with lots and lots of vulnerabilities. That's not the point. The point is what kind of security do we have that gets ahead of terrorists? Security that doesn't rely on us predicting exactly which way they are going to come at us next.
I'd just like to say one thing for the public—and for all of us who wonder, am I safe? What is it that the TSA does beside examine my baggy?—We start the day every day with intel briefings with all the members of the intelligence community and with law enforcement, and we trade threat information. We actually prepare and discuss operations for that day. We then move to within the TSA environment to meet with all of our operating people and figure out what we're doing about these threats.
It gets down to the flight level. If there's a particular concern about a flight, we deploy federal air marshals to cover that flight. This is something that happens 24-hours a day. It's invisible to the public, but it is the bulk of what we do at TSA. It's to work with other agencies in the intelligence community, law enforcement, and others within the Department of Homeland Security to get ahead of terrorist activity.
Our strategy now, as many of you know from the behavior observation that we've put in front of the checkpoint and some of the document checking that we've done, is to break up that congestion at the checkpoint. To say, look, we need to know who is coming through the magnetometer. It's just not whether it's a special screening selectee. Let's have some risk assessment before the person comes to us at the magnetometer. We are pushing the perimeter out. It allows us to look at who's out there, is there anyone acting suspiciously?
Last Friday morning in Minneapolis, there was a double-murderer out there and our SPOT person identified him, and the individual was taken into custody. We have situations every day where our behavior observation people find people who should be referred to law enforcement. So this is a huge step for us. By and large, it's invisible to the public. But it lets us know who's out there, even if they're not carrying a prohibited item.
If you're only looking to see whether somebody's carrying a prohibited item, you're going to miss the terrorist who's doing a casing of the place, or traveling on the way to do something else. That is a huge opportunity to miss, and we are not missing that.
Our strategy is: Know as much as we can about who's approaching the checkpoint. Increase the opportunities for our officers to identify risk people before they come in. It involves saying, yes, we do know about prohibited items, and yes, there are objects that we don't want to get through the checkpoint. That is what's appropriate when you get to the magnetometer and the x-ray. But let's identify in advance who the people are and not let them even get to the airport.
You're going to be seeing other changes in the coming year. Over the last year, we spent a lot of time working with our transportation security officer corps to upgrade the training, provide better compensation, provide incentive compensation, and other benefits to increase retention, including career progression. A lot of additional layers of security have been added that go beyond the checkpoint. These get us out from behind that fortress of the checkpoint.
You're also going to see more changes over time. We are experimenting with new technology. How do we do stand-off detection? We have a pilot program on the Staten Island Ferry that uses a passive millimeter wave technology. That is stand-off detection. We're also exploring new technology to help us identify what's inside bottles without opening the bottles. We're going to continue to push the perimeter outward, looking at these things.
As you travel, you'll see different pieces of equipment. You'll see different processes to try to accelerate the pace. What I call 'de-checkpointize' our security. Extend it. Create more chances for a pace that is brisk but balanced, so that passengers can have a sensible experience all the way through security and not have the crunch just at the checkpoint.
We need you to help us with this. It is a fundamental learning from 9/11 that none of us can do it alone, and in order to be effective, we really do have to be linked together and continue that. I think we have a lot to be proud of. I think of Carol [Hallett] who was there on 9/11 and was so instrumental in getting the requirements up and running and getting TSA started. Looking back over these five years, I think we have succeeded as an industry, and as a private sector/public sector partnership, in bringing up the post-9/11 required security regime. It's up and it works. But it is not sufficient to sit with that.
The next step is up to us, that as we learn from each other and as we learn from our customers, we come up with ways to accelerate the pace, accommodate the need for more and more passengers in the aviation system, and do it in a way that their service expectations are met. And we must do it in a way that, as the scrutiny continues, enables increased public confidence. I invite the industry, as truly we have done to this point, to continue with innovations. Look over the next year to see how we can make this process one that uses people and technology to our best advantage and allows us to handle the challenge that we have ahead.
As time passes from 9/11, that does not mean the threat is fading. It means there is more time available for preparation, for them and for us. This threat is real. We have the responsibility to use every moment that we have to best advantage.
It doesn't make sense to devote energy going from one vulnerability to another vulnerability, chasing after things that people identify as, 'hey, they could do this,' or 'hey, they could do that,' and then just applying our resources to get after each one. That's not the way that we'll be successful.
The way we'll be successful is to get ahead of it, to have a strategy that we agree on. I suggest one that's people-centric and spread from the checkpoint and flexible. Think in terms of a web that can move, as opposed to a checkpoint-type fortress. I think if we come together around that theme, it allows us to be light and flexible and address both the threats that we know and those we don't know about.
Both the taxpayer and our private sector shareholders are devoting enormous amounts of time, energy, resources, and dollars to this fight. We owe it to them to use their money and their good will wisely. This means we have to stay engaged together and deliver real security—Security that is smart, sustainable, and achieves our mission.
Thank you very much. I'd be happy to discuss anything that you'd like.
