Sloppy Screening and Background-Checking Led to Embarrassing Opportunity to Cull Ranks

The TSA is, of course, blaming it on the private-sector companies it hired, because it couldn't get the job done itself; but with congressional ire starting to burn the backside of all the pensioned military and secret police types that run the TSA, something had to be done. Like their jobs.

In pursuit of appearing less-worthless than facts would support, the TSA has quite publicly fired 1208 screeners. It says 85 of the people they had checking up on you were convicted felons, and another 503 lied on their applications, failing to mention they had been arrested or convicted of a crime. The other 620, we must presume, just got fired because the TSA hired too many people.

"I take this issue very seriously," declared pensioned Coast Guard Admiral James Loy (above), who took over leadership of the TSA from John "No Waco Questions, Please" Magaw, after Magaw embarrassed then-boss Norm Mineta a year ago. Loy quickly recovered his Washington, D.C. demeanor, though, and promptly uttered a thoroughly unbelievable statement: "This is not a system in disarray."

Part of the screening process for prospective screeners was to assign "color codes" to prospects. Red, yellow, and green catagories were assigned. "Green" candidates were waved through, to take whatever tests the TSA administered. "Yellow" candidates (often with nothing but a less-than-perfect credit rating) were often allowed to matriculate; "Red" candidates were stopped, ostensibly until the conditions of their employment were checked. (An arrest for a disqualifying crime, for instance, that did not result in a conviction, should not have kept a candidate out of consideration. [We are told by former applicants, though, that the TSA was quite intent on achieving politically-correct new-hire demographics, so certain groups of people were overlooked, while others were summarily nailed. We are unable to determine what, if any, impact the desire for politically-correct workforce makeup may have made then... or now. --ed.]

Loy, for his part, said that screeners later noted to have been in the "red" category (half the screeners hired were "yellow" or "red"), were immediately pulled off the customer-contact line, and put in other jobs. He did not say if those other jobs could have involved access to more-sensitive information, such as is now being compiled on travelers by Delta, and older information available on the CAPPS system.

Loy did not mention how many of the non-screener positions -- supervisors and above -- had not yet been checked, or how many, if any, of them had been found to be ineligible for hire into positions of public trust.

A year into the process, the TSA still has not turned over to the federal Office of Personnel Management, the hiring records of most screeners, in defiance of federal law. (The OPM is supposed to do more-thorough checks of the hires.) He blames the private screening companies (which the TSA hired) for the lack of compliance. (One company, NCS Pearson, is holding back the files, because TSA isn't paying them, because they aren't turning over the files, because the TSA isn't paying them, according to a Washington Post story.)

FMI: www.tsa.gov