[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND MISCONDUCT AT TSA: PART II
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 12, 2016
__________
Serial No. 114-136
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah, Chairman
JOHN L. MICA, Florida ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland,
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Ranking Minority Member
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
JIM JORDAN, Ohio ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIM WALBERG, Michigan Columbia
JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee JIM COOPER, Tennessee
TREY GOWDY, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania
CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TED LIEU, California
MICK MULVANEY, South Carolina BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
KEN BUCK, Colorado STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands
MARK WALKER, North Carolina MARK DeSAULNIER, California
ROD BLUM, Iowa BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
JODY B. HICE, Georgia PETER WELCH, Vermont
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, New Mexico
EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin
WILL HURD, Texas
GARY J. PALMER, Alabama
Jennifer Hemingway, Staff Director
Andrew Dockham, General Counsel
Christina Aizcorbe, Transportation and Public Assets Subcommittee Staff
Director
Sharon Casey, Deputy Chief Clerk
David Rapallo, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on May 12, 2016..................................... 1
WITNESSES
Mr. Peter Neffenger, Administrator, Transportation Security
Administration
Oral Statement............................................... 7
Written Statement............................................ 10
Mr. John Roth, Inspector General, Department of Homeland Security
Oral Statement............................................... 21
Written Statement............................................ 23
EXAMINING MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND MISCONDUCT AT TSA: PART II
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Thursday, May 12, 2016
House of Representatives,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:01 a.m., in Room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jason Chaffetz
[chairman of the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Chaffetz, Mica, Duncan, Jordan,
Walberg, Amash, Gosar, Gowdy, Lummis, Massie, Meadows,
DeSantis, Mulvaney, Buck, Walker, Blum, Hice, Russell, Carter,
Grothman, Hurd, Palmer, Cummings, Maloney, Clay, Lynch,
Connolly, Kelly, Lawrence, and DeSaulnier.
Chairman Chaffetz. The Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform will come to order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess at any time.
We have an important hearing today. The public comes in
regular contact with the Transportation Security
Administration. We have a fairly new administrator who I have
had a chance to visit with, but it is important as the
Oversight Committee that we continue to take a look at what is
happening or not happening at the TSA.
So today, we are going to have our second hearing examining
the management practices and misconduct that we have heard
about and seen about and investigated at the Transportation
Security Administration.
And this time of year the traveling public picks up kids
and families, and people are traveling sometimes at record
levels. People get frustrated. They go to airports, there are
long lines, there is frustration, but at the same time we have
to find a balance to make sure that those airplanes are
properly secure because the enemy, terrorists and whatnot, they
only need to get by once. And they deal with millions of
passengers on a weekly basis at the TSA.
We have a lot of good men and women who serve on the
frontlines who are trying to do the best job that they can and
dealing with a frustrated public sometimes it is hot and they
are sweaty and they are late, and there are a lot of issues to
deal with.
Last summer, the Department of Homeland Security inspector
general performed a covert testing of TSA's airport security
screening and found ``failures in the technology, failures in
TSA procedures, and human error.'' There were very alarming
rates of success for penetration beyond the lines in being able
to bring something nefarious onto an airplane.
Although some of the inspector general's recommendations
are still outstanding in the wake of the testing, the TSA
claims they are making progress and training its employees to
be more thorough in resolving these security concerns, yet the
progress may be undermined if TSA employees continue to quit at
their current rates. The agency loses around 103 screeners each
week through attrition. As the administrator has told me, a lot
of these are part-time employees. But nevertheless, it is very
expensive to get somebody trained up and bring on to only have
them leave later on in the process.
In the year 2014 the agency hired 373 people but had 4,654
departures. You can see where--if you think of it as a bathtub,
if you are pouring water into it but the drain is going out
faster than you can keep people in that tub, that there gets to
be a problem.
We are very concerned about the morale at the
Transportation Security Administration, the TSA. The government
does do, I think, a good thing. It goes out and ranks and does
surveys and comes up with a scientific way to assess the
various agencies. Of the 320 agencies, the TSA ranked 313th.
This is an alarming trend throughout Homeland Security, not
just the TSA. There are a number of these agencies, including
the Secret Service and others, that are near the very, very
bottom of agencies that are ranked.
It is something that has to be assessed. And there are
probably reasons for this, and we want to understand that. We
have a duty and obligation to the Federal employees, and you
worry that people in a security type of situation with low
morale, you don't necessarily get the best security and the
best product out of that.
Two weeks ago, one of our witnesses testified that he
believed ``while the new administrator of the TSA has made
security a much-needed priority, once again, we remain an
agency in crisis.'' He attributed poor leadership and oversight
of senior leadership appointments in the last several years as
major contributing factors. In testimony before this committee
he alleged a double standard within the TSA. We have heard
senior leaders in the agency are treated with far more leniency
than the TSA's rank-and-file employees.
Now, we have one situation. I don't know this man; I don't
believe I have ever met him. If I did, I again don't remember
it. But he is a very senior person. As the assistant
administrator of the Office of Security Operations, there is a
gentleman, his name is Kelly Hoggan. He receives a base
compensation of $181,500, a very healthy salary. Since his
promotion to that position in 2013, security operations at TSA
have been abysmal.
Again, the inspector general I think we will hear testify
today the penetration tests that were done previously were
nothing close to successful. They were successful in getting
objects and items through security, but they were, from a
security standpoint, absolutely rock bottom in terms of their
performance.
Yet during this time, in September 2014, the inspector
general found that despite spending $551 million on new
equipment and training, the TSA had not improved its checked
baggage screening at all since the IG report found
vulnerabilities in 2009.
Last summer, covert testing by the inspector general
revealed an alarming high-rate failure rate that was widely
reported by the media. Yet whistleblowers reported that instead
of being held accountable for those failures, Mr. Hoggan
received an amazing amount of bonuses beginning in 2015.
I want to show you a slide here.
[Slide.]
Chairman Chaffetz. Not to pick on this person, but this is
what is so frustrating, and the rank-and-file sees this. He is
earning a base salary of $181,500, and in 13 months he gets
$90,000 in bonuses. That is just his bonuses. Nine times he is
getting bonuses over a 13-month period. That is in addition to
his health care and all the other things, retirement that he
will get. People don't understand that.
Let me go to this next slide.
[Slide.]
Chairman Chaffetz. So here you have John Halinski, who I
don't believe works at the Administration anymore. He makes a
recommendation to the person at the bottom, a guy named Joseph
Salvatore, who makes a recommendation that Kelly Hoggan get a
bonus, and then Halinski, who made the recommendation to
Salvatore, Salvatore recommends Hoggan get a bonus and then
Halinski gives him that bonus. It happened four times.
Go back if you could to that first slide.
[Slide.]
Chairman Chaffetz. So you got rank-and-file people working
hard, trying to do the right thing. We have massive security
failures based on what the inspector general is doing, and this
person at the senior part of the food chain gets $90,000 in
bonuses. I don't understand that. This didn't even necessarily
happen during this administrator's watch, but we want to know
what is being done to clean this up.
If you can go to the next--you can take that slide down.
Thank you.
So how did he get this done? In the normal scenario, the
President has to approve any bonuses over $25,000. OPM has to
approve bonuses over $10,000, and yet Title 5 in OPM
regulations don't apply to the TSA, and that is why I think we
are going to have to go back and review this.
When the IG investigated that after a whistleblower tip it
found in July of 2015 TSA had no clear policies prohibiting an
arrangement such as we had just seen and only ``loose internal
oversight of the awards process.'' I hope we are going to hear
that this has been cleaned up and that they can be more fair
and more equitable and truly rewarding those people that are
having success. The frustration is it is not as if we have had
success. Those bonuses were given to somebody who oversees a
part of the operation that was in total failure. This is
contributing, I think, to the massive problems of morale and
other challenges that we have.
Administrator Neffenger has many challenges to overcome in
restoring the confidence of the rank-and-file, and even the
perception that some current leaders have been part of the
problem can continue to harm morale within the ranks of the
TSA. More significantly, it can deter TSA employees from
speaking up about security challenges, which ultimately impacts
the core responsibility of the agency to keep America's
transportation safe.
Last November, the inspector general testified ``creating a
culture of change within TSA and giving the TSA workforce the
ability to identify and address risk without fear of
retribution will be the new administrator's most critical and
challenging task and something I am sure that we are going to
talk about today.
Chairman Chaffetz. You know, we have somebody on our panel
who has spent considerable time dealing with the TSA and
transportation. It was the chairman of the Transportation
Committee here in the Congress, and I would like to yield some
time to Mr. Mica of Florida.
Mr. Mica. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman and ranking member,
for conducting this part II. There are some very serious
concerns about performance of TSA, the first hearing that you
held just a few weeks ago. We had, for the first time since we
created TSA, people who came in from responsible positions and
were willing to testify to the almost sheer chaos that exists
both in the management and also the operations.
Of course, I expressed my concern about the meltdown that
we have had to date, and I had prepared actually yesterday--and
staff had gotten me like one figure during the break. We had
6,800 American Airlines passengers miss their flights due to
checkpoint delays, and that is sort of--you know, we hear that,
Members of Congress and others. Well, last night, I had the
night from hell. I had three people who I invited to Washington
who came to Washington, spent most of the day with me. All of
them missed their flights standing in a TSA line. I tell you
what. I am so livid.
And Wednesday night is a particularly bad night. Now,
traffic was bad. They were late getting there. The TSA people
wouldn't have the courtesy to accommodate people who could have
caught their flight even though they were somewhat late. The
plane was there. I was on the phone for hours. One of the
individuals whose family is leaving on vacation today had to
get back to Orlando to accompany his family. I actually had a
staffer drive him and bought him a ticket home last night. So I
could put a face on it.
And you can't get a hold of a damn person in TSA even as a
Member of Congress, nor would they take your calls. I tell you
what, it is just unbelievable, the operation. And you have got
your $100,000 people standing around accommodating Members of
Congress to get them on a plane and you can't get a passenger
on a plane who has to get home to leave with his family.
I want a list of all of those people standing around that
chauffer Members of Congress and VIPs up to the front of line,
and you can't get three people, one lady with some physical
disabilities. I tell you what. I am so disgusted with this. It
makes you, Mr. Chairman, lose your focus.
But let me go back to you can delay these people and then
here is my GAO report, ``17 known terrorists have flown on 24
different occasions'' passing through your TSA. What was the
very most troubling of the testimony that I heard--and you can
fail and you will fail and your attempts on the training and
recruiting and all that will be a failure, I can tell you that.
Now, I told you that on my sofa when you came in because you
cannot recruit, you cannot train, you cannot retain, and you
cannot administer. It is just a huge failing government
program, and it will fail.
But the most troubling thing was the testimony from Mark
Livingston, former assistant administrator for TSA's Office of
Intelligence and Analysis who testified, ``It is my testimony
today that we have non-intel professionals running our Office
of Intelligence and Analysis.'' That is the core of the
government responsibility, connecting the dots. And he is
telling us--and I questioned him about what was going on, and
he is saying that that important government function, the most
important government function, to find the bad guys, not stop
the innocent 99 percent of the travelers, that we have chaos in
that operation.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
I now will recognize the ranking member, Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
There have been few times in my 20 years on this committee
that I have felt so strongly about an individual. Administrator
Neffenger is a person who I have a phenomenal amount of respect
for. When I was the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Coast
Guard and Maritime Matters, it was Mr. Neffenger, Admiral
Neffenger, who cleaned up a mess called Deepwater Horizon where
the Coast Guard was buying ships that didn't float, rid our
systems that were supposed to have surveillance of 360 degree
with 180 degrees, radios that when they got wet, they didn't
work. He cleaned up the mess and saved this country and the
Coast Guard probably hundreds of millions of dollars. And, sir,
no matter what happens in this hearing, I thank you. I really
do.
Last month, our committee heard testimony from three
Transportation Security Administration employees. They raised
troubling allegations about personnel practices that stretched
back several years in some cases. The employees who came
forward deserve to have their allegations thoroughly and fairly
investigated. And I emphasize that. It is one thing to allege,
but we need all the facts so that we can be about the business
of not only hearing testimony but bringing about the reform
that is necessary. And I am sure you would agree with that, Mr.
Roth.
Unfortunately, the committee has not yet had the
opportunity to fully examine or substantiate their claims. And
let me pause here for a moment.
Mr. Roth, in your testimony, I want you to do me a big
favor and I want you to do a big favor for this committee. I
want you to distinguish between what happened pre-Neffenger,
Admiral Neffenger, and post-. The chairmen spent, and
rightfully so, a good amount of time talking about the $90,000
bonus. There is probably nobody in this Congress who has railed
against bonuses going all the way back to AIG than I have. And
so I want to make sure that we are putting responsibility where
responsibility belongs. I hope you will do that.
Nevertheless, during our previous hearing, I was struck by
how highly those whistleblowers speak about our witness today,
Vice Admiral Peter Neffenger, the administrator of TSA. Despite
their understandable frustration about what they endured, these
whistleblowers repeatedly told the committee that Administrator
Neffenger was taking positive steps at TSA. They made clear
that he is setting a course for the agency that puts the top
priority exactly where it should be, on security.
For example, Mark Livingston, a program manager in the
Office of the Chief Risk Officer, testified that Administrator
Neffenger is ``a man of integrity.'' He also said, ``TSA is not
going to compromise our mission to expedite passengers at the
expense of our mission.'' He went on to say, ``What we are
going to do is we are going to get better, we are going to keep
pushing pre-check, we are going to keep pushing a better
process, we are going to get more people and we are going to
get better at this. Mr. Neffenger has made it his priority.''
Similarly, Jay Brainard, a Federal security director in the
Office of Security Operations in Kansas, testified, and I
quote--now, these are whistleblowers. ``Certainly, since Mr.
Neffenger has been in, there has been a shift to security and
trying to get that pendulum to go back so we strike a
balance.''
Mr. Brainard also said, ``It is important for us to make
sure that we reassure our officers so that, regardless of the
fact, that somebody is going to have to wait a few extra
minutes, we still have their back. And we have an administrator
who fully supports that, and that is part of the culture that
he has established with TSA. That is a very difficult job. It
is certainly not the most popular job, and we certainly
appreciate it.''
I have to say that during my many years here on the
Oversight Committee, I have rarely seen employees
simultaneously come forward to report what they believe to be
abuses while at the same time commending an individual who is
in charge of the agency for his efforts to address them so
vigorously. I can never remember that in these 20 years, and I
have been at just about every minute of all the hearings.
Admiral and Administrator Neffenger testified last November
that TSA faces ``a critical turning point.'' And I agree. He
cannot turn around this agency on a dime. I wish he could. I
don't think anybody up here could. But in the 10 months he has
been on the job, and I emphasize 10 months, he has taken bold
action to address the challenges he inherited.
For example, in February, he halted all directed
reassignments currently in process. If you remember the
committee when a lot of the complaints were about people who
felt that they were being punished and being retaliated against
by being moved from place to place. The wife would be sent to
the Northeast and the husband be sent to the Southwest and all
kinds of mischief. And so I am glad you addressed that, and I
hope that you will talk about that a bit today because it was a
large part of our hearing.
In March, he issued a memo that requires new reviews and
approvals whenever a directed reassignment is requested. He
strengthened TSA's controls over special achievement awards,
more transparency to the Executive Resources Council, and
appointed a chief operating officer to oversee the assistant
administrators in charge of agency's operating divisions.
Critically, he has worked diligently to address the security
shortcomings identified by Inspector General Roth, who is also
with us today. And I truly have a tremendous amount of respect
for you, Mr. Roth.
He retrained all screening personnel, including managers,
and created a new academy to train newly hired screeners. As
Inspector General Roth testified last November, ``He has
deactivated certain risk assessment rules that granted
expedited screening through pre-check lanes.''
However, despite all of these positive changes, the number
of screeners has dropped by nearly 6,000 over the past 4 years.
And I agree with the chairman. That is something that we all
should be concerned about. We all need to get to the bottom
line of why that is happening. We want to retain our folks. And
I am hoping that it is not a situation that the chairman and I
found with the Secret Service where people had gotten to a
point because they did the same job over and over and over
again. I at least concluded that they had moved into a culture
of complacency, and sadly, mediocrity.
Of course, the TSA has to do its job, but Congress has to
do ours as well. Congress wants to ensure that this agency has
the resources it needs to accomplish the security mission, and
I want you to let us know whether you do have the resources,
including rightsizing the number of screeners. I look forward
to hearing from Administrator Neffenger about what more he
needs to continue the improvements he has put in motion. And I
anxiously look forward to hearing from Mr. Roth about the work
he is undertaking to assess these changes.
I do believe that we are well on our way to making the TSA
a better organization, and if it is a morale question, I would
like for you to address that forthrightly, Mr. Neffenger,
Admiral Neffenger, and let us know what you plan to do about
that.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you, and I yield
back.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman. I will hold the
record open for 5 legislative days for any members who would
like to submit a written statement.
I now recognize our witnesses of today's one panel. I am
pleased to welcome Mr. Peter Neffenger, administrator of the
Transportation Security Administration; and Mr. John Roth,
inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security. We
welcome you both.
Pursuant to committee rules, all witnesses are to be sworn
before they testify. You have each testified here previously,
but if you would please rise and raise your right hand.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. Let the record reflect that
the witnesses each answered in the affirmative.
As you know, we like to limit the oral testimony to 5
minutes, but of course your entire written statement will be
entered into the record.
Mr. Neffenger, Administrator Neffenger, you are now
recognized for 5 minutes.
WITNESS STATEMENTS
STATEMENT OF PETER NEFFENGER
Mr. Neffenger. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Chaffetz,
Ranking Member Cummings, and distinguished members of the
committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today. I sincerely appreciate the committee's oversight of the
management practices at TSA. This issue has been of great
concern to me as well. I commit to you and the American people
that, under my leadership, TSA has established high standards
of performance and accountability.
I also want to thank Inspector General Roth for his
support. I greatly value the oversight that his office provides
to improve our agency, and I have been working closely with him
during my tenure.
My leadership perspective is shaped by more than three
decades of national service in crisis leadership. Throughout my
career, I have emphasized professional integrity and duty to
mission as foundational elements of service for myself and for
the dedicated civil servants and military members I have been
entrusted to lead.
Since taking the oath of office on July 4 of last year, I
have traveled throughout the country and around the world to
meet with employees at all levels of our agency. I have been
impressed by their patriotism and their sense of duty. These
are servants who every day perform demanding tasks under
difficult circumstances, and I deeply respect and appreciate
their work. They have risen to the challenge of service to a
mission and have taken an oath of office and loyalty as a
condition of employment. Their success requires the utmost
professionalism from all of our employees from frontline
officers to the most senior leaders.
My overarching priority is to fulfill the core mission of
TSA to secure the Nation's transportation systems. In just 10
months we have undertaken a range of transformational efforts.
I immediately prioritized our counterterrorism mission. I set a
renewed focus on security, revised alarm resolution procedures,
made investments in new technology, and retrained the entire
workforce.
We are holding ourselves accountable to high standards of
performance and are supporting our frontline officers in their
critical counterterrorism mission. We have reinvigorated our
partnerships with the airlines, airport operators, and the
trade and travel industries and are working closely with
Congress to address our security mission.
We simultaneously undertook a broad evolution of the entire
TSA enterprise with respect to that mission and our people. I
am systematically and deliberately leading this transformation,
and I have made it clear that we are focused on our security
mission.
Most importantly, I am investing in our people. With
Congress's help, I directed a complete overhaul of our approach
to how we train our workforce at all levels of the agency. We
establish the first-ever TSA Academy on January 1 of this year.
This intensive training will enable us to achieve consistency,
develop a common culture, instill core values, and raise
performance across the entire workforce. Establishing a culture
of mutual respect and trust between leaders in the workforce
instills confidence and pride and is a prudent investment in
the future of the agency.
I also ordered a review of all personnel policies and
practices. This led to a number of significant changes, among
which are elimination of the arbitrary use of directed
reassignments, restrictions on permanent change of station
relocation costs, and significant controls on bonuses at all
levels.
We are overhauling management practices. I've conducted an
independent review of our acquisition programs. We're building
a planning, programming, budgeting, and execution process, and
we're building a human capital management system to address
recruitment, development, promotion, assignment, and retention.
And to ensure the effective integration of our leadership
team, I have brought in new leaders from outside the agency, a
new deputy administrator, new chief of staff, a chief of
operations, a new head of intelligence, and other key
positions. And with respect to intelligence, I want to note
that our intelligence office just received a very prestigious
award from the National Counterterrorism Center for the work
that they have done to analyze recent attacks on the aviation
system.
I assure this committee that under my leadership TSA treats
its employees fairly and affords them every legal and available
means to exercise their due process rights. We review
management controls regularly, revise them when needed, and
fully investigate and adjudicate misconduct at every level, and
I hold those who violate standards appropriately accountable.
With respect to leadership, my experience tells me that
good leaders set high standards and inspire people to perform
at their best. I have demanded much of my leaders over the past
10 months. I have set high standards for them. I expect them to
work hard, and I supervise them closely.
Finally, we must deliver a highly effective intelligence-
driven counterterrorism and security capability every day. To
do so, we must have fully trained, highly motivated,
professional employees supported by a mature and efficient
agency with a common set of values. My guiding principles,
which I expressed in my administrator's intent, are focused on
mission, invest in people, and commit to excellence.
We are pursuing these objectives every day. As
administrator, I will continue to do so until we achieve and
sustain success in every aspect of this agency, in every
mission, in every office and location where we operate, and
with every single employee.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today
and for the committee's support of TSA's mission. I look
forward to your questions.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Neffenger follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the administrator.
I will now recognize Inspector General Roth for his
testimony. You are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JOHN ROTH
Chairman Chaffetz, Ranking Member Cummings, and members of
the committee, thank you for inviting me here to testify this
morning.
One year ago, I testified before this committee at a
hearing on TSA's programs and operations. During that hearing,
I testified that we remain deeply concerned about TSA's ability
to execute its important mission. I noted that TSA had
challenges in almost every area of its operations. At the time,
I testified that TSA's reluctance to correcting security
vulnerabilities that our audits uncovered reflected TSA's
failure to understand the gravity of the situation.
Six months ago, I testified before this committee and
stated that I believe that the new administrator had begun the
process of critical self-evaluation and, aided by the dedicated
workforce of TSA, was in a position to begin addressing some of
these issues. I predicted that the new administrator's most
critical and challenging task would be to create a culture of
change by giving the workforce the ability to identify and
address risks without fear of retribution.
Today, I still believe that to be true. However, we should
not minimize the significance of the challenges that TSA faces
and the grave risks that failure brings. The task is difficult
and will take time. In the meantime, my office will continue to
conduct audits, inspections, and investigations and bring an
independent look and professional skepticism to our reviews, as
we are required to do.
In light of part I of the committee's hearing, I would like
to discuss our office's work in investigating misconduct within
the TSA workforce. As you know, we are organizationally
independent from both DHS and TSA, and as such, have a crucial
role in ensuring that crimes and serious misconduct will be
investigated by an independent fact-finder.
The department employs more than 400--240,000 employees and
an equal number of contractors. We have fewer than 200
investigators onboard and available to conduct investigation,
so this amounts to approximately 2,000 employees for every OIG
investigator. In fiscal year 2015 we received almost 18,000
complaints, about 350 complaints per week. A substantial number
of those complaints alleged that DHS personnel engaged in
misconduct. Last year, we initiated 664 cases, and our
investigations resulted in 104 criminal convictions and 37
adverse personnel actions. Some of these investigations
involved TSA personnel.
In the last fiscal year, we received about 1,000 complaints
either from or about TSA employees. We typically accept for
investigation only about 40 of those cases per year. Our
criteria for case selection involves an assessment of the
seriousness of the allegation, the rank or grade of the
individual involved, and whether OIG's uniquely independent
role is necessary to ensure that the case is handled
appropriately.
We value the contributions that whistleblowers make in
identifying fraud, waste, and abuse. Federal law provides
protections for employees who disclose wrongdoing.
Specifically, the agency may not retaliate against employees by
taking or threatening to take adverse personnel action because
they report misconduct. The IG act also gives me the absolute
right to protect the identity of our witnesses upon whom we
depend to expose fraud, waste, and abuse.
In TSA, for example, we investigated a whistleblower's
allegation that a notorious felon was granted expedited
screening through pre-check. The traveler was a former member
of a domestic terrorist group and while a member was involved
in numerous felonious criminal activities that led to arrest
and conviction. After serving a multiple-year sentence, the
traveler was released from prison.
The TSA officer gave us the tip because the officer
recognized the traveler from news coverage. We investigated it
and found that the officer was correct. Because of TSA's
policies at the time, this traveler was given expedited
screening. We were able to write up a report and give
notification both to the Department and Congress, including
this committee.
Thanks in part to this whistleblower's complaint, we were
able to illustrate the dangers of this policy, and TSA has
ultimately rethought the issue of managed conclusion.
I would also note that the chairman's description of the
bonuses that Mr. Hoggan received in our investigation of it was
as a result of an alert DHS employee who notified us of that
situation.
When I arrived at OIG about 2 years ago, I was concerned
about how we had been managing our whistleblower protection
program. My goal is to make sure that we have a whistleblower
program that is good or better than any in the Federal
Government. To that end, we have instituted a number of changes
in the last 6 months to ensure that whistleblowers with claims
of retaliation are listened to and that their claims are fairly
and independently investigated.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. I welcome any
questions you or other members of the committee may have.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Roth follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Chaffetz. We thank you both and now recognize Mr.
Mica of Florida for 5 minutes.
Mr. Mica. I am sure, Administrator, you have heard or
watched the proceedings when we had three TSA officers in here.
As I said in my opening remarks, one of my major areas of
concern is your intelligence and analyst office and that
capability. I had never heard more damaging testimony than I
heard under oath on that matter.
And we have detailed information that we have acquired
about some of the personnel that are there, and obviously, the
qualifications and the background are lacking. What do you want
to say to this?
Mr. Neffenger. Congressman Mica, thank you for the
question. I had questions about the capabilities across the
entire organization when I first came in, as you know.
Mr. Mica. And are you currently reviewing the
qualifications and the allegations?
Mr. Neffenger. I am. I have a new chief of intelligence
that I brought in who is an intelligent professional. He's
here. I can report that ----
Mr. Mica. I think that I would like an outline to the
committee. I mean, the screening function is fine and you may
find some knives and some guns. They are not going to take down
an aircraft. But intelligence is a government responsibility.
We don't have good intelligence, and again, I cited an older
GAO report where known terrorists are going through the system.
This was a risk-based system. So can you provide us with an
outline of what you intend to do to correct this situation?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir, and I'll also provide you with
examples of how we have to build an intelligent enterprise,
which I think is one of the best in the country now. And I can
say that ----
Mr. Mica. Well, again ----
Mr. Neffenger.--it's been recognized recently by the
National Counterterrorism Center with one of their prestigious
awards for the ----
Mr. Mica. Well, again ----
Mr. Neffenger.--analysis that they've done.
Mr. Mica. Again, it is just most troubling.
The other thing TSA has been giving this line. I have seen
it in the press that it is a lack of funds that right now
create some of the problems in the lines. That has been put out
by TSA, hasn't it?
Mr. Neffenger. No, sir, I have not said that it's a lack of
funds.
Mr. Mica. Well, I have seen it from TSA. It is actually
staffing. Last night, like at Reagan, at seven o'clock they
closed some of the lines. TSA cannot staff to traffic. So, I
mean ----
Mr. Neffenger. Let me ----
Mr. Mica.--I've seen it all over. I had an anecdotal report
last week of a Member that told me that at one airport they
were backed up, lines forever. The other side of the airport
there was a concourse and there were not thousands standing
around but everybody standing around and someone can't shift
them. And in the lanes that the individual was leaving in, two
were closed. I have been at National airport. I have seen the
same thing. People can't make a decision to staff to traffic.
The other thing, too, is we have got to look at the money
that you are spending. The last account I had we were spending
$1.1 billion on administration and $1.9 billion on screening.
That is a lot of administration. We need to pare those numbers
down. The bonuses that the chairman said, $80,000. I asked the
staff, well, how much can we pay screeners? If you are losing
30 percent of the screeners--30 percent of the screeners and 38
percent of the non-TSO employees leave their job within 1 year.
So you could be training these people, and like the chairman
said, you have got a boat, you know, with a leak in it, it is
going to sink.
But again, how much is a--let me ask this question. How
much is the bonus you can give to a screener? I am told $300 a
year.
Mr. Neffenger. No, it can be higher than that. I don't have
the exact number for it.
Mr. Mica. Can someone tell us the exact amount?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir, I will ----
Mr. Mica. But I am told it is about $300 year. If you are
giving--that guy got--we will knock off the one month, so he
got $80,000 in bonuses, and I have got people that are doing
the work, not sitting in an office.
And I want a full accounting of all the people working in
the Washington area. At one time there were 4,000 people within
like 10 miles of here working for TSA making on average
$103,000. I would like that figure into the record. Can you
provide us with that?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir, we'll provide that.
Mr. Mica. And then finally, I am not a management analyst,
but these folks testified, too, that you went from a risk-based
system to the system we see out there with these long lines and
everything. We have got the summer coming and they said if you
think, what was it, the day after Thanksgiving was bad, that we
are going to see that every day. What is plan B? We have gone
from a risk-based system down to shaking and thoroughly
examining everyone and no Plan B. Can you tell us about Plan B?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, we're still a risk-based system. In
fact, we still have TSA pre-check. We are growing that
population. It's a--we're doubling--we've doubled the
enrollment of that population over the last year, and the risk-
based approach is the more people I get into the Trusted
Traveler Program, the more I can move them through expedited
and the more we can focus on those who aren't.
We discontinued the practice of arbitrarily assigning and
randomly assigning people from an unknown population into that
expedited population. That was called managed inclusion. That
pushed a lot of people back into the standard screening lanes.
We have a significantly larger population of travelers this
year than we had previously, and it's grown substantially. It
grew faster, at a higher rate, than was predicted by those who
set the predictions for our budgets, which have been built, as
you know, in the past.
The--when I came into this organization last year, I found
an organization with 5,800 fewer screeners and it had had fewer
frontline officers than it had had 4 years previously. And that
was in the face of significantly higher traffic volume. And one
of the first things I asked Congress to do was to halt any
further reductions to the workforce because it was my suspicion
that we did not have enough people to staff our lanes. And my
suspicion was correct. We do not have enough people currently
to staff our lanes.
Mr. Mica. I ----
Mr. Neffenger. And we have been systematically scrubbing
our budget to hire more.
Mr. Mica. I respectfully disagree and yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
I now recognize the gentlewoman from New York, Mrs.
Maloney, for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this
important hearing. Nothing is more important than securing the
lives of American people.
And I want to thank Admiral Neffenger and IG Roth for your
work to really make the TSA security system more effective.
I would like to remind my colleagues that TSA was built not
for speed or created by government but to protect our citizens.
Almost 3,000 people just in New York City alone were murdered
on 9/11 merely because they woke up and did what each one of us
are doing today in this room. They went to work, sat at their
desks, and they were murdered not on a military site but at
their worksite. And this happened at other sites around the
country.
And if you remember--I would go to the airport just to see
what was going on. It was closed down. No one would fly. Our
commerce was crumbling; our air system was totally dead.
Everything was dead until government came in and started
putting security measures in place to protect the American
people.
Five hundred of my constituents died on 9/11 and hundreds
of friends and acquaintances of mine merely because they were
Americans going to work. This is horrifying. And we know that
our airlines continue to be a terrorist target. We know. I
talked to the pilots. They tell me they continue to test the
system all the time to see if there are weaknesses. And they
find that often after they leave the plane and see where they
were meddling.
So I want to thank both of you for your focus on security.
I would also like to remind my colleagues that when we
created TSA it was hotly debated for months. There was a
division between both sides of the aisle. Some thought it
should be privatized. Others thought the government should have
this responsibility since our main responsibility is to protect
our citizens. If our police and our fire are maintained and
supported by the government, surely the TSA that plays a vital
role of making sure that America doesn't get on a plane that is
going to blow up should have that same type of support from the
Federal Government.
So I want to thank Mr. Neffenger for your statements before
this committee where you--and I am going to quote you because I
thought it was such a good line. You said you are ``readjusting
the measurements of success to focus on security rather than
speed.''
And I will say to you I don't see TSA pandering to any
passengers. I get stopped all the time. Sometimes I say why am
I being stopped? They said it is a random number. You are that
random number. Sometimes the bells go off. But like every other
American, I have not seen anyone protest the fact that they
were stopped. They realize that they are there to help make it
more secure for us.
And I study the lines, like all of us. I travel every week
back and forth. And we have long lines. TSA has really helped.
The pre-check, sometimes the pre-check line is longer than the
other lines. The pre-check line is really growing, as you said.
But I have studied my fellow residents, and I don't see
them angry. If they lose their flight, miss their flight, they
should have been there earlier. We are all supposed to be there
an hour earlier. We rarely are there an hour earlier. And they
are not upset. They realize that they are stopping people to
make sure they don't get killed when they get on that plane.
So I for one just want to support the oversight strength of
our nation. The IG's office came out saying it wasn't strong
enough for security. The admiral has responded. He has 10
points that he is implementing. And I just want to ask Admiral
Neffenger, what adjustments have you made to ensure that
screeners are assessed on the security results that they
achieve?
And I want to reiterate I have never, never since 9/11--it
has been 15 years. I have never seen a resident or foreigner,
whoever is in that line, object that they are being stopped or
that someone else is being stopped, and because of their
feeling that there is an emergency, they may miss their plane.
The one complaint I hear is it secure enough? What is the
oversight? Every now and then someone gets on a plane with a
knife or some weapon and it gets all over the papers and people
start calling my office how did this happen? Because if people
do not believe that their planes are secure, they are not going
to fly. Commerce is going to hurt, the country hurts. And fear
is terrible and undermining the American spirit to get things
done.
So I really want to know what are you doing to improve
security? If you need more people, let us know and give us a
report on how you can keep the security at the top level but
you may have to have more people. I just know in New York it is
a busy place, but oftentimes, there are only one or two lanes
open because they don't have the people to staff the other
lanes. But no one is complaining about a pressure on security.
You know, I want to thank you for the job you do.
Chairman Chaffetz. The gentlewoman's time ----
Mrs. Maloney. If anything, it should be tougher in my
opinion.
Chairman Chaffetz. The gentlewoman's time is expired, but
the administrator may answer.
Mr. Neffenger. Thank you. I'll provide a further comment
for the committee's record, but let me just highlight a few
points that we're doing. As you know, following the results of
the IG's test last year, the first thing we did was a true root
cause analysis, what actually happened. What I found were
systemic problems in agency focus, in agency training, and in
the way in which we deployed our equipment.
So the first thing we did, we did a retraining of the
entire workforce. That took 2 months. It was a rolling stand-
down 8 hours at a time, every single employee, including
myself. I made all my senior leaders go through it as well. We
called that Mission Essentials. We have followed up with a
quarterly version of Mission Essentials. We now focus on
various aspects of the checkpoint. We have dramatically
increased our covert testing, internal covert testing, and we
do immediate feedback into that.
We provide--I work from--as I say, I work from the positive
side of the equation. We provide rewards for those people who
perform well, and then we turn those people into trainers for
the next round of folks. We do immediate feedback, and we do
that consistently.
I get daily measures of performance, workforce readiness,
workforce performance, and workforce accountability. We've
change that. It's no longer based upon how long the lines are
that you're working. That's a separate issue, and we deal with
that at the management level. But for the frontline workforce,
I want them to know that I want them to focus on their mission,
and I will support them in doing so and will provide them the
best possible training.
We also train them on the equipment, how it operates, and
we gave them hands-on understanding of what the limitations
were. There's a more fuller answer for you, which I'll provide.
Thank you, sir.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. I will now recognize the
gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Duncan, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral Neffenger, can you tell me how many TSA employees
make $100,000 or more a year?
Mr. Neffenger. I'll have to get the number for you for the
record, sir. I don't know that off the top of my head.
Mr. Duncan. Can you make a rough guess?
Mr. Neffenger. I can make a rough guess, maybe--I don't
really know, sir. I'll have to get that for the record for you.
Mr. Duncan. All right. Well, let me ask you this. Do you
know how many TSA employees got bonuses in the past year?
Mr. Neffenger. There were--as I said, I've restricted the
number of bonuses that we do. I'll get you the exact number. It
was a significantly smaller number, and it's based upon
performance. It wasn't based upon special act awards.
Mr. Duncan. Can you tell me, have you personally fired any
TSA employees for misconduct or rudeness or incompetence since
you have been in office?
Mr. Neffenger. There have been a number of people who have
been fired from the agency at all levels of the past year. I
came in and one of my first tasks was to determine what my
agency looked like. I hold my leaders, as I said, to high
standards, and I have demanded a lot of them. I have been--I'm
confident in my current leadership team. I'm certainly
confident in the people I've brought in to help lead that team.
And today, I've been satisfied with their performance, although
we have a long way to go.
Mr. Duncan. And you heard Mr. Mica say that you are
spending almost as much on administration as on actual
screening. What is your response to that? Do you think that
is--is that accurate?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I agree that any leader needs to look
hard at the way in which his resources are being spent. I have
done so. As I mentioned, I've done a systematic review of our
entire agency and the management practices of this agency.
We've taken a hard look at the budget, and in fact, I've moved
a lot of resources around and I've been working with my--the
appropriators and other--and my oversight committees to ensure
they understand where those savings can be found. I think
there's more savings to be found in my budget. Some of that
administrative oversight is required to manage the contracts
that TSA has, but I think that there's always room for
examination of that, and I intend to do so.
Mr. Duncan. Were you surprised when the inspector general
mentioned the 18,000 complaints and 104 criminal convictions?
Mr. Neffenger. I think that was across the DHS enterprise,
not all TSA. We--it's--we're a subset of that number. I'm
always dismayed by misconduct in an agency. We're a very large
agency of about 60,000 people. It doesn't surprise me that we
occasionally have people who don't act well. I'm concerned
about the--its effect on ground. I'm mostly concerned about how
you deal with it when you discover it, and I've committed to
the inspector general that I will work very closely with him on
understanding what the nature of those allegations and
misconduct are.
Mr. Duncan. I have served on the Aviation Subcommittee ever
since I have been in Congress. I chaired it for 6 years, and I
can tell you that you have well over twice as many screeners
now as when it was privatized, and yet there are more
complaints and longer lines now than when it was privatized. Do
you have any explanation of that?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I think there's a couple factors
there. One, there are significantly more people moving
through--travelers now than there were ----
Mr. Duncan. Well, not that many more percentagewise.
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir, actually ----
Mr. Duncan. There has been an increase but I can tell you
there has not been a--there has been a big increase but not a
2-1/2 times increase over when it was privatized. I can assure
you of that.
Mr. Neffenger. Well, we'll get you the exact number, but I
think you would be surprised at how much of a volume we're
seeing. And there's a lot more to worry about at a checkpoint
than we ever had before. There's a lot more threats to the
system. This is one of the most dynamic threat environments
I've ever seen. So the nature of passenger screening is much
more complex than it was 15 years ago prior to 9/11.
Mr. Duncan. Have you reviewed the testimony of the
witnesses that we had in here a few days ago and particularly
the testimony by the one administrator that you spent $12
million on a re-staffing of a floor that should have cost $3
million at the most?
Mr. Neffenger. I have reviewed the testimony, and as I
mentioned, I've put significant controls over expenditures,
over costs associated with those expenditures at all levels of
the organization.
Mr. Duncan. Now, I also heard that there were just about as
many contractors as numbers of employees, and yet I have read
and heard that many small businesses feel they are having
trouble getting meetings set up or getting phone calls
returned. Do you have or would you be willing to set up a small
business ombudsman or a small business outreach office to
help--so many departments and agencies when they become so big,
just the big giants are well-connected enough to get meetings
and get phone calls returned. And I am wondering if you are
doing something about that.
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir. Actually, thank you for that
question. I have good news to report on that front. That's one
of my concerns, too, coming in. My time in the Coast Guard I
spent a fair amount of time on the acquisition side of the
house and we had great concerns about small business
participation. So it's a particular interest of mine. We do
have a small business outreach office, and what I'm pleased to
report is that we met our small business participation targets
last year for the first time ever, and we continue to do so.
I don't think there's enough competition in the current
marketplace, and I think that there's a great deal of
entrepreneurial and creative ideas in the small business world.
Mr. Duncan. All right. Thank you very much.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
I will now recognize the gentlewoman from Illinois, Ms.
Kelly, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Administrator Neffenger, you have talked about the idea
that more and more people are traveling and that TSA needs more
workers. I wanted to concentrate a little bit more on pre-
check. How many passengers are currently enrolled in pre-check?
Mr. Neffenger. We're currently at about 2.4 million people
enrolled in pre-check.
Ms. Kelly. And what number do you think that can grow to?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, we've done a lot of work with the U.S.
Travel Association and other associations connected with the
airline industry, and we think we can get the number to 25
million by calendar year 2019.
Ms. Kelly. And what are you doing to encourage passengers
to join the program?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, we've done a lot more to advertise the
program. You need to continually advertise something for people
to be aware of it, and I think in my opinion failure to do so
over the past few years consistently has reduced its--the
awareness of people for it. So there's two factors. One, you
have to advertise it and it has to be available, and then you
have to have places where people can sign up for it. And those
were the two areas that I think that we needed to do a lot of
work on.
We've been working very closely with U.S. Travel
Association, individual airlines, the airline associations, and
the airport associations to increase their advertising. I'm
pleased to report that all the major airlines are doing their
own versions of advertising. Some of the major airlines have
offered to the opportunity to exchange miles for pre-check.
We've gone out to a number--to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
and to a number of the large corporations. Microsoft
Corporation, for example, now buys pre-check for all of its
travelers, for its frequent travelers. So those kinds of things
are helping considerably.
And our enrollment rate now is running about 165,000 per
month, which is more than double what we saw this time last
year. We think it needs to get a little higher, but between
that and the other Trusted Traveler Programs of the government
such as Global Entry and NEXUS and SENTRI, we believe, and the
associations agree with us, that we think we can get this up to
25 million, which would dramatically change the way we can
operate this system by calendar year 2019.
Ms. Kelly. I typically fly in and out of O'Hare or
sometimes Midway, and what my colleagues said about sometime
the pre-check lines are actually longer than the regular lines,
but the other thing is all of the carry-on luggage because of
what the airlines charge, people are carrying more and more
luggage on and stuffing more and more things in the luggage.
And according to the New York Times, the big four airlines--
American, Southwest, Delta, and United--made $22 billion in
profit from their charges. And I wanted to know--that is one of
the sources of growing profits in the airline. And what portion
of that from the airlines goes toward paying any airport
security? Do they contribute in any way?
Mr. Neffenger. I think the--currently, the airlines do not
make a direct contribution to airline security. There's a
passenger security fee that's charged on every ticket. It's
capped on a round-trip.
The--we do--we are seeing more baggage come through the
checkpoint. I will say that the airlines now are being very
diligent about enforcing the one-plus-one rule, and that's
helped considerably. We're also experimenting in a number of
the large airports with what we call travel-light lane, which
gives those individuals who are carrying--who have just, you
know, a simple carry on like a briefcase or a purse or
something the opportunity to have a dedicated lane which allows
us to move significantly more people through. It's the carry-on
baggage that is one of the major slowdown points in the
checkpoint.
Ms. Kelly. And I wonder if we should do more calling on the
airlines to help address the consequences of their business
decisions on the TSA screening process because the more they
charge, the less people are going to check their bags. I think
American is $35 for a piece of luggage. What do you think about
that?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, it's the decision of the airlines to
make those fees. I can talk about the impact of people carrying
a lot of baggage through the checkpoint. I will say that I
think airlines are aware of this. I've had a number of
conversations with the CEOs of each of the major airlines. I
understand why they made that business decision. I tell them
what the impact can be upon us, and they've committed to
working with us to ensure that they find ways to reduce that
stress at the checkpoint.
Ms. Kelly. And it's something they should look at because
if everyone carries luggage on, that slows up people getting on
the airplane and the on-time record and on and on and on so --
--
Mr. Neffenger. That's right.
Ms. Kelly. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. I will now recognize the
gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Gosar, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Gosar. Thank you, Chairman.
Mr. Neffenger, TSA employees report that directed
reassignments have been used improperly to force out disfavored
employees. Do you believe this is an ongoing practice at TSA?
Mr. Neffenger. I discontinued that practice explicitly, and
in fact have put strong controls on it. I will say that I think
an agency--an operating agency needs to be able to move people
periodically to places where their skills are needed or for
exigent circumstances, but you need strong controls over that.
It needs to be done in an open and transparent way, and it
needs to be done in a way that is not used for retribution or
punitive measures. But I've stopped that.
Mr. Gosar. Well, I am glad you went that way because I
would like to illustrate Mr. Brainard, who testified before
this committee, that he was issued a directed reassignment from
Iowa to Maine in 2014 with no apparent need or justification
even though the move cost him significant financial hardship.
His replacement and the person he was replacing were issued
similar reassignments. In your opinion, was this an appropriate
use of directed assignment, and if so, what is your
justification?
Mr. Neffenger. If I may, it was not an appropriate use of
directed reassignments, and that's why I changed the policy.
Mr. Gosar. So now, Mr. Brainard has also testified that he
had an excellent performance evaluation. He was reassigned to a
smaller and less complex airport. The person he replaced did
not want to leave, and the person reassigned to replace him
reassigned because accepting their reassignment would cause him
hardship. Can you further explain the decision to move forward
with this reassignment?
Mr. Neffenger. Again, that happened before I arrived as the
administrator.
Mr. Gosar. Oh, it may have happened before, but, I mean,
you are responsible, are you not, sir?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I'm responsible now, and as I said
before, I am not conducting directed reassignments in that
manner. If I have to--in fact, I have not directly reassigned
anyone under my leadership.
Mr. Gosar. Now, Andrew Rhoades was issued a directed
reassignment in February of 2015, which was stayed by the
Office of Special Counsel due to concerns of retaliation for
protected whistleblower activity and ultimately rescinded by
the TSA. Can you explain how Mr. Rhoades' reassignment was
approved?
Mr. Neffenger. Again, I would defer to the person who made
that decision. I don't allow the policy under my watch, and
we're supporting Mr. Rhoades in his complaint, which stands
before the Office of Special Counsel right now.
Mr. Gosar. Now, part of the justification for Mr. Rhoades'
reassignment was to sever past loyalties due to suspicions he
was a source for the media, which he denies. Do you consider
this an appropriate justification?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, again, that matter is being
investigated right now by the Office of Special Counsel. If
they find that to be true, then of course it wasn't
appropriate.
Mr. Gosar. So was Mr. Rhoades' directed reassignment
approved by the Executive Resources Council?
Mr. Neffenger. I believe it was brought before the
Executive Resources Council under its then-mandate and then
recommended to senior leadership beyond that.
Mr. Gosar. Now, have you disciplined anybody at TSA for
their role in this reassignment?
Mr. Neffenger. Again, I'm waiting for the results of the
Office of Special Counsel investigation. Depending upon what
they find, it may point to appropriate discipline.
Mr. Gosar. I mean, if there is a--you know, and in many
cases with law enforcement, people are put on administrative
leaves. Has anybody been put on administrative leave or
anything like that?
Mr. Neffenger. I've not placed anyone on administrative
leave.
Mr. Gosar. Now, do you stand by the validity of these
reassignments or do you have any reason to believe that they
were improper?
Mr. Neffenger. With respect to the ones you're talking
about ----
Mr. Gosar. Yes.
Mr. Neffenger.--again, I'm going to--I will await the
Office of Special Counsel's review. I think it's important that
we look for an independent review of that to determine whether
or not there was improper use there. I will tell you that I
don't think the manner in which we were doing directed
reassignments prior to my arrival was justifiable. And even if
it was appropriate, it wasn't done in a way that was open,
transparent, fair, and otherwise controlled, which is why I
changed it and we put significant controls on that process now.
Mr. Gosar. And do you--on updates on reassignments, are
they periodic or are they a daily basis? How are they done in
your office?
Mr. Neffenger. Oh, I get a report on those. I will tell you
I've not done any directed reassignments, so right now, the
update is that we aren't doing that, and I've created a process
by which someone can recommend a reassignment, someone can
request a reassignment, and then it goes through a series of
checks and reviews. That includes the Office of Human Capital,
the chief financial officer, the Executive Resources Council,
and ultimately comes to the office of the administrator for a
decision.
Mr. Gosar. Well, I thank you. I am just running out of time
so I will yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
I will now recognize the ranking member, Mr. Cummings, from
Maryland.
Mr. Cummings. Admiral, I want to get down to the meat of
what happened the other day when the whistleblowers came in.
There was a theme running throughout their testimony, and they
were very forthright, really good people. And they came to us
begging almost for fairness. But one of the things that they
said was that there are some leadership folk and they said it
is not a lot of them that try to undermine the things that you
are trying to bring about. And they felt very strongly that if
these folks were not there, things would run a lot smoother.
And so I just want to ask you, one of them said this,
``this workforce is waiting out Mr. Neffenger because they
think the elections are coming.'' Other whistleblowers
expressed similar concerns. And, Administrator, have you heard
this type of concern? And I hear that you are doing a great
job, but that the problem elements at TSA are just waiting you
out?
And how do you put in systems that go beyond your tenure?
Because I know you are used to doing that. You did it with
Deepwater Horizon in the Coast Guard. You made sure that we had
procurement officers that were trained properly. You set up a
mechanism by which there was an inside-the-Coast-Guard training
apparatus, and now they are doing fine. So how do you do that
here and keep in mind what they said? They weren't so much
complaining about you. They were complaining about some folks
under you. So how do you deal with that? And do you have any
idea who these whistleblowers were talking about?
Mr. Neffenger. I don't know who they were directly
referring to, Mr. Cummings, but let me tell you how I approach
leadership at this organization. The first thing you have to do
is set very clear standards, which I have done since I've been
there, and very clear expectations and define a vision and a
mission for where you're going. And it's directly related to
getting our security mission done. And then I hold people
accountable for reporting back to me.
So I will tell you this. I have--I sat down with each of my
leaders, the people who report directly to me at headquarters
and who are responsible for--collectively for the performance
of TSA. And I looked each one of them eye to eye, and I've done
this repeatedly and I do this weekly, and I do this sometimes
daily. And I've said this is what I expect of you. If you fail
to perform, then I will hold you accountable. And I hold them
accountable by requiring them to report back to me with very
specific measures of performance.
I will tell you to date--and I've driven them very hard. I
know that because I know how hard I--because I know how hard
they're--I'm working and I know how long they're there. And if
I'm there at eight o'clock at night and I call somebody,
they're there at eight o'clock at night, and then we do that
until we get it done.
So what I'm seeing is a leadership team that if driven and
pointed in the right direction is doing what I'm asking them to
do.
Now, how do you ensure that that stays there in the event,
you know, I'm not here after the elections? First of all, I
want to--you inspire the workforce to the mission that they
first took the oath of office for. You can remind people of the
oath of office they took, and I remind everyone that this is a
workforce that committed themselves to one of the most
challenging missions in the country. And then you have to build
the institutional controls and you put them into policy and
then you get that policy stamped by the Department of Homeland
Security.
And you turn to people like the inspector general and you
turn to people like the Secretary of Homeland Security, and you
ask them to review your policies and then you put controls at
the department level over this.
And then you bring in leaders below you that are career
employees that will survive you that are on the same page you
are, which I've done. I have a new deputy administrator who
came in from outside the agency, and she has a stellar
reputation in the Federal Government.
And then you bring in a--I brought in the chief of
operations, again, a stellar operator who is a man of superb
integrity and who then is responsible for encouraging that
going forward.
I will provide for you a list of those kinds of actions
we're taking, but I think the way you ensure that it survives
is that you don't let it be the decision of one individual
anymore, which I don't.
Mr. Cummings. Well, let me ask you this. One of the
things--and I think that--first of all, I think every member of
this committee and I know for a fact the chairman feels this
way and certainly--because we have talked about it a lot. If
there is retaliation, we have a major problem with that, and we
will do everything in our power to protect whistleblowers.
And I guess my question now is when I heard about this
reassignment--and I know you are not doing it anymore--I mean,
some of that stuff really upset me because basically what they
were doing was it sounded like intentionally tearing up
families, dividing them, and I mean really putting some
hardship on people, which was, I mean, unbearable. And they
were spending--I think one case spend $100,000 to do a
reassignment that didn't even make sense except to retaliate.
I want to know what your position is with regard to
retaliation, how you deal with that. And we want to be assured
that if there are people who are doing that--and I am telling
you, I think you will get--not I think, I know you will get
every member of our committee backing you up, but we want to
know what your position is with regard to that, and have you
found any of that so far, I mean, yourself. I know that you may
have heard some things. I don't--but go ahead.
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I don't tolerate that. That's--it's
illegal, it's unethical, and it fits in all the categories of
the kind of people you don't want any organization. The people
who were doing the--most of those directed reassignments are no
longer with the agency. They left before my arrival. I'm very
interested in the results of the Office of Special Counsel
investigation into the existing cases with the individuals who
appeared before you. Depending upon those findings, I will take
immediate action against that.
It will not be tolerated. I don't tolerate it. It's why I
stopped the practice. I don't know how extensive it really was
because we know the people that have come forward. But I can
tell you that it doesn't happen under--and I made that very
clear to everyone.
I also directly support the rights of individuals to come
forward. That's valuable information you get from people who
have the courage to step forward and tell you what they think
is wrong with the organization.
Mr. Cummings. And I am going to finish with this, Mr.
Chairman.
So you are saying that if there are people watching this at
TSA who feel that they are being wrongfully retaliated against
or some action taken against them that is illegal and improper,
you are saying you have an open door?
Mr. Neffenger. They can come directly to me, exactly, and I
will then, in fact, turn directly to Inspector General Roth and
I will ask his assistance in investigating.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Neffenger. Thank you.
Chairman Chaffetz. I now recognize the gentleman from South
Carolina, Mr. Gowdy.
Mr. Gowdy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief, and
then I will yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman
from Florida.
Mr. Chairman, I think we are probably all prisoners to a
certain extent to our own personal experience, so while I am
open and interested of the experiences and expectations of
others, I have never had a problem in any of the airports I
have ever traveled to. I use Greenville-Spartanburg, I use
Charlotte, I use DCA. The folks are professional.
My friend from Florida mentioned that there may be some
Members of Congress and perhaps other people who consider
themselves to be dignitaries who either expect or accept
preferential treatment. The Members of Congress that I travel
with don't expect it, and they wouldn't accept it if it were
offered to them. And a Member of Congress has a little bit of
obligation herself or himself to say no, I am going to stay in
the line like everybody else.
So I am quite certain that your department can do better. I
am quite certain that you have a plan to do better. I am also
quite certain Congress can do better. So I am going to focus on
fixing us, and I trust that you have a plan to fix TSA. And my
experience with them is you have a really hard job with the
zero margin for error. That is not much margin.
So with that, I would yield to the gentleman from Florida.
Mr. Mica. I thank the gentleman.
Actually, I want to take a minute and compliment Mr.
Cummings. Sometimes he and I disagree, rarely, but his line of
questioning--Mr. Neffenger, I am not here just to bust your
chops, but his line of questioning was from the other side of
the aisle, and what we heard raised great questions, and it was
documented by staff the amounts of money that were used to pay
to transfer people in retribution.
And then the other thing, too, is sometimes I think--I was
telling the chairman I think you are a good guy. I think you
were a good guy to be sent in to clean up the mess, but
sometimes the leader is fed mushrooms and kept in the dark. I
will put that as politely as we can. And Mr. Cummings described
to you what we heard is going on, that you are being fed this
information by these people who are protecting their rear ends.
I am trying to put this in terms that can be transmitted on C-
SPAN for the family community. But, again, this is our concern.
I helped create TSA. I will never forget Mr. Mineta and I
went out and we--I think it was like we had a goal of 20 or 30
minutes from curb to the gate. That was our goal. That was when
it was under the Transportation Committee. And we actually went
out and did a thing. And it can be done. We don't have to
hassle the 99 percent of the people. We are supposed to be
looking for the ones that are getting through.
And, again, you have an attrition rate of an average of
about 10 percent, right, for screeners, average across the
board? If you can't tell me now ----
Mr. Neffenger. No, no, the average ----
Mr. Mica.--I don't know what the attrition ----
Mr. Neffenger.--of--it's higher in the part-time workforce.
Mr. Mica. Okay. You have 4,500 full-time--or 45,000 as your
cap. You have 4,500 vacancies at any time. Thirty percent of
them are dropping out after you train them and 38 percent of
the non-TSO. That is what we have from you. So, again, it is a
tub that the water is draining and we are not going to get--
that is why it is very hard to administer all those people.
And staffing to traffic, they can't staff to traffic. And
you heard, one of your defenders, Mrs. Maloney, sometimes the
pre-check line was longer than the others because no one
adjusts. It is not a thinking organization. And I don't know
how you get it. I am an advocate of private screening under
Federal supervision, which hopefully could make better
decisions.
But I also want to know the total number of bonuses that
were paid in 2015, 2014. I want to know how much--that is for
management personnel and your highest level. Then, I want to
know the maximum and minimum amount for the screeners. These
guys do work hard, and the staff is telling me their max is in
the range of $300. And this guy is getting $80,000, and we are
screwing the guy that is doing the work and the job? If we paid
them better, maybe we could retain them. I know some of the
private screening companies pay more than the TSA schedule.
They have to pay the minimum. It is not done on the cheap. You
are aware of that, aren't you? Do you have that flexibility to
pay more?
Mr. Neffenger. I have some flexibility. I don't have much
flexibility.
Mr. Mica. Maybe you need more. Thank you. And I yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. I would now recognize ----
Mr. Connolly. Would my friend from Florida just yield for
one second?
Chairman Chaffetz. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Mica. For Mr. Connolly, I would ----
Mr. Connolly. I just want to ----
Mr. Mica.--yield any time--I would do anything Mr. Connolly
----
Mr. Connolly. The C-SPAN word for screwing is euchring ----
Mr. Mica. Thank you.
Mr. Connolly.--for the record.
Chairman Chaffetz. I now recognize the gentleman from
Massachusetts, Mr. Lynch, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Admiral.
Thank you, Inspector General. Good to see you again.
You realize this is an equal opportunity committee, so when
we criticize you today about having long lines and taking too
long to screen people, next week if there is a breach, we will
haul you appear again and lambaste you for, you know, not be
more thorough. So we have that flexibility up here and you do
not.
But I think, based on what I have seen and, you know, I
have been a critic at times, based on what I have seen,
Admiral, the work that you are doing and, Inspector General,
you continue to do, I think we are going in the right
direction, but we have got a lot of work to do.
The question we had at a previous hearing was regarding--
let me ask you up front. We seem to rely a lot on the
whistleblower, and I am wondering in the Aviation and
Transportation Security Act, it says that employees may be
hired and fired, you know, basically on the will of the
management at TSA, any other law in existence notwithstanding.
So, as I understand that, they do not have the protection
under title 7 of the Civil Rights Act. They do not have
protection under antidiscrimination law by the language in the
law that says notwithstanding any other law to the contrary
they could be fired. And do you want to speak to that, Admiral?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir. They do have protection under
civil rights and under the Equal Opportunity Act. In fact,
we've explicitly put that into the way in which we govern the
agency. So they have all the due process rights and protections
are ----
Mr. Lynch. Have you adopted that? Because you just had a
case in court where they threw the case out because they said
employees were not covered by that.
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I'll have to look at that case, but I
believe they are fully covered, and it's one of the questions I
asked.
Mr. Lynch. They are not covered by the statute. I am not
sure how ----
Mr. Neffenger. Given the unique nature of the statute, no,
but it's been adopted by--it was adopted by previous
administrators.
Mr. Lynch. Okay. Okay. Okay. I will take your word for
that. That is helpful because if they don't have statutory
protections, obviously they are going to have to rely on the
whistleblower protection or the 40 cases that Mr. Roth is able
to take up each year. And that is not nearly the protections
that they would need, right?
Let me go back. We had a case a while ago. I think there
were like 70 or 71 employees who were on that no-fly list,
terrorist watch list that were actually working at some of our
airports. And you came in and you changed that system. And I
want to ask you, those employees, were they removed?
And I realize--let me fully explain. The reason that was
given was that TSA was not privy to those lists on which those
employees who were on the terrorist watch list or the no-fly
list were allowed to be employed in airports in secure areas.
But when you went in, I understand it from our last
conversation, we cleaned that up. And I just want to know how
it was cleaned up. Were they fired or what happened there?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, just to clarify, they actually weren't
on the no-fly or the watch list. They were in what was called
the TIDE database, the Terrorist Information Datamart
Environment. And this is information that may or may not
indicate a direct association with terrorism. So one of the
first things we did was I wanted the FBI's read on every one of
these individuals. And the answer back was that none of them
were--met sufficient information to actually directly call them
a terrorist or an associate of a terrorist ----
Mr. Lynch. But ----
Mr. Neffenger. So that said, we looked back at it. Many of
them no longer hold their credentials. Two of them had their
credentials removed, and the remainder have actually been
scrubbed out of the database on the advice of the FBI. But it
was very valuable to get--what it did for us, though, is it
allowed us then to get automated access to the categories of
that separate database, which then ultimately could feed into
the terrorist watch list or the terrorist screening database.
And now we do a full automated review of every single
credential holder against that database. And if anybody pops up
in any category ----
Mr. Lynch. Okay.
Mr. Neffenger.--it allows you to take a harder look at
them, which we do, and then we go back to the intelligence
community and to the FBI and we do a scrub on those
individuals.
Mr. Lynch. But you have to admit this is a higher level of
sensibility here allowing these folks to actually work inside
secure areas ----
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir, and that was exactly the question
that I had about that ----
Mr. Lynch. Yes.
Mr. Neffenger.--which is why--and I've been working very
closely with Director Comey and the National Counterterrorism
Center to ----
Mr. Lynch. Right.
Mr. Neffenger.--correct things through that.
Mr. Lynch. Mr. Roth, you did a great job on the screening
tests at the big airports, and, you know, we had a very high
failure rate the last time you did that test. And I am not sure
if enough time has gone by to allow Admiral Neffenger to sort
of adopt a new protocol among the screeners, and has that
happened yet? Have you done any new test to sort of take a
measurement of how we are doing?
Mr. Roth. Sure. What we have done is two things. One is the
natural follow-up that we would do in any audit. So, for
example, with regard to the penetration testing, we have
reviewed TSA's 22-point plan to increase security at the
checkpoint. Additionally, we are planning more covert testing
the summer of a similar scale that we did last summer so we'll
be able to tell exactly how we're doing.
Mr. Lynch. Great. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your
indulgence. I yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. I now recognize the gentleman
from North Carolina, Mr. Walker, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have been amazed to know how much money has actually been
spent in some of these previous relocations, reassignments
nearing $200,000 per relocation. Have you directed any of these
reassignments during your tenure?
Mr. Neffenger. I have not, no, sir.
Mr. Walker. And Mr. Brainard reported that the relocation
expenses for his reassignment to Maine exceeded $100,000. Is
that true as far as you know?
Mr. Neffenger. That's my understanding, yes, sir.
Mr. Walker. Okay. And would you agree that that is an
illegitimate use of taxpayers' dollars?
Mr. Neffenger. It's in excess of what should have been
spent. In fact, I've capped any relocation reassignment costs.
Mr. Walker. How are involuntary relocation decisions
approved now?
Mr. Neffenger. Now, the process is, first and foremost, it
has to be looked at by the Office of Human Capital. I want them
to see is there a need for the relocation. Second, has the
individual that you're looking--thinking about relocating, is
that something the individual desires, wants, what's the skill
set that you need, why would you do that.
Second, I have to have a CFO--the chief financial officer
has to sign off on the ability to actually pay for it, and it
has to be within a reasonable cost, and we set limits on those
reasonable costs.
And then finally, after it gets reviewed by my executive
counsel, we make the final decision in the office of the
administrator.
Mr. Walker. Administrator Neffenger, it sounds like you are
trying to develop or implement a plan for the future, which is
part of a cleaning up from some of the things in the past.
Probably the biggest thing that concerns me is the issue with
Mr. Hoggan. Do you believe that Mr. Hoggan's performance
bonuses of $90,000 is justified for the taxpayer?
Mr. Neffenger. I don't think that level of bonuses
justified, period.
Mr. Walker. Okay. Well, I am glad to hear that. As the
leader of the OSO, did Mr. Hoggan have a key role in directed
reassignments?
Mr. Neffenger. He had a role in directed reassignments. It
wasn't the only role in directed reassignments. Those came out
of a different office.
Mr. Walker. When you said a role, can you expound just for
a moment for me?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I mean moving--the Office of Security
Operations ultimately has to get the people moved from one
location to the other and perhaps has to carry out the order to
make the movement happen.
Mr. Walker. Is it fair to say that he had a key factor in
this?
Mr. Neffenger. I think he had a role in this, yes.
Mr. Walker. Okay. All right. In looking at his situation
and his involvement, I am sure you have considered replacing
Mr. Hoggan as the director of OSO given his responsibility for
screening failures, rolling directed reassignments, and his
questionable bonus payments. Is that fair to say?
Mr. Neffenger. I'd like to back up a little bit, Mr.
Walker, and talk about--I-- what I found ----
Mr. Walker. Well, I would like for you--I appreciate it,
but I want you to answer the question. You are welcome to
expound, but I asked a direct question there.
Mr. Neffenger. My first task was to see how--what my
leadership team was able to do. And everything I've asked of
Mr. Hoggan since I've been here, he has done that. I look all
of my leaders and determine whether or not they're qualified
for the job ----
Mr. Walker. Sure, I appreciate it, but there have been some
past violations. Have you had discussions as a part of groups
saying listen, this is a decision that we may need to make as
far as removing Hoggan for these past transgressions?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, the inspector general took a look at
the situation with respect to that. I think that there were
people responsible for that who are no longer within the
agency.
Mr. Walker. I'm not asking--with all due respect, and I
know you are doing a great job. And for Inspector General Roth,
I am asking about you. What has your role been in Mr. Hoggan's
previous indiscretions here when it comes to some of the
spending expenditures? Have you had discussions or is there any
plan to remove him or put him on probation? What is the
decision here?
Mr. Neffenger. I do not currently have a plan to remove Mr.
Hoggan. He has performed to my expectations since I've been
there, and he--and I have not seen any indiscretions on his
part in the time that I've been in TSA.
Mr. Walker. So even though we acknowledge there has been
some, do we just kind of put a blind ----
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I don't know--I don't acknowledge that
he had indiscretions. I think he carried out some orders, and
those orders resulted in people being reassigned, sometimes for
good reason, sometimes maybe for ill-considered reason ----
Mr. Walker. But even carrying out orders, it reminds me of
the movie A Few Good Men. These young marines were still in the
fictitious movie therefore carrying out the code red. If he is
following orders but still doing something wrong or going after
people, there is still some accountability. Is that not fair?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, and I think that those--some of those
issues have then investigated, and they were recommended. We
have filled out those recommendations as necessary from the
inspector general. I have not seen any direct misconduct on the
part of Mr. Hoggan in the time that I've been there.
Mr. Walker. No, and I appreciate that for the time that you
have been there. Our concern or the facts that we have is
before you arrived, and it was in the not-so-far distant past
that there were some of these indiscretions as we have used
going on.
My time is expiring. I do hope that there will be some kind
of looking into Mr. Hoggan as far as some of these things that
went on, especially these involuntary relocations. Mr. Cummings
talked about even potentially tearing some of the families
apart because I do think there is some responsibility on his
part even if he was carrying out orders.
I have got 10 seconds left. I do want to compliment
Inspector General Roth. Every hearing I go to you and your
staff are properly prepared, and we appreciate it. Thank you
very much.
And with that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. I now recognize the gentleman
from Virginia, Mr. Connelly, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Connelly. Thank you very much. And welcome, both of
you.
Admiral Neffenger, let me start by saying I really
appreciate the management reforms you have undertaken and the
spirit with which you have taken them. This is a big
enterprise, a difficult enterprise, a critical mission with a
lot of unsatisfying aspects to the job. Very few human beings
are going to make a 30-year career out of telling people to
take off their belts and shoes, and yet it is critical to the
mission, the security of the American people.
And so it not easy keeping motivated to have a salary
structure that makes sense, and I for one very much appreciate
what you have done, and I hope you don't leave with the new
administration. And as a matter of fact, if you do, I hope you
will give Paul Wiedefeld a call at Metro and join his team
because we need the kind of management reforms you have
undertaken at TSA.
One little plug that I always make, and I have seen in my
own experience a big change, which I appreciate, in how we are
treating the public, but we have still got work to do. But I
have really been impressed at different airports I have gone to
where--and I just think when you create a more hospitable,
friendly climate that invites people's cooperation, you get it.
And there is always a risk if you get a hostile public or a
resentful public that something can go wrong. Why not go the
former if you can? And I just thank you for that, and I hope
you will keep that sense of that culture present. We are not
dealing with cattle. We are dealing with people, and we need
their cooperation and we want them to feel good about the
experience as much as they can.
And I think we do have a long-suffering public that gets it
about the security mission and is willing to put up with a lot
more than I would have guessed, but we should make it as easy
as possible without compromising security, and I think that
ought to be the ethos. And so I commend the two of you, and I
thank you for the progress that has been achieved.
Let me first ask, by having said all of that, I think there
is a growing concern as a management challenge what is
happening in terms of wait times. So, for example, 600
passengers missed their flights in Charlotte, North Carolina,
on Good Friday because of wait times that exceeded 3 hours.
Now, Mrs. Maloney said she doesn't know anyone who complains.
My guess is they were 600 people that day on Good Friday in
Charlotte who did.
It is one thing to understand I am going to be discommoded
and inconvenienced to get through a security line to protect me
and everybody else. It is quite another that the price of that
is it is moving so sluggishly and glacially I am going to miss
my flight.
American Airlines says 7,000 of its customers missed
flights in March alone, the month of March, due to long waits
and security lines. Seattle and Atlanta have indicated they
actually may seek authority to try to privatize passenger
screening to expedite this process. Could you address that?
Because I think we have to agree that is not acceptable. It may
happen, but if that becomes routine, that just doesn't--now, we
are going to get real public resistance.
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir. Well, thanks for the question.
The--we've seen huge increases in passenger volume. There's no
doubt about that. And at peak times we're seeing more people
moving through the system than we've ever seen before. Just to
put it in perspective, 4 years ago a big day in this country
was about 1.6 million passengers going through screening
checkpoints. We're well above 2 million passengers daily right
now. So that's just a--it's just a volume increase.
And I do think we need to grow the staff slightly to get up
to that, and we're working hard on that. In fact, we've been--
once we got our appropriation bill passed in December, we began
accelerating hiring because, as you know, if you're going to
reduce by another 1,600 or so people, we cut into that number
well in advance of the fiscal year.
So we are hiring and we're meeting our hiring quotas. I
think the good news is is we have people who actually want to
come to work for TSA. But it seems to me--and I know you know
this is a good management principle--I think we have got to
priority-set some metrics. Three hours is unacceptable.
Mr. Neffenger. Well ----
Mr. Connelly. So we ought to be setting for ourselves a
time frame that is acceptable. We don't go beyond that. And
whatever the staffing required, I mean, Mr. Mica correctly
talked about staffing to traffic.
Mr. Neffenger. That's ----
Mr. Connelly. This is part of that.
Mr. Neffenger. That's right. And we've been working very
closely with the airlines, the airports to understand when
those peak loads are coming through and to make sure our
staffing meets that. I think we've improved significantly just
in the past few weeks.
I'm not aware of any wait times of the length that you're
talking about right now, and I track them daily. And I look at
passenger volume daily and I look out across all of the
airports that ----
Mr. Connelly. Well, you may want to check Good Friday in
Charlotte ----
Mr. Neffenger. I will do that.
Mr. Connelly.--according to this report. One final question
if the chair will indulge me, just a real quick one.
Inspector General Roth, do we have an anonymous hotline
within TSA that people can call when they feel something is
untoward, sort of under the broader whistleblower category?
But, I mean, you know, in my county there is a hotline you can
call if you think someone is doing something untoward, and you
are protected with anonymity and it is followed up by our
inspector general.
Mr. Roth. Yes, absolutely. We have a hotline that is
manned, as well as a Web site so you can use either of those
ways to complain or give us information that we will eventually
----
Mr. Connelly. And there is guaranteed follow-up?
Mr. Roth. We will take a look at it. We get 18,000
complaints a year. We can't guarantee that every single one of
those complaints will be thoroughly investigated, but we
certainly look at them and evaluate them.
Mr. Connelly. Very fine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Connelly.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr.
Hice.
Mr. Hice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think we have got a very great facility for the Federal
Law Enforcement Training Center. I think the TSA frankly is not
utilizing it to the full potential, certainly not to the
potential that would be helpful. But how long on an average
does a new hire have to wait before they begin training at the
TSA Academy?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I've got good news to report on that.
We're--so, as you know, that academy stood up for the first
time ever on January 1 of this year, so this is new for us. And
we are pushing now eight concurrent classes, about 200 officers
a week. We--it takes about 4 months to on-board somebody new,
and during--and we typically bring them on board and they have
to get their security background checks and the like, and then
we get them right into a training class shortly after that. So
we're actually seeing the ability to move people right in, and
we're still ----
Mr. Hice. So 4 months is the average wait?
Mr. Neffenger. It's on average 4 to 5 months, but that--but
during that time you're going through the background checks and
the like to determine if they're ----
Mr. Hice. All right. How ----
Mr. Neffenger.--worth hiring.
Mr. Hice. What percentage of TSO go through FLETC?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, now, it's--we're doing ----
Mr. Hice. Ten percent?
Mr. Neffenger. No, no. Now, we're putting 100 percent of
our new hires through FLETC. It used to be the case that we
trained, you know, at various places on the job around the
country. We are going to make a couple of exceptions because of
the need to get some more officers out in front of the summer
travel season, so we're doing--we've--we're taking the FLETC
curriculum and we're doing it locally in a couple of key
locations. But we are ----
Mr. Hice. Is that local training as effective as the FLETC
training?
Mr. Neffenger. We're using the same FLETC ----
Mr. Hice. I know the curriculum, but is it as effective --
--
Mr. Neffenger. Well, from my opinion it's not ideal.
Mr. Hice. Okay.
Mr. Neffenger. I would like to do everything--if the--we're
still--we're building out capacity and FLETC has been working
with us to allow for that capacity ----
Mr. Hice. How many airports have requested the
authorization to utilize local training?
Mr. Neffenger. I think I've got to airports right now that
have asked the authorization.
Mr. Hice. Two? Okay. Have any been denied?
Mr. Neffenger. What we've said is that we will do it on an
as-needed basis. We aren't currently doing any local training
classes because we're able to--we've been working with FLETC to
increase the class offerings there. So ----
Mr. Hice. Is there a clear policy to determine the as-need
basis?
Mr. Neffenger. There is a clear policy, yes, sir.
Mr. Hice. Okay. Could you submit that to us ----
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir. I will do that.
Mr. Hice.--and let us have a copy of that?
In regard to the bonuses, I would like to go back and ask a
couple of questions regarding Mr. Hoggan. You are aware that
the $90,000 in bonuses were broken up in increments of $10,000
each. Could you explain why the agency did it this way, why it
was broken up that way?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, as I understand it--and as you know,
that was done under previous leadership, but as I understand
it, it was because the maximum amount allowable on any given
bonus was $10,000.
Mr. Hice. Okay. So was this some sort of scheme to get
him--well, could you explain smurfing?
Mr. Neffenger. I'm sorry, say again?
Mr. Hice. Smurfing.
Mr. Neffenger. Smurfing? I am not familiar with the term.
Mr. Hice. Okay. So if there is $90,000 broken up in $10,000
increments, is that the type of thing that would need approval
from DHS?
Mr. Neffenger. It does now. I will tell you that there is
nothing in my experience that finds that justifiable. It's why
I stopped the--it doesn't matter if it didn't violate policy --
--
Mr. Hice. All right. So why do you say that? Why is that
not justifiable? What does not appear to be to you?
Mr. Neffenger. It just looks--it just doesn't pass the
front-page test for me.
Mr. Hice. It looks like something is being hidden.
Mr. Neffenger. I just don't like it. I don't think it's
right, and I stopped that practice. And I make sure now that
all of our bonuses have to be approved at the department level,
and I severely restricted them within TSA.
Mr. Hice. Mr. Roth, I would really like to hear your
comments on all of this.
Mr. Roth. As we looked at our report, I mean, it was
clearly an attempt to circumvent the departmental regulations
on approval, so ----
Mr. Hice. Okay.
Mr. Roth.--smurfing is breaking up specific financial
transactions to something below the reporting requirement,
which is what happened here.
Mr. Hice. Right.
Mr. Roth. The individual responsible for that, by the time
that we did our investigation, was no longer employed at TSA,
and the regulations that existed at the time were so loose that
it was technically permissible even though clearly the intent
was, I think, wrong.
Mr. Hice. So the intent is to hide?
Mr. Roth. Absolutely.
Mr. Hice. Yes, absolutely, and that is what smurfing is,
and I appreciate you bringing that.
Is there anything currently preventing the agency--back to
you, Admiral--from disguising these bonuses in forms of
payments, be it relocation or any other method where it is
really just a disguise for bonuses?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes. I've expressly prohibited it, and I
made that very clear in policy. I'm happy to provide that
policy for the committee's record. And I require oversight from
the Department before any bonus can be awarded to a senior
executive.
Mr. Hice. I would like to have that ----
Mr. Neffenger. Yes.
Mr. Hice.--policy submitted.
Mr. Hice. So your testimony here is that there is no
disguise taking place?
Mr. Neffenger. Not under my leadership. And I've made clear
that we put that directly into policy, and I made sure that
even--that no single individual can approve a bonus award for a
senior executive without oversight, and it has to be approved
by the Department. Even I don't--I've not even given myself the
authority to make the final approval. It goes through the
Department for oversight.
Mr. Hice. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
I will now recognize the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Clay,
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank both of you
for being here.
You know, we all agree that security must be the top
priority, and there is no disagreement about that.
Mr. Roth, when you testified here in November, you were
critical of certain programs that granted passengers access to
expedited screening lanes when they had not undergone risk
assessments. You also commended Administrator Neffenger. You
said he ``deactivated certain risk assessment rules that
granted expedited screening through pre-check lanes.'' Is that
correct?
Mr. Roth. Yes, sir.
Mr. Clay. Okay. On March 24 the Bureau of Transportation
Statistics issued a report that said ``U.S. airline and foreign
airlines serving the U.S. carried an all-time high of 895.5
million system-wide.'' So, Administrator Neffenger, passenger
volumes have been increasing, but the number of screeners in
the TSA workforce has dropped by nearly 6,000 over the past 4
years. Is that right?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir.
Mr. Clay. And why did this occur?
Mr. Neffenger. I'm sure there were good reasons for people
before me to reduce that. I think it was predicated on a
prediction of higher numbers of people getting into expedited
screening than we've seen. It's just a fact that we're smaller
agency on the frontline workforce than we were before and that
we had significantly more people moving through the system.
Mr. Clay. And, you know, I heard my friend Mr. Gowdy from
South Carolina talk about he doesn't encounter much trouble. I
travel through St. Louis Lambert Field weekly. It seems to have
a shortage of employees, especially for the pre-check line.
Probably 90 percent of the time that line is closed, and each
time, staff gives me the excuse that they don't have enough
personnel, enough security officers to check people. So it is
very frustrating to my constituents who have paid the extra fee
for pre-check. Is there a shortage of staff for airports like
Lambert?
Mr. Neffenger. We--I think we have a shortage of staff
across the system right now. We're moving people into the areas
of greatest volume and greatest need. We are hiring back the
people that have been slated to be attrited out this year, and
we've--we're pushing about 200 new officers every week.
So what I'm hoping to do is build back a sufficient staff
to meet the peak staffing that we need. We currently cannot
staff effectively across the system to the peak volume periods.
Mr. Clay. So in your opinion was TSA screener workforce
sized appropriately to handle increasing passenger volumes?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I think the budgets were predicated on
what was predicted to be 2 percent volume growth. I think we
use the Bureau of Transportation Statistics predictions, and
you remember, these budgets were built a couple of years ago.
The actual volume growth has been significantly higher than
that, so in my opinion, we're not at the right size.
That said, I appreciate all the great comments about our
workforce because we have a really dedicated workforce, and
they're doing a very challenging job out there and doing it
quite well. I'd like to get them some more help.
Mr. Clay. Well, okay. Then perhaps you can help me. I
annually give a career fair in St. Louis. It is the largest one
held. I would love to involve your local staff and coming out
in looking at potential candidates, and I will follow up with
you on that.
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir. Thank you.
Mr. Clay. On May 4 Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson
issued a statement responding to increased waiting times, and
he said this: ``TSA is increasing the staffing of TSOs to help
expedite the checkpoint process without sacrificing security.''
Mr. Neffenger, what is the size of the screener workforce TSA
needs to handle projected passenger volumes while ensuring that
only passengers who are subjected to risk assessments are sent
through expedited screening procedures?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, Congress just approved a reprogramming
request, which will allow me to hire another 768 screeners--
screening officers this summer, and we'll get them out in the
workforce, we hope, by the middle of June. That will
significantly help us.
We've also been working with the airlines and the airports,
and they are taking on some of the non-security-related duties,
which helps free up more of my officers to go on--directly on
to the screening checkpoints. I think with the combination of
those two and the use of our passenger screening K-9s should
significantly alleviate some of the challenges that we're going
to be facing over the summer.
Mr. Clay. Thank you both for your responses.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
I will now recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr.
Carter, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Admiral
and Mr. Roth, for being here. I appreciate it very much.
Admiral, let me ask you. Would you agree that having expert
and standardized training for TSA screeners like we have at
FLETC, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glencoe,
Georgia, that that is very important to make sure that we have
personnel that is fully prepared to keep our airports safe?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir, absolutely.
Mr. Carter. I bring that up because the Federal Law
Enforcement Training Center in Glencoe, I know you have been
there ----
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir.
Mr. Carter.--and of course it is in my district. And I am
very proud of that. I look at that as being one of the areas
that we are getting right in the Federal Government. I mean, to
go down there--and I want to invite my colleagues here on this
committee particularly to visit because--and we will try to
schedule a trip down there for everyone to see just what an
outstanding job they are doing down there in the way of
training.
And I mention that because I want to make sure that we are
not confusing these well-trained employees with the problem
that we are having that I consider to be more in performance
and more in management in particular. When you talk about
having a shortage of employees, that is not because they are
not well-trained. That is a management problem.
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir.
Mr. Carter. When you talk about employees not showing up on
a holiday and having a shortage during the busiest travel time,
that is a management problem. So I just want to make sure that
we understand that there is a difference here, that they are
being trained well.
FLETC is a great facility. It is used by over 94 different
agencies. So training is not the problem. The problem here is a
management problem and a performance problem.
Mr. Neffenger. Well, thank you for that. And thank you for
recognizing that our frontline workforce--I believe it to be
one of the best in the world. I really do. I've seen their
dedication. I've talked to them. I've been down to FLETC
multiple times now. I meet with as many of the classes as I can
when I go down there, and that is a world-class institution,
which is why I was really excited about the opportunity to
stand up a full-time academy down there. And Connie Patrick,
who runs that outfit, is one of the best in the world.
Mr. Carter. Absolutely.
Mr. Neffenger. And we're looking forward to continuing to
develop that. My goal is ultimately to train every single
employee of TSA through that academy.
Mr. Carter. Good.
Mr. Neffenger. That's the plan in the future, and we've got
a pretty aggressive plan, a pretty ambitious plan, but I'm
getting a lot of support from Congress on that, and I really
appreciate that.
Mr. Carter. Well, I just want to make sure we differentiate
between the training portion of it and the management ----
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir, that's exactly right.
Mr. Carter.--once they get there because we obviously, as
you can tell, a lot of upset people here today, and obviously,
we have a management problem at TSA, and we are depending on
you to get that straightened out.
Mr. Neffenger. And that's what I've been tackling, yes,
sir.
Mr. Carter. Okay. Well, let me pivot for just a second and
talk about something else, a different subject. A couple of
weeks ago we had some employees of TSA here who had testified
before us, and you are familiar with that, and they talked
about the involuntary directed reassignments. Some of these
that we had to testify before us had gotten excellent marks and
in fact had gotten awards in being recognized for their
outstanding performance, their job performance. And yet, they
were reassigned against their will.
And the thing that concerns me is not just, you know, the
upheaval of having to move somewhere else for these people.
Obviously, that is a very trying time for families and for
employees, but the cost in it. What we were told is that their
relocation costs were well over $100,000. Is this really
happening?
Mr. Neffenger. I believe it did happen. I share the same
concerns you do. I stopped that policy completely. We don't do
directed reassignment.
Now, that said, I think it's important for an operating
agency to have the ability to move people periodically. You
have to do that. I mean, it's a security agency ----
Mr. Carter. And I think they understand it, but ----
Mr. Neffenger. And ----
Mr. Carter.--what their concern was ----
Mr. Neffenger. And it needs to be ----
Mr. Carter.--is they were being disciplined as a result.
Mr. Neffenger. No, and that's what my concern was, too, so
I've put some very strong controls over that process. I'll
share with you the nature of those controls so that we don't
take up too much committee time, but I will tell you that I'm
as concerned as you are about that. I--those reports greatly
distressed me. I stopped that process. It's not going to happen
again.
Mr. Carter. Good. So we can take your word that it is over
with?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir. You can absolutely take my word on
that.
Mr. Carter. Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And
again, thank you for your dedication to FLETC because--and
again, Mr. Chairman, I am going to try to get that together,
but I want everyone to understand what a great facility this
is. This is an example of the Federal Government working.
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, and I yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
I will now recognize the gentleman from Michigan, Mrs.
Lawrence, for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to examine the hiring and the role of human
resources at TSA in more detail. In 2008 during the Bush
administration, TSA awarded a $1.2 billion human capital
service contract to Lockheed Martin. Under this contract, known
as HRAccess, Lockheed administered the agency's process for
recruiting and hiring and is also responsible for personnel and
payroll processing services such as position classification.
Administrator, is that correct?
Mr. Neffenger. That was the case, yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Lawrence. So many of the improper personnel practices
that the whistleblowers alleged at the last hearing, including
improper hiring and directed reassignments, would have occurred
while Lockheed was providing these services to TSA. Is that
correct?
Mr. Neffenger. It was during the same time period, yes,
ma'am.
Mrs. Lawrence. Okay. On January 29 the inspector general
issued a report about the TSA's contract with Lockheed Martin.
The report states that among other performance deficiencies
there were incidents in which Lockheed Martin failed to handle
personally identifiable information properly. Is that correct,
Mr. Roth?
Mr. Roth. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Lawrence. The report also found that Lockheed Martin
``failed to consistently refer to eligible veterans on job
announcements. Ultimately, the report stated that the Lockheed
Martin hiring team ``reported a total of more than 150 veterans
who were not referred on six different job announcements.'' Mr.
Roth, is that correct?
Mr. Roth. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Lawrence. So if Lockheed Martin failed to follow our
Federal regulations in regards to the competitive service
hires, particularly veterans, preference, this is a simply
intolerable. So Administrator, are you familiar with the
inspector general's report?
Mr. Neffenger. I am, yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Lawrence. Okay. So when does the TSA's contract with
Lockheed Martin end?
Mr. Neffenger. It's coming to an end this year, and we are
completely restructuring our approach to that. I would like TSA
to own more of its hiring, recruitment, and personnel policies,
and so we're restructuring that completely. It's part of the
plan to completely overhaul the human resource management
program of the agency.
Mrs. Lawrence. In lieu of the contract ending with Lockheed
Martin, is this going to be put out to bid again? And when you
say ``assume,'' do you have the capacity and the resources as
far as budget to be able to take on more of these
responsibilities in hiring?
Mr. Neffenger. We don't have all the capacity we need, and
what I'd like to do is if I can get back to you with a fuller
answer for the record, we can show you what the plan is, what
the strategy is for moving forward beyond the HRAccess
contract.
Mrs. Lawrence. Well, I want to be on the record that the
issues that were brought forward in the hiring process, and we
being a Federal agency, is totally unacceptable. The fact that
we are ending a relationship with an industry or company that
did not meet our benchmarks is refreshing, but I don't want to
hear that we are taking on the responsibilities ourselves and
them come back later with concerns because you weren't able to
handle the capacity.
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, ma'am, I share those same concerns. And
we have to do this in a very deliberate way, in a way that
protects our workforce as it currently exists and in our
potential workforce for the future.
Mrs. Lawrence. Mr. Roth, did you make any recommendations
based on your findings on what TSA could do to improve their
hiring practices?
Mr. Roth. Yes, ma'am, we did. We made five different
recommendations. TSA agreed with each of those recommendations,
and we're in the process of doing an audit follow-up to ensure
that in fact TSA is doing what they said that they would do.
Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you. And I look forward to moving
forward under your leadership and protecting a group of
employees in our Federal Government, as so many others are, but
that TSA, being a Member of Congress and in the airport
constantly, the respect I have for that agency, the need for
good foreign leadership and accountability that we saw through
this situation, we need to move forward, and I support you in
the future. Thank you.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentlewoman.
I will now recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr.
Meadows, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Inspector General Roth, I want to go on record to not only
thank you but your entire team for your service. I have great
admiration for your role and the roles of your colleagues
across the Federal workforce.
But I have a top-five list, and I would say you and your
team are in my top-five list for not only doing insightful work
but thorough work, actionable work, and follow-up work that
provides a real tool for Members of Congress. And so I want to
make sure that the record reflects that.
Mr. Roth. Thank you.
Mr. Meadows. Administrator Neffenger, are you familiar with
Federal Air Marshal Robert MacLean?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir, I am.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. Are you familiar with the fact that the
courts have overturned TSA's assertions that his whistleblower
disclosures were not prohibited by law?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir, I am.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. Are you aware of the fact that it has
been over a year since an administrative judge has indicated
that those disclosures should indeed be protected?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. So if you are aware of all of those, and
in light of the fact that Mr. Cummings asked do you tolerate
retaliation, in what scheme could you not see the fact that he
has been reinstated but yet no raises, he still continues to be
paid at a position--and not put in a position that he would
have been in had he not been fired? At what point can you
justify that that is not retaliation?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I don't believe I did. I believe he
was reinstated as required by the decision ----
Mr. Meadows. At a pay that he was that in 2005. Do you know
any other TSA employee that is at a pay that he was at in 2005?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I'll double-check the pay ----
Mr. Meadows. No, you don't have to double-check. I know.
Mr. Neffenger. But I'm--off the top of my head, I can't
give you the exact pay of any--of TSA employees.
Mr. Meadows. Do most TSA employees get a raise?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, you get the annual cost-of-living
increases that are authorized by ----
Mr. Meadows. So would you say that if he didn't, would that
be retaliation?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I'll check to see. I'm--I would be
surprised ----
Mr. Meadows. Well, no ----
Mr. Neffenger.--if he didn't get ----
Mr. Meadows. Yes or no? If he is getting paid the same that
he got paid in 2005, is it retaliation?
Mr. Neffenger. I don't--I'd have to see the facts of the
case. I wouldn't necessarily call it ----
Mr. Meadows. Well, I am giving you the facts of the case.
Is it retaliation or not?
Mr. Neffenger. Depending on ----
Mr. Meadows. Because let me tell you, what really bothers
me is I protect my whistleblowers, and for you to get up here
and talk about how wonderful the rank-and-file is and how you
are looking out for their best interest and to see evidence
that retaliation continues to go, it has a chilling effect,
wouldn't you think?
Mr. Neffenger. If in fact there is retaliation, I will look
into ----
Mr. Meadows. Well, why is the ----
Mr. Neffenger.--the situation with that.
Mr. Meadows.--Office of Special Counsel having to open a
full investigation?
Mr. Neffenger. On Mr. MacLean?
Mr. Meadows. Yes. Why are they having to do a full
investigation?
Mr. Neffenger. Are you talking about the one that was
already done ----
Mr. Meadows. I am talking about the one they are about to
embark on.
Mr. Neffenger. Well, if they're opening one again, it's
because he's made an allegation that there's been retaliation.
I support his due process to investigate that. I am not
familiar with the specifics of this current situation ----
Mr. Meadows. Well, don't you think you ought to be?
Mr. Neffenger. I'm familiar with the fact that we've
reinstated him and that he now is in position to compete for
whatever position he desires to compete for ----
Mr. Meadows. You know ----
Mr. Neffenger.--in the organization.
Mr. Meadows. You know, Administrator, let me just tell you,
that testimony is very troubling to me because what I am not
going to tolerate is retaliation on whistleblowers, and that is
what it looks like to me.
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I don't tolerate it either, and I
promise you I will--following this ----
Mr. Meadows. So can you get back to this committee within
30 days with the way that you are going to rectify it so the
Office of Special Counsel doesn't have to do a full
investigation?
Mr. Neffenger. I will follow up on this colloquy to
determine what the actual situation currently is.
Mr. Meadows. So do I have your commitment ----
Mr. Neffenger. I have your commitment ----
Mr. Meadows.--that ----
Mr. Neffenger.--that I will get back to you with what I
have found ----
Mr. Meadows. An action plan.
Mr. Neffenger.--involving that ----
Mr. Meadows. An action plan.
Mr. Neffenger.--and if necessary, an action plan, yes, sir.
Mr. Meadows. Within 30 days to the chairman?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I will get back to you exactly with
what I find. I'm interested in ----
Mr. Meadows. Well, that is not an answer.
Mr. Neffenger.--what you've just told me.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. What is a reasonable amount of time
there, Administrator?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I can do it within 30 days. As I said,
what I want to do is look at--this is new information that
you're providing to me that I'm not aware of. I need to look at
this ----
Mr. Meadows. Yes, you have done your research. This would
not have been a shock that this might have come up today. Is
that a shock to you?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I'm aware of the previous issue
concerning ----
Mr. Meadows. All right.
Mr. Neffenger.--this Federal air marshal.
Mr. Meadows. Let me dispense with the rhetoric. Get it
fixed where we don't have to waste taxpayer dollars on a
special investigation into this. You are the guy in charge. We
are going to hold you accountable.
And I will yield back. I will expect a response to the
committee in 30 days.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
I will now recognize the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr.
Russell, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Russell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I share my colleague's concerns obviously about
whistleblowers. I think while everyone who has the mantle of
responsibility certainly wants to do right with their
organization, when we do see individuals that have the courage
to come forth, they have to be protected. I think that is the
bipartisan motivation of everyone on our committee today.
I want to take questions more on the security end and take
it in a little bit different direction, however. Inspector
General Roth, I, too, share my colleague's, you know, opinion
of the confidence of your office and your personal diligence.
The record has just been outstanding. But my question today
deals with Vapor Wake dog teams in terms of security. And you
will see why here in a moment. Did the IG in the reports make
any recommendations on Vapor Wake dog teams and how they should
be deployed or how they should be used at different airports?
Mr. Roth. We have not looked at that issue. My
understanding is that GAO may have done some work on that, but
we have not.
Mr. Russell. Okay. I appreciate that.
And, Admiral Neffenger, as a preface, first off, I take
some comfort knowing that you are at the helm of this
organization. I don't think anyone who is advanced to your
level as an admiral in our Coast Guard who has protected our
shorelines and protected our borders has anything other than
the interest of the defense of our country, and I appreciate
that. I also think that it probably gives you incredible
insight in dealing with a myriad of problems in a very complex
and at times lethargic organization.
In Oklahoma City in my district the Vapor Wake dog team
issue came to mind because acting Federal security director
Steve Cartwright had cited that it was the IG's report as the
reasons for the elimination of Vapor Wake dog teams from
airports such as Will Rogers World Airport, and it was due to
the need for performance and screening and getting people
through, and therefore, these airports would have to lose their
dog teams.
And in the case--although we had Will Rogers that was one
of the charter five original airports in the training of these
teams, they train for such teams very effectively, allowed
great throughput, the entire program was eliminated from that
airport, and I suspect it is probably not the only one.
And so my question to you is why would a Federal security
director make the claim that it was the IG and their findings
that would call for the elimination of that program, and why
would we not want these teams at airports that might have less
capacity other than a huge airport, but they also might have
greater vulnerability for infiltration? It seems to me that
security-wise it makes good sense. And I realize that this was
not part of the normal stuff, but it is very important for
security.
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I'm not sure what the Federal security
director's discussion was. Let me tell you from my perspective
what we've done.
Mr. Russell. Sure.
Mr. Neffenger. We are--I like the--we call them passenger
screening K-9s, Vapor Wake dogs. These are dogs that work the
passenger line, and they look for trace odors and they follow
them back to their source. It's a tremendous resource. It's a
great explosive detection technology that we have, and it can
move people very efficiently through a security line.
I don't have as many of those dogs as I'd like to have, and
so to meet--so this is my decision, so I'm the guy you need to
look at for this. It was my decision to take dogs from some
airports that aren't seeing as much volume as some of the
largest airports on--for the coming summer in order to meet
what we know to be the real passenger volumes that we're going
to see in these large airports. It was never my intention to
eliminate their use.
We're also--so right now, we have about 322 total dogs that
TSA operates. Most of those were trained to do cargo sniffing,
not passenger screening. We're in the process of converting as
many of those as we can to passenger screening K-9s. It takes
about a month or so to do that.
Mr. Russell. And I appreciate ----
Mr. Neffenger. And we're continuing to do that.
Mr. Russell. I would just ask--and again, security has been
much of my life and a lot of my interest here in Congress. I
would ask that we would consider--I mean, if I were an enemy, I
would infiltrate in small or regional airports simply because
there is a better chance of infiltration than in a large one.
In deploying all the assets, once you get in the loop, you are
inside the loop no matter where you originated or flew from.
And so I would ask that you relook some of this
specifically in a vulnerability stance, not necessarily a
regional or political stance. That is irrelevant in my view
when it comes to security of the Nation. But we ought to
relook, rather than putting everything where we expect to have
a problem and maybe leave areas vulnerable where we don't.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back my time.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. I now recognize the gentleman
from Alabama, Mr. Palmer.
Mr. Palmer. Well, I am the guy you have been waiting on,
the last one.
Mr. Neffenger, how many different assistant administrators
have led the Office of Intelligence and Analysis since TSA was
created?
Mr. Neffenger. I don't have that exact number. I'll get
that for you.
Mr. Palmer. It is 11. And I ask that because it concerns me
that that office would suffer from that rate of turnover. Would
you agree with that?
Mr. Neffenger. Turnover in offices is always challenging.
Mr. Palmer. Well, particularly, the office that is
responsible for your intelligence and analysis. Have you looked
into that?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir. In fact, I've brought in a new
chief of intelligence this year, and, I mean, he's an
intelligence professional, and one of the things I asked him to
do was to ensure that we built a world-class, high-quality
intelligence operation. And he's in the process of doing that.
Mr. Palmer. And that is Mr. Bush?
Mr. Neffenger. That's Mr. Bush, Tom Bush, yes, sir.
Mr. Palmer. Are you aware of any significant security
violations committed by OIA officials?
Mr. Neffenger. I'm not sure if you're referencing anything
in particular. I am ----
Mr. Palmer. I am asking if you are aware of any security
violations committed by OIA officials.
Mr. Neffenger. I know that prior to my arrival there was an
individual who was in charge of OIA who had been disciplined by
the agency.
Mr. Palmer. So that answer would be yes?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes.
Mr. Palmer. Do you believe OIA should abide by the
professional standards of the intelligence community in
handling classified information?
Mr. Neffenger. That ----
Mr. Palmer. Wasn't that what the issue was?
Mr. Neffenger. It was ----
Mr. Palmer. Classified information?
Mr. Neffenger. My understanding, that was not the issue
that that was about, no, sir.
Mr. Palmer. Well, then what were the circumstances related
to the departure of the former assistant administrator Stephen
Sadler?
Mr. Neffenger. Oh, I was--with Stephen Sadler--I need to
familiarize myself with that case. I'm sorry, sir.
Mr. Palmer. Well, there were multiple security violations
that took place under his leadership.
What percentage of TSA's intelligence and appropriation is
used for vetting, and what percentage is used for traditional
intelligence?
Mr. Neffenger. I'll get you the exact number for the
record, but we--a significant amount of our activity is spent
on vetting, understanding the vetted population, but we also
have a strong analysis branch that works very closely with the
intelligence community members to provide specific intelligence
assessments of transportation security challenges and risks.
Mr. Palmer. Well, one of the--I am going to transition a
little bit here. One of the things that I am concerned about is
in our last hearing there were repeated reports that there are
only three U.S. airports that currently require employee
security checks. Are you aware of that?
Mr. Neffenger. That's actually not correct. Well, it
depends on what you mean by security checks. We vet anyone who
holds a credential ----
Mr. Palmer. I am not talking about that.
Mr. Neffenger.--that gives them access.
Mr. Palmer. I am talking about requiring them to go through
the same kind of security that, say, a staff member ----
Mr. Neffenger. So this would be screening of individuals as
they ----
Mr. Palmer. As they are coming into the property ----
Mr. Neffenger.--enter the property?
Mr. Palmer.--they are reporting for work, yes. I should
have been more clear.
Mr. Neffenger. Okay.
Mr. Palmer. I apologize.
Mr. Neffenger. There are currently, I think, three or four
airports that do--that the airport themselves do a security
screening. There are other places where employers provide
security screening. But we are at varying levels across the
system right now for direct screening. Everyone has access
requirements, and that's a fundamental requirement. And those
access requirements are with their badge, and those badges give
you access to certain locations. And then there are some
airports that have gone beyond that to do actual screening. We
in TSA do random screenings throughout the sterile area of the
airports as well.
Mr. Palmer. Well, but that gets back to my concern. Every
member of my staff, every member of--any Member of Congress's
staff has to go through screening process. Their bags are
screened. They have to take metal objects out of their pockets.
They all have badges, okay? And that is part of my concern is
that out of the thousands of people who work for TSA, does it
not create any concern? I mean, it was reported that there were
a number of TSA employees who had some tie to terrorist groups,
and it just seems to me that they ought to go through the same
screening process that ----
Mr. Neffenger. Well, we've had no TSA employees that have
ties to terrorist groups. We vet our people daily, and if we
ever found that ----
Mr. Palmer. I am not ----
Mr. Neffenger.--they'd be gone.
Mr. Palmer. Well, I am just telling you that in our last
hearing ----
Mr. Neffenger. We ----
Mr. Palmer.--that came up, that it was reported that there
were some who had some connection to terrorist--or potentially
had terrorist ties. And I am bringing this up in the context of
out of the thousands of people who work for TSA, all of whom
have security badges, it just makes sense before they enter
these critical areas that they go through a screening process
like everybody else. Their bag goes through a machine, they go
through the machine like everybody else.
Mr. Neffenger. Congressman, I want to make sure I
understand what we are saying. First of all, there's--there are
the people who are not TSA employees who have access badges to
airports, and they are--and we vet those people continuously
against--there's a population of about 900,000 or so in the
aviation system that have access badges of some type. And it's
varying types of access and they're not all accessing the same
locations.
Those people are continuously vetted against the terrorist
screening database. They're now continuously vetted against
extended database elements, the so-called TIDE database. And
they're also recurrently vetted against the criminal database.
We are piloting a continuous vetting pilot with the FBI.
Mr. Palmer. We are not talking about the same thing.
Mr. Neffenger. And then TSA employees are also vetted
against those--our own employees.
Mr. Palmer. We are not talking about the same thing. I
mean, it is also been reported that there are thousands of the
badges that have been lost or stolen, let me say, that haven't
been accounted for. My question is when they report for work,
do they have to put their bag on a conveyor to go through a
machine to see what is in the bag? And do they go through ----
Mr. Neffenger. In some locations they do, and in some
locations they do not.
Mr. Palmer. Well, then my contention is is that it ought to
be all locations.
I yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. I haven't asked questions yet, so I
would like to recognize myself now for probably more than 5
minutes.
So let's talk about the involuntary reassignments or the
directed reassignments. You have spoken about that. You said
there is or is not evidence that that was done as a retaliatory
action?
Mr. Neffenger. I do not have any direct evidence. What I'm
waiting for is to see what the results of the Office of Special
Counsel investigation tells me with respect to a couple of the
people who have made such allegations.
Chairman Chaffetz. Well, the Office of Special Counsel has
already stated Andrew Rhoades' directed reassignment, as well
as Becky Roering's suspension, due to evidence that there were
cases of improper whistleblower retaliation. Are you telling me
that they haven't given you the final report? Is that what you
are waiting for or ----
Mr. Neffenger. I am waiting for--as Mr. Rhoades has an
outstanding investigation, which is still pending. In the
meantime, I was pleased to see that, prior to my arrival, that
that had been stayed and he is still located in the ----
Chairman Chaffetz. What about Becky Roering's?
Mr. Neffenger. Same with hers. I understand that hers is
still undergoing review as well.
Chairman Chaffetz. And you have no other evidence of any
other ----
Mr. Neffenger. I myself do not have any ----
Chairman Chaffetz.--retaliation? Do you have any other
evidence of any other types of retaliation above and beyond the
directed reassignment tool that they had used?
Mr. Neffenger. I don't have personally any knowledge of any
other retaliation. If I see it, I will take action to address
it.
Chairman Chaffetz. Mr. Roth, do you have anything to shed
on this?
Mr. Roth. I do not. I don't have any evidence that I could
share at least today.
Chairman Chaffetz. Okay. Administrator, we have
particularly over the last 6 months--I have got kind of one
page--a two-sided page here of outstanding requests that we
have from this committee. We will give you a copy of this. I
don't expect you on the spot to respond to it, but there are
some that have had no--I see you have a copy there. Again, I
don't you on the spot, but we need help getting these responses
in a timely manner. Some have been good, but others have been
not so good. Some we have had nothing on. We get very
frustrated with having to do in camera reviews. We handle
classified intelligence on a regular basis. I just need your
support in responding to these outstanding requests.
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir, I will.
Chairman Chaffetz. I want to go back to what Mr. Palmer was
talking about. You said you vet daily. When somebody--I want to
get a crystal-clear picture. When somebody applies and goes
through the process of working for the TSA, they get what sort
of background check?
Mr. Neffenger. It's a standard national agency check. It's
the same type of check you do for people coming into the
military first time. You do a criminal history background
check, you check their name against the terrorist screen
database, you look for any disqualifying activities, offenses,
or the like in their background prior to coming on board.
Chairman Chaffetz. And there are some infractions that
would still be acceptable to be hired as a TSA ----
Mr. Neffenger. There are. I can't enumerate those off the
top of my head, but there are some ----
Chairman Chaffetz. If you can provide that, whatever the
current standard is.
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir, I will.
Chairman Chaffetz. And then you said you vet those daily,
but how do you--if somebody were to get arrested, somebody had
an assault charge or a murder charge or, you know, pick
something heinous, how would you know that once they have been
hired?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, once--oh, you mean after they've been
hired?
Chairman Chaffetz. Yes, after they have been hired.
Mr. Neffenger. Well, we do recurrent criminal history ----
Chairman Chaffetz. How often?
Mr. Neffenger.--background checks. I believe it's on a--I
believe it's an annual basis. I'll verify that. And then we do
daily recurrent--I mean, it's just a continuous test, check
against the terrorist screening database for our employees.
Chairman Chaffetz. Four hundred and fifty or so airports, I
am not sure how many ports you are dealing with. How many of
these--you mentioned 900,000 security badges of all sorts.
Mr. Neffenger. In the aviation system.
Chairman Chaffetz. In the aviation system. So how many of
those are--do you have a sense of how many of those have
biometric information, whether it would even be as simple as a
photograph on them?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, they all have photographs. As you
know, those are issued--these are the badges that airports and
airlines issue their individuals, and it's set individually at
each airport. So a badge that you have for Atlanta Hartsfield
will not work in any other airport. So these are issued by
employers and the airport. It's--usually the standard is set
according to--there's a Federal security standard that they
have to meet in order for the badge--so they all have to have
photographic IDs and they all have to have a biometric
identifier associated with them, but not all of those biometric
identifiers are necessarily in use for access purposes at every
airport.
Chairman Chaffetz. When you say biometric, do--one of the
issues in the past is they didn't have readers. They didn't
have electronic readers for each of these ----
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I don't want to confuse this with the
TWIC card, the Transportation Workers Identification
Credential. It's not a credential that's used in the aviation
system. The Transportation Worker's Identification Credential
is not a credential that's used in the aviation system. That's
the one that is primarily used in the maritime transportation
system and people who are interacting with that.
That one does not currently have a--readers for it. So that
biometric in the maritime world is not currently in use, so
it's still a--I mean, it's a badge that--or card that's issued
with a background check. It has a biometric on it but not all
the readers are out there. But in the aviation system--so
that's a government-issued card. It's a joint program between
the Coast Guard and TSA. It does not apply to aviation workers.
The--that's a--there's a much larger population of people who
hold that TWIC card.
Chairman Chaffetz. So you shouldn't be able to use it in an
airport?
Mr. Neffenger. You ----
Chairman Chaffetz. You use it in the maritime ----
Mr. Neffenger. You cannot use it in an airport.
Chairman Chaffetz. Shipping, cruise lines, things like that
----
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir.
Chairman Chaffetz.--is that what you are talking about?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes. Truckers that interact with the ports
and the like.
Chairman Chaffetz. Okay. That is one of my bigger concerns
is the access that so many people have. I mean, Dulles airport
alone my understanding is there is some 16,000 security badges
out there.
To Mr. Palmer's point, what he was talking about is, you
know, why not check people who go--why not check TSA employees
as they go in and out? And you check a pilot. I stand there
and, you know, they go to the front of the line, as they
should. Pilots are checked. My goodness, if we are trusting
somebody, it is trusting the pilot. Why not check each person?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, we do check out--each person. They do
recurrent drug testing, they do--we vet them against the
databases, we watch them every day. Remember, these are people
who are standing in the security checkpoint day in and day out
and we pay close attention to ----
Chairman Chaffetz. Yes, but if they pop some--pick whatever
you want--in a backpack and they just walk past, you would
never know, correct?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, that's not necessarily true. We do a
lot of integrity testing. In fact, we have a pretty good
integrity testing program, I think, and we--if we find people
doing wrong ----
Chairman Chaffetz. No ----
Mr. Neffenger.--we get rid of them.
Chairman Chaffetz.--you are checking and screening every
person that goes through except the TSA people.
Mr. Neffenger. Well, they're--I mean, they're checked by
definition when they show up in the morning. They are vetted
every single day. Like I said, we look at them every single
day. They're probably some of the most watched people in the
transportation system because they're under the watchful eyes
of supervisors, they're under the watchful eyes of the other
screening workforce. So I believe that we're doing a very good
job of keeping track of those folks. These are really good
people, and they've taken ----
Chairman Chaffetz. By and large, I am sure they are really
good people, but, again, when you have a zero tolerance for--
you have to keep security at its highest level. I just don't
understand that. We check a pilot, we check the flight
attendants, but we don't check the TSA folks going. And you
have had arrests. I mean, there have been problems.
Mr. Neffenger. We have had arrests.
Chairman Chaffetz. It is not as if it has never happened
before. Your ability to move drugs or weapons or anything else
across that line--Mr. Roth, do you have any insight into this?
Mr. Roth. I don't, no, Congressman.
Chairman Chaffetz. I want to move to dogs if I could. I am
a huge fan of dogs. The person I want to sit next to on the
airplane is the person who has had their luggage screened, has
had their handheld information screened, they walked through a
metal detector, and they have walked by a bomb-sniffing dog.
I have never seen some of the technology that is used at
the airport. I have never seen it at the White House. I don't
see it in Afghanistan where they are dealing with improvised
explosive devices on a daily basis. I don't see it in a lot of
other places. Europe has banned some of this technology, and
yet we still use it here in the United States.
And I appreciate your comments about the dogs, but the
single best way to secure an airport from an improvised
explosive device is a dog. Would you disagree with that or
agree with that?
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, I think it's a hugely important piece
of the security environment. I like dogs, too. I'm a big fan of
them. In fact, I've been advocating for more K-9s in the
screening--in the aviation security environment.
Chairman Chaffetz. We need more of them, and I hope the
appropriations follow appropriately.
I want to compliment TSA also on its Instagram presence.
You want to see an entertaining Instagram, go ahead and go to
the TSA one. I will put in a plug for it. You have got some, I
think, 400 plus thousand people that are looking at it. But it
is also kind of scary because almost on a daily basis, I mean,
the one I looked at just now there was a live smoke grenade
that somebody tried to bring onto an airport. At BWI there was
a picture of a gun that they had taken off a person.
The rise of people bringing or attempting to bring guns on
an airplane is astronomical. I mean, the statistics on this are
quite high. My question--and maybe you can shed light on what
that is happening--but I don't see that there is any
consequence. I don't hear anybody is getting prosecuted. We
have a $10,000 fine, you can go to jail, but find me a person
in this country that has violated that. And if you don't know,
if you don't understand at this point in time that you can't
bring a gun on the airplane, where in the world have you been
living?
And a lot of people I know will come to the TSA and say,
oh, well, I forgot I had my gun in my backpack, gosh darn it.
Well, go put it back in your car. I mean, I believe in the
Second Amendment. I am as pro-gun as you get. But if you are an
idiot and you don't know you have got a gun on you and it is
loaded and you are trying to bring it on an airplane, why
aren't some of these people going to jail every once in a
while?
Mr. Neffenger. Mr. Chairman, I am a shocked as you are by
people who bring guns to the airport. And you're right, we saw
many, many more last year than we saw the year before. TSA is
not a law enforcement agency so I don't have the authority to
take action against individuals. The protocol is that when we
see a gun, it gets held inside the x-ray machine. We call local
law enforcement, and then it's up to local law enforcement and
the laws of whatever jurisdiction that they cover to take
action against that.
We can take action against an individual. We can strip them
of their pre-check eligibility if they come through a pre-check
line, but it's--we have to turn them over to local law
enforcement and then it--and is whatever the law is it ----
Chairman Chaffetz. Well, what would the call be--what would
you like local law enforcement to do?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, again, it--you--we know that we have
laws in this land where people are allowed to conceal carry,
where they are allowed to open carry, and in many States the
local law enforcement says take that back out to your car and
then come back in. Sometimes they get arrested. If you're in
New York State, you'll get arrested. If you're someplace else,
you might not get arrested.
I would--you know, I just don't want that stuff coming
through the checkpoint. I mean, it's astonishing what people
try to bring through checkpoints these days.
Chairman Chaffetz. Okay. So live smoke grenade, trying to
bring it on an airplane, what should happen? Are you
encouraging--I guess I am trying to ----
Mr. Neffenger. Well, we are working very hard. We encourage
local law enforcement to take as strong of action as they can.
I think if somebody brings a live smoke grenade onto a plane,
they shouldn't be allowed to fly anymore, but I don't have the
authority to make that decision.
Chairman Chaffetz. All right. I have far exceeded my time.
Let's recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman,
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Grothman. Thank you.
In the past, the committee heard numerous accounts of line
staff being punished for minor infractions while high-level
managers went unpunished for significant abuses. Is there a
double standard if a TSO employee can be fired for picking up a
pen during integrity tests but senior officials who retaliate
against their subordinates or engaged in serious misconduct
such as lying to the police about a DUI are allowed to keep
their job?
Mr. Neffenger. I think that there needs to be--we're doing
this. I think there needs to be work done on the way in which
we do discipline and performance management across the board.
I--the law--as you know, the Aviation and Transportation
Security Act set up somewhat of a bifurcated system, and it
needs to be consolidated, it needs to be coordinated.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. Next, this is more of a comment, and I
want you to respond because I think Congresswoman Maloney said
something I don't agree with. I obviously on this job fly a
couple times a week. I have never seen a situation in which the
pre-check line is longer than the regular line, and I think I
can probably speak on behalf of most people. I wish you would
put more people in the pre-check line because we would get
things through quicker. And I do hear people complain, and I
realize you have got a difficult job, but they wish they could
go through the lines faster. So I don't know, you know, who she
talks to, but just so you know there is another side to the
story.
And I have got another question for you. TSA spent $47,000
on an app to randomly assign people to go right or left that
anybody with basic knowledge of codes could do. Do you feel
that app is worth what TSA paid for it?
Mr. Neffenger. I think that was an excessive amount of
money to pay for that. We don't use that app. That was done, as
you know, back in 2013. And we're not using that.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. Mark Livingston, the former deputy
assistant administrator, testified that a watch floor
transformation that was supposed to cost $3-3.5 million cost
approximately $12 million because it was performed improperly.
Do you want to comment on that? Are you familiar with that?
Mr. Neffenger. And I'm not sure which watch floor
transformation he's referring to, but what I've done is we've
done a complete review of our entire acquisition process, and
from my perspective, there are lots of opportunities to save
taxpayer money in our current processes.
Mr. Grothman. We will give you one more thing that Mr.
Livingston said. He said there is a still a half-million
dollars worth of equipment sitting in a box in the office. Do
you want to comment on that? Are you familiar with that?
Mr. Neffenger. I'm not familiar with that, but I'm going to
go back and look for that.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. I will yield the remainder of my time.
Chairman Chaffetz. I will go to Mr. Cummings for 5 minutes.
Mr. Cummings. I am going to be very brief. First of all, I
want to thank both of you for your testimony.
After the last hearing we had on TSA, Admiral, we had a--my
staff has just given this to me this morning, but it was a
letter, a handwritten letter from one of the whistleblowers.
And I have never read a letter into the record that was
addressed to me like this, but I am reading it for a reason,
and I will explain it in a minute. Again, this is one of the
whistleblowers.
It says, ``Dear sir, thank you for your leadership and
direct fairness in the hearings on the issues of TSA's current
and potential misconduct. You spoke truth to power when you
asked and demanded a fair and balanced hearing. You breathe air
into our agency and gave hope to all the men and women when you
asked for the facts. We, all of us at TSA, now believe that
Congress can and will fix TSA. Thank you, sir. You have
inspired all of us to renew our faith in the process of
accountable leadership, and I wish you continued success and
great health.'' And I am going to leave the name out.
And the reason why I read that letter is because there are
people depending on us, and they just want to get it right. You
know, a lot of times I hear negative things about employees,
that is Federal employees and State government, but I tell
people that a lot of these people--and most of them, they come
out, they have a mission, and they want to serve the public.
And they want to treat them right.
There are stresses that come with the job. I mean, any
elected official will tell you that they could be at the
supermarket and maybe somebody will come up and say, hello, and
then somebody will say, Congressman--they are just trying to
get out of the supermarket--about the seventh or eighth person,
you know, the person doesn't realize that they are the seventh
or eighth person that has called him and doesn't realize he has
got to get home. So that is part of the job.
And I realize that a lot of the things that the employees
do, I am sure, can get monotonous. And the chairman was just
showing me the photos of all the knives and the guns and
grenades and things that people I am sure in many instances--
most instances it is accidentally are trying to get through. So
we do not have room for error.
But I read the letter because I want to remind you--and I
know I don't have to do this, but there are so many people who
want us to help. They want you to help, and they want us to
help. And when I listened to those whistleblowers, and I heard
all of their testimony, you know the theme that ran through the
whole thing was that they simply wanted the best for the public
and for the agency. They weren't showboating. They probably
didn't even really want to be here, but they, like many of our
Federal employees, most, they had a desire that their agency
would be the elite of the elite.
And that is the kind of reputation I want to get to. I want
people to be very proud to be a TSA employee. And I want them,
when they say, you know, I work for the TSA, to stick their
chest out and say you know what, this is a great organization.
But again, keep in mind what I said. If you go back and you
listen to all the things that they said, they talked about a
few bad apples in the leadership and excluded you, by the way.
They said that you are doing a good job. So I just beg you to
keep all of that in mind. And I really appreciate your efforts.
I know it is difficult. Mr. Roth, I want to thank you.
And I hope that you all will continue to work together
because that is what it is all about. This is how it is
supposed to work. We need the critical eye of just a great
lawyer and a great IG like you, Mr. Roth, but then we need the
response to be appropriate.
And so with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. And again, I
thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this hearing.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
I now recognize Mr. Mica from Florida for 5 minutes.
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I spoke earlier about the attrition rate, which overall is
about 10 percent, about 4,500 a year, and then the new hires,
we are losing about 30 percent of those and 38 percent of the
non-TSO, which is information we got from you.
The problem is that is an average. You have 30 airports in
the country that handle 75 percent of the traffic, and those
numbers are much higher. I know Los Angeles, a whole host of
the big ones have had a problem recruiting, retaining,
training, and hiring.
You actually have deferred--you told Mr. Hice you have lots
of people going through with few exceptions to FLETC, but you
actually have given authority to 21 airports, almost all of
those the largest in the country, isn't that correct, for local
training and hiring?
Mr. Neffenger. Well, it won't be at 21 locations. We've
given the authority ----
Mr. Mica. Waivers to 21 locations.
Mr. Neffenger. Right. We've given ----
Mr. Mica. We have Boston, O'Hare ----
Mr. Neffenger.--on an as-needed basis, yes, sir.
Mr. Mica.--JFK ----
Mr. Neffenger. That's right.
Mr. Mica.--La Guardia, Miami, LAX. I mean, these are the
big ones, too.
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir.
Mr. Mica. And I don't generally have a problem with that. I
think that you can get people to do the training, and there are
firms that will do that may be internally. It can be done. But
I just want to make sure that was in the record. I disagree
with the gentleman who last spoke. And I talked to him about at
every airport screening the employees through a metal detector
and all of that. In Orlando and Miami it is a waste. I don't
know if you are still doing it in Atlanta.
You need to be vetting the employees first before they are
hired, and you need to be vetting even the TSA people, which
are not all getting cleared. The people who work in the secure
areas, we had a hearing, and thousands of them, we didn't have
Social Security numbers. Hundreds and hundreds of them are
foreign nationals with working papers we don't know anything
about. That is what concerns me is the people who have access
to secure areas. So vetting and then monitoring those people,
knowing who they are.
The dogs, and there is an opinion about dogs. Dogs right
now don't deal with the threat that we face. The threat is a
non-nitrate-based explosive. Dogs can't detect that, neither
can the equipment you have got at the airport. You know that,
don't you, sir? Just say--it is yes.
Mr. Neffenger. Well, I ----
Mr. Mica. I can tell you it is yes because I have tested
the system, and I have ordered more tests of the system for the
first time in years and will reconfirm that.
And this thing about getting guns and knives and all of
that, they aren't going to take down a plane. Those people
don't pose a risk. Maybe they did it accidentally. Do you know
any of them that intended to take down a plane of those guns
and knives that you--none of them. But I do know that known
terrorists have gotten through the system. That concerns me.
I do know that your Intel and Analysis division is in chaos
from what I have been told. Your intel division lacks a
classification guide, we were told, which is a breach of
classification guidelines. Did you know that?
Mr. Neffenger. I don't believe we lack any guide, sir.
Mr. Mica. Well, again, that is what we are told. It says it
lacks a classification guide. This is information given to us,
also reportedly does not have the capability to internally vet
and disseminate intelligence in real-time. Any intelligence
information dissemination in the field must be first vetted and
then approved by DHS and FBI, sort of a bureaucracy. These are
other reasons why we failed to connect the dots in the past,
and failing to connect the dots in the future is a concern. And
again, I would ask you to respond also to that on intelligence
analysis.
The SPP program, to solve your problem, you have got to get
out of the screening business. You need to set the rules for
the screening, oversee it, and audit it and let the private
sector do it. They do it for nuclear facilities, DOD
facilities, some of our most secure facilities. You will never
get it right with 45,000 personnel across the whole country. It
is just not going to work. I can assure you no matter what you
do.
I want to speed up this SPP process. It takes a year. Can
you prequalify people that can provide screening services?
Mr. Neffenger. It depends--I'll have to check the exact
rules. I know that we follow the ----
Mr. Mica. But I would like to see that because this is the
first thing. It requires 120 days. We will have dozens of
airports that will opt out, but you can still set the rules.
You get out of this mess and get into the security business,
which will save us from another terrorist attack. I would like
a response on how we can clean this up so it doesn't take that
long as part of the record. And then ----
Mr. Neffenger. Sure.
Mr. Mica.--finally, Mr. Chairman, I have asked for some
information about salaries, both within the District, and then
overall I want to see for the record the amount for screening
and the non-screening positions in your highest-paid positions,
a complete list of them and the totals ----
Mr. Neffenger. Yes, sir.
Mr. Mica.--and salaries. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Neffenger. Thank you.
Chairman Chaffetz. As we wrap up here, Mr. Neffenger, the
last point I just wanted to make, we have a request and I want
to reiterate the bonus policy. One of the criticisms, I
believe, from the inspector general is that there really wasn't
a bonus policy in place. So what is it? In 2015, for instance,
the senior members, the TSES members who made less than
$160,000 were ineligible for a bonus even if they achieved the
highest level of excellence. But if you made more than
$160,000, even if your performance evaluation came in lower,
you could get a bonus. That seems so upside down and wrong.
Mr. Neffenger. I'll get you the policy for the record, Mr.
Chairman, so that you can see what we've done.
Chairman Chaffetz. Mr. Roth, do you have any comment on
that?
Mr. Roth. No, just what was in our investigation, which was
that the policy was very sort of loose, but we had a commitment
from TSA that they would fix the policy. My understanding is
they have.
Chairman Chaffetz. Okay. It is something we would like to
look at. Mr. Roth, last question, what are your biggest
concerns?
Mr. Roth. Just the size of the enterprise, 2 million
passengers a day, 450 airports, TSA as the checkpoint operator
but also TSA as the regulator of the airports, it's a
monumental task that's going to take time to fix.
Chairman Chaffetz. Okay. We appreciate you both. We have
the greatest confidence in the administrator but also in the
inspector general, plays a vital role. And you each represent a
lot of employees and a lot of people who are good, hardworking,
patriotic people that are trying to do the right thing, and for
that we thank you.
We have a mutual symbiotic relationship in trying to weed
out the bad apples, and they are there. And to the extent that
we can make that better, smarter, more fair, I think it will
improve morale, it will make the airports and the population
more safe and secure, and we share that mutual goal. And so we
look forward to continuing to work with you and thank you for
your presence today. And thanks again to the men and women who
do the good hard work every day.
With that, the committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:46 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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