Sen. John Thune: TSA in need of dramatic cultural change

Last week, Americans learned that a recent test of airport security succeeded in getting simulated explosives and weapons past airport screeners 96% of the time. That's right. On 67 out of 70 occasions, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) failed to detect forbidden items being smuggled through security.

Needless to say, this wasn't a minor security breakdown. We're not talking about a "B" or even a "C" average. We are talking about an unacceptably high failure rate.

While the airport screening problems exposed would be sufficiently troubling on their own, unfortunately they are just the latest failure to emerge from the problem-plagued TSA. Earlier this year, a television news investigation revealed that more than a thousand Secure Identification Display Area (SIDA) badges, the badges that give airport and airline employees access to secure areas of an airport, had been lost or stolen over a two-year period at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. An investigation at San Diego International Airport found that more than 270 SIDA badges had disappeared over a similar period. It's not difficult to imagine what terrorists might do if they got their hands on these badges.

As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has primary jurisdiction over the TSA, I sent a letter to the TSA on March 17, 2015, along with my Democratic counterpart and two other senators asking about the TSA's response to the loss or theft of SIDA badges. In its answer, the TSA stated that it doesn't maintain any record of lost badges, despite the fact that the agency is legally responsible for enforcing badge regulations and fining violators.

Still more security vulnerabilities were recently identified in the TSA's Pre-check screening, which allows trusted travelers to go through an expedited security process before boarding a plane. Travelers who were approved for expedited screening included a convicted felon who had been a member of a domestic terrorist group. And on top of all this, the Department of Justice is currently conducting a criminal investigation into misconduct by the Federal Air Marshal Service, misconduct which I am concerned may have resulted in a failure to appropriately staff flights with air marshals.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security's own inspector general, John Roth, delivered perhaps the most damning indictment of the TSA when he testified before Congress that "although nearly 14 years have passed since TSA's inception, we remain deeply concerned about its ability to execute its important mission."

Needless to say, our country cannot afford a transportation security agency that can't carry out its mission.

TSA has roughly 50,000 employees, including many dedicated and hard-working screeners, but the agency regularly fails to deploy its resources effectively. And when TSA programs fail, too often the TSA's response has been denial or indifference.

The Senate is in the process of reviewing the nomination of Coast Guard Vice Admiral Peter Neffenger to be administrator of the TSA. I voted to approve his nomination in committee this past week after the administration waited six months to formally nominate him for this critically important position. The admiral seems like an outstanding candidate, but he needs to realize that if he is confirmed, he will have a big task ahead of him.

The TSA obviously needs to implement a number of reforms, from addressing the security risks in the PreCheck program and screening to revamping training and procedures for airport screeners, but first and foremost, the agency needs a culture change. The next TSA administrator needs to usher in a new era of accountability and responsibility, where incidents like the recent string of security breaches will not be tolerated.

Our country cannot afford to entrust our aviation security to a government bureaucracy that fails a majority of the time. Commercial airlines continue to be a prime target for terrorists, and the TSA's security failures invite our enemies to test us. With threats multiplying around the world, the era of 96% failure rates needs to end today.

Sen. John Thune is a Republican senator from South Dakota. He is chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and the Senate Republican Conference.

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