Critics Say TSA Must Catch Up With Technology

When British authorities foiled an alleged terrorist plot last week to blow up transatlantic jetliners using liquid explosives, they exposed vulnerabilities in U.S. air travel security.

The episode also provoked a battle over domestic security spending that is likely to erupt when Congress returns next month from its summer recess.

The fact that screening systems at U.S. airports cannot quickly detect liquid explosives has prompted some lawmakers and critics to ask why such technology is still not available when the threat was identified more than 10 years ago.

Other legislators are questioning the Department of Homeland Security’s plans to shift resources toward hiring more personnel and the current limit of 45,000 federal transportation security screeners.

“Our first mistake was when we opted for an army of personnel and not for technology,” said Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on aviation, who is surveying the use of new technologies at 14 U.S. airports during the recess. “We unfortunately have a highly labor-intensive passenger-screening system that is dramatically flawed.”

The approaching midterm elections, and the political potency of security as an issue, may inflame the debate over priorities that continues five years after the Sept. 11 attacks. When the Senate reconvenes next month, Democrats -- who blame the drain of spending on the Iraq war for cutbacks on research into emerging technologies that could deter terrorists -- are planning to try to attach a number of amendments aimed at bolstering domestic security to a defense spending bill.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, referring to the foiled British plot, said Wednesday: “It’s interesting that every time we have a success, Democrats come out and complain. Now I don’t quite understand that, unless they’re seeking desperately some political advantage out of a success story.”

Meanwhile, security experts and safety advocates lamented what has been characterized as Washington’s tendency to “fight the last war” while Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups developed more sophisticated techniques to thwart security.

“Knee-jerk reactions to last week’s headlines will make us no more secure,” said Randall J. Larsen, director of the Institute for Homeland Security, a private think tank.

When Edmund “Kip” Hawley became chief of the Transportation Security Administration last year, said Larsen, he tried to redirect the agency away from considering “handguns, knives and box cutters” as primary threats. Instead, Hawley sought a focus on flammable liquids, but was “lambasted by many in Congress and virtually all of the hyperventilating shock jocks of cable TV news,” Larsen said.

On the technology front, the TSA is deploying several advances:

* The puffer machine, or explosives detection trace portal, blows puffs of air at selected passengers walking through a portal and analyzes the air for traces of explosives. The TSA has deployed 93 puffers in 36 airports at a cost of $30 million, officials say.

* All checked luggage is examined with special detection equipment that “reads” the bags for traces of explosives.

* The TSA’s Transportation Security Lab is testing a backscatter X-ray device that gives explosives, plastics and metals a special shape that is easier for screeners to interpret, and a laser-based device -- already used for drug interdiction -- that uses light to determine the chemical properties of substances.

“There’s no silver bullet,” said William McGann, chief technology officer for GE Security, where scientists are working on the Shoe Scanner, a machine that detects explosives in footwear. “The cost of manpower is expensive. We need to enable the effectiveness of manpower through technology.”

On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff weighed in and said he wanted to federalize the contract workers who are the first line of defense -- the security screening officials who check boarding passes against identification cards -- and give them training in behavioral profiling, similar to that used by Israeli airline El Al.

Democrats generally applauded Chertoff’s move, blaming Republican congressional leaders for capping the number of airport screeners at 45,000 and dismissing the GOP’s interest in promoting the use of technology as a way to help business allies.

But lifting the cap faces resistance from House Republicans -- particularly Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on the Department of Homeland Security. In a statement issued Wednesday, he defended the limit as “very reasonable” and said the TSA could always use part-timers “when and where they are needed most during peak travel times.”

Whatever happens on the number of airport screeners -- a proposal by Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) to lift the cap will be debated next month as part of House-Senate negotiations over the $32.8-billion Homeland Security appropriations bill -- many blame the administration for cutting back on research and development on technologies that could help detect terrorist devices.

In 2003, the TSA shifted more than half of its $110-million research and development budget, including development of equipment to detect liquid explosives, to personnel costs, according to a 2004 study by the Government Accountability Office.

That caused delays in “developing a device to detect weapons, liquid explosives and flammables in containers found in carry-on baggage or passengers’ effects and further development and testing of a walk-through chemical trace detection portal for detecting explosives on passengers,” the GAO said.

But technology may not be the only answer, said Bob Hesselbein, national security chairman of the Air Line Pilots Assn., who favors a greater effort to single out suspicious passengers. Screeners, he said, “may not see that carefully concealed Semtex plastic [explosive] in the luggage liner of a suitcase because they’re so busy trying to find Grandpa’s shaving cream.”

In the aftermath of the arrests in Britain, members of Congress are offering ways to deal with the problem.

On Wednesday, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) called for screening of all cargo on passenger flights. The foiled alleged plot, he said, was “an urgent reminder of dangerous security loopholes that remain open to exploitation by terrorists.”

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) urged Homeland Security to accelerate plans for deploying explosives-detection systems in all U.S. airports and lambasted the department’s decision to cut spending on research and development as “a major error in judgment.”

And Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who will attend briefings on airport security at Los Angeles International Airport today, plans to renew her call for safeguarding aircraft from shoulder-fired missiles.

But a lobbyist who is involved in aviation security issues and spoke on condition of anonymity predicted that, given Congress’ short schedule this year and the election-year partisanship, lawmakers would “look for a couple of good headline-grabbing things to do to make themselves look like they’re pursuing a security agenda.” He added: “But I would not expect anything dramatic to happen.”