TSA Losing Latest Director

There is more turbulence at the agency charged with airport security: The Transportation Security Administration is losing its third director in as many years.

TSA chief David M. Stone will leave the job in June, spokesman Mark Hatfield said Friday. No reason for the move was provided and no replacement was announced.

The change comes as the new Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, is considering restructuring the entire department, which includes TSA.

Stone, a retired Coast Guard admiral, was preceded by James Loy, former commandant of the Coast Guard, and John Magaw, former head of the Secret Service.

Stone’s 16-month tenure as TSA chief was the longest.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairwoman of the committee that oversees Homeland Security, said Stone ran TSA during a critical time, “when the challenges of securing our transportation infrastructure have taken on a great urgency.”

“He did a good job,” said Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House aviation subcommittee. “I worked well with Adm. Stone.”

Mica has criticized the TSA for being a “Soviet-style bureaucracy” with too many airport screeners who don’t perform well enough detecting explosives and dangerous items on passengers. He wants to see the agency transformed so that private companies take over screening and the TSA simply oversees the private companies.

“TSA did a great job in putting an army of 48,000 screeners together, but then when you stand back and look at the results, the performance is just not acceptable,” Mica said. He said he’s concerned that the time required to replace Stone will slow efforts to restructure the agency.

Oregon Rep. Peter A. DeFazio, formerly the ranking Democrat on the aviation subcommittee, said there were not enough screeners and they were hampered by dated equipment. He opposes a return to private screeners, who were widely criticized for their poor performance after the Sept. 11 hijackings.

Airports have the option of using private screeners, but only one -- in Elko, Nev. -- has gone that route.

Bruce Schneier, who has written a book on security technology and serves on a TSA advisory committee, said privatizing screeners won’t improve their performance.

“A private company will want to wring efficiencies out of the system, and inherently security is not an efficient system,” Schneier said.