Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on TSA's challenges. Cliff Owen/AP
TSA Told to Improve Vetting of Workers for Terrorism Ties
Though hiring is generally effective, IG seeks more sharing of watchlist information.
The Transportation Security Administration, already under scrutiny for poor performance in a test of airport screening for passengers carrying illegal objects, needs to improve vetting of job candidates for possible terrorism and other criminal ties, a watchdog found.
Homeland Security Department Inspector General John Roth’s report generally praised the agency’s “multi-layered” worker credentialing process. But testing by IG auditors “showed that TSA did not identify 73 individuals with terrorism-related category codes because TSA is not authorized to receive all terrorism-related information under current interagency watchlisting policy,” the report said. “TSA acknowledged that these individuals were cleared for access to secure airport areas despite representing a potential security threat.”
The report came on Monday, the day before Roth testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on challenges at TSA and the value of whistleblowers.
Auditors tested TSA’s vetting of its 2 million workers with access to secure areas of commercial airports for links to terrorism, criminal history and lawful status, as well as the reliability of data the agency uses for the vetting.
As required, the agency screened new applicants and also re-vetted existing employees with every update of the 1 million-entry Consolidated Terrorist Watchlist maintained by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, the report found.
But “TSA lacks effective controls for vetting applicants’ criminal history and work authorization,” auditors wrote. “TSA relies on individual airports for criminal history and work authorization checks. Presently, TSA does not have an adequate monitoring process in place to ensure that airport operators properly adjudicated credential applicants’ criminal histories.”
Another impediment is that “law and FBI policy generally prohibit TSA and the airports to conduct recurrent criminal history vetting and rely on individuals to self-report disqualifying crimes.” (TSA is planning a pilot program for automatic FBI updates on criminal histories later this year.)
Commercial airports’ own vetting does not adequately address the immigration status of applicants, the IG said. And auditors “identified thousands of aviation worker records that appeared to have incomplete or inaccurate biographic information, including incomplete names, passport numbers, alien registration numbers, Social Security numbers and aliases.”
The IG recommended that TSA improve data quality, request and review additional watchlist data, and require airports to improve verification of eligibility to work in the United States and revoke credentials when permission expires.
TSA agreed with the recommendations and has already taken steps to address some of the weaknesses.