To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. Testing Time By K E L L E Y V L A H O S , W A S H I N G T O N C O R R E S P O N D E N T TOO OFTEN FOR THE TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (TSA) IT’S BEEN THE TALE OF TWO HEADLINES. On the one hand, officials prefer the headline in April 2008 that declared, “TSA Touts Bomb Arrest at Florida Airport.” In that case, plain-clothed TSA agents engaged in behavior detection duties collared a 32-year-old man at an Orlando International Airport checkpoint. The officers’ instincts were on target: Kevin Christopher Brown was trying to board a plane with a bevy of bomb-making materials, including nitromethane, galvanized pipes and a model rocket igniter. The incident, held up as a win for the agency’s new Behavioral Detection Officer units at 450 domestic airports, was much preferable news to the CNN headline a few months later: “Loaded Gun Slips Through Airport Security,” followed by, “TSA Tester Slips Mock Bomb Past Airport Security.” In the first case, a man returned to a checkpoint after being granted access to the terminal at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington and informed the checkers he had forgotten he was carrying his gun. The checkpoint screener who missed the gun was taken off the line—the traveler was charged with a misdemeanor for carrying the weapon into an air terminal. On Jan. 28, 2008, CNN announced it had been embedded with a secret TSA tester who slipped through the checkpoint with a fake bomb the size of a cigarette case tucked into “the small of his back.” It also reported the results of 2006 tests that found investigators were able to slip fake bombs through checkpoints 75 percent of the time at Los Angeles International Airport and 60 percent of the time through O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, the nation’s busiest air travel hub. Rough weather TSA’s reputation has often swung between two extremes since it was created out of whole cloth after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to oversee new federal security measures throughout US transportation systems. Its journey through infancy and adolescence under the Bush administration can only be characterized as a bumpy ride. Although officials see terror threats today as no less serious or imminent, TSA faces potentially big changes under the new Democratic administration, particularly in the area of aviation. Today, TSA officials, members of Congress and industry experts are pondering where existing programs and policies in airport security are headed in what might be considered the agency’s “teenage years.” “My general thrust, when I talk about TSA, is it’s a very tough job,” David Stone, who served from 2002 to 2003 as TSA administrator under the first Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, told Homeland Security Today. “The goal is to improve it, make it better, make it more effective.” What are the chances for that in 2009? Stone, a Republican appointee who ended up as an advisor to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, then to the future President Barack Obama, said he’s confident. “I was a huge proponent for change.” As of this writing,Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano had yet to name her TSA administrator. Career professional Gale Rossides was still serving as acting administrator This month’s issue is now available online at… REUTERS/JESSICA RINALDI 22 May 2009 | Homeland Security Today Magazine