After Lapses, T.S.A. Will Target Screening in Overhaul

WASHINGTON — The new administrator of the beleaguered Transportation Security Administration said the agency would make several changes to security and screening procedures as part of an overhaul to address glaring lapses over the past few months.

Peter V. Neffenger, who took over the agency this month, said in an interview that the T.S.A. would retrain thousands of screeners to better detect weapons and other illegal items, scale back a program that allows people who have not signed up for background checks to use expedited security lines and more aggressively police airports’ oversight of security badges.

The agency has been on the defensive after disclosures in June of a report by the Inspector General’s Office of the Department of Homeland Security, first reported by ABC News, that found agents failed 67 of 70 security tests. In one such test, they did not spot undercover investigators’ passing through checkpoints with potential weapons. The findings prompted criticism by many former and current T.S.A. employees who said the agency emphasized moving passengers quickly through lines over security.

“Efficiency and getting people through airport security lines cannot be our sole reason that makes you take your eyes off the reason for the mission,” said Mr. Neffenger, a former Coast Guard vice admiral, who is to testify on Wednesday before the House Homeland Security Committee.

Many former and current T.S.A. employees say Mr. Neffenger has an enormous challenge taking over an agency that has been roiled by the tension between the often-conflicting imperatives of safety and speed.

Jason Harrington, who joined the T.S.A. as a screener at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago in 2007, said he was stunned by the agency’s seemingly ever-changing priorities.

“One day it was, ‘We want to thoroughly check everybody, even if the line is backed up to the ticket counter,’” said Mr. Harrington, who left the agency in 2013 to attend graduate school and wrote an article in Politico the next year about his experience with the T.S.A. “But a short time later, it was, ‘We have to get these people through the lines.’”

More than a half dozen current and former T.S.A. staff members said in interviews that they largely shared Mr. Harrington’s assessment. Lawmakers have also said recent breaches at airport checkpoints and problems with worker background checks raised serious questions.

“I have to say, though, that this feels a little bit like the movie ‘Groundhog Day,’ where the same things keep happening over and over again,” Representative John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, said during a hearing on the T.S.A. in June.

An internal report that measures performance, sent out last month by the T.S.A.’s Midwest regional headquarters, devotes just three pages to security, while the remainder focuses on wait times and customer service, according to Andrew Rhoades, an assistant security director at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

“Many of the measurements work against prudent security practices,” Mr. Rhoades said.

Mr. Rhoades had previously reported what he said were security lapses to T.S.A. headquarters, and in response, he said, the T.S.A. tried to transfer him. He filed a complaint with the United States Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency that protects federal employees from reprisal, and the agency sided with him, blocking the relocation. The T.S.A. denied that the move was punitive.

Kenneth S. Kasprisin, who was the acting head of the T.S.A. in 2005, said the tensions in Minnesota, with its emphasis on reducing wait times and increasing expedited screenings, pervaded the T.S.A.

The result, he said, is that screeners and managers “all are now much more worried about long wait times than they are about properly executing the established screening procedures.”

To cut wait times, the T.S.A. started a program called managed inclusion. It allows passengers who have not signed up for the PreCheck prescreening program to go through checkpoints without taking off their shoes or removing laptops from their bags. The agents use managed inclusion when security lines are particularly long.

But the agency’s own classified review of the program, which came to light in a hearing, showed security gaps.

An assistant security director disclosed that Sara Jane Olson, who was convicted in a plot by members of a radical 1970s group to kill Los Angeles police officers by planting bombs under their squad cars, was allowed to use an expedited inspection lane even after having been identified by a screener. A supervisor overruled that employee.

Mr. Neffenger said the agency would be cutting back on using the managed inclusion programs, though he said he planned to push to get more passengers into the PreCheck program.

“I’m a big fan of a fully vetted population,” he said.

Another audit by the inspector general found that the T.S.A. failed to identify 73 people “employed by major airlines, airport vendors and other employers” who may have had links to terrorism. The T.S.A. said the people posed no threat to airline safety.

Other reports by agency auditors have found that employee security badges at a number of airports disappeared and were not reported for weeks or months.

During a Senate hearing in May, John Roth, the Homeland Security inspector general, said the disclosures raised troubling issues.

“Although nearly 14 years have passed since T.S.A.’s inception, we remain deeply concerned about its ability to execute its important mission,” Mr. Roth said.

T.S.A. officials acknowledged the problems highlighted in the recent audits and said they had taken steps to correct them.

After the T.S.A. was created in 2001, agency screeners checked all passengers, which resulted in long lines and complaints from the public and members of Congress.

That changed under John S. Pistole, who took over the agency in 2010. Instead of having the agency screen everyone, Mr. Pistole, who had also served as deputy director of the F.B.I., took a more risk-based approach with the PreCheck program.

“We shifted the focus, from screening people we know the most about, to the people we don’t know anything about,” said Mr. Pistole, who added that he did not believe the program was the reason for the recent security breaches. Mr. Pistole left the agency last year.

Rebecca Roering, a T.S.A. assistant security director in Minnesota, said she raised concerns in 2013 about expanding the program to include those not signed up to use the expedited lanes, prompting an investigation by the Office of Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security, which confirmed the problems with PreCheck.

“T.S.A. is handing out PreCheck status like Halloween candy in an effort to expedite passengers as quickly as possible, despite the self-admitted security gaps that are being created by the process,” Ms. Roering said at a June hearing.

Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, has introduced legislation that would restrict the PreCheck program to people whose applications have been approved.

Despite the issues at the T.S.A., Mr. Neffenger said he remained confident that the problems could be fixed.

“It’s a real challenge to move millions of people and baggage each day,” he said. “But I know we are up to the task.”