Terminal Condition

In June 2002, just after Dario Compain took his oath as Tampa International Airport's first federal security director, the 30-year Army veteran got a phone call from the wary airport director. "Dario admitted to me right out of the chute that he'd flown through a lot of airports, but didn't know much about airport operations," says Louis Miller, who had been in charge at Tampa for six years. Luckily for Miller, his new federal counterpart was a quick study. Compain, a military policeman who retired as provost marshal of the Joint Security Directorate at nearby U.S. Central Command, told Miller he didn't need to know how to fly an airplane to secure it, but added, "I do need to understand the intricacies of the airport business so that I can understand the ramifications of some of my decisions."

This new partnership meant Compain and Miller would have to learn the art of give-and-take. Reporting for duty, Compain sprang into action on a congressional order requiring airports to scan all checked luggage electronically for bombs and other dangerous contents. In short order, 10 bulky SUV-size explosive detection systems were parked in the Florida airport's twin ticket lobbies, beating the order's Dec. 31, 2002, deadline by five days. But Miller feared the big machines would wreck Tampa's long-standing reputation as one of the world's easiest airports to use. He wanted to move them into the bowels of the side-by-side terminals and give travelers back their elbow room.

On Sept. 26, 2002, the Tampa duo presented a solution to Transportation Security Administration officials in Washington. Their $127 million plan would take the baggage screening operation inline, meaning luggage would be inspected behind the scenes. In less time than it took them to fly back to Tampa that day, they got the OK. Miller credits Compain's rapport with senior officials at TSA. "He was able to take the lead and go to Washington, D.C., and get me through any, quote, bureaucracy that might exist. And everybody knows there's some bureaucracy. We were all amazed," Miller says.

This June, Tampa International declared itself the first large U.S. airport to field TSA-approved bomb detecting equipment that is integrated fully with an automated baggage handling system. Now, instead of carrying luggage to a TSA agent, passengers can watch their checked bags ride out of sight on a conveyor behind the airline ticket counter, just like they did in the old days.

Beneath the ticket lobby, eight miles of moving belts feed suitcases and other checked items through the relocated bomb scanners and 11 new ones at a rate of six per minute. If one airline's scanner or conveyor breaks down, bags can be rerouted to another airline's unit without causing a flight delay. Uniformed TSA agents monitor the bags' progress on computer screens, using special software to view the contents in three dimensions. They can cull a bag for closer inspection by pushing a button. The system then spits out the bag, along with a classified picture of the questionable contents, into a room full of metal tables and gloved inspectors. After the source of the alert is taken out, the bag goes back onto the belt and out to the airplane.

Miller and Compain became fast friends, and a good example of how post-Sept. 11 aviation security can work. But many local managers are butting heads with their federal counterparts. As TSA approaches its third birthday, the hastily created agency is struggling to function in a way that satisfies key stakeholders-most notably the aviation industry, the traveling public and Congress.

Bureaucratic Behemoth

Inflexible, inefficient, reactionary and out of control: These are the more polite words that have been used to describe TSA in the past several months. A "Soviet-style . . . centralized bureaucracy" is what Rep. John L. Mica, R-Fla., called it in April. He was chairing an aviation subcommittee hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on the questionable performance of federalized and private security screeners at the nation's 445 commercial airports. "Anyone who has seen the classified results and detection rates of this system and does not call for reform in the program, I believe, is derelict in their responsibility," Mica said. Ranking member Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., agreed: "The inadequacies and loopholes in the system are phenomenal."

Mica and other Republicans who never liked the plan of creating another bureaucracy have floated the idea of reorganizing or even dismantling TSA. The agency already has given up the Federal Air Marshal Service, its grant administration authority, and some research and development work. Come Nov. 19, airports will be eligible under a provision Mica wrote into the 2001 Aviation and Transportation Security Act to replace their federal screeners with private ones employed by a TSA-approved contractor. Six days later, the Homeland Security Department no longer will be required to maintain TSA as a distinct entity. The 2002 Homeland Security Act contains a sunset clause for the agency, effective Nov. 25.

Could TSA fade away like the leaves of autumn?

TSA's future has not been discussed widely in public forums, but Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., raised the question May 12. "It is not clear to me that TSA should continue to operate as a distinct entity," a published news report quotes him as saying at the start of a hearing before the Infrastructure and Border Security Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee. "Are we on a road to further organizational progress and integration? To what degree should TSA exercise authority beyond aviation security?" Cox asked the witness, then-Deputy Administrator Stephen McHale. "I don't see TSA going away," says McHale, who designed the organization, watched it grow from two employees to 65,000, and then managed its transition from the Transportation Department before leaving federal service July 23. "The mission has to be delivered by somebody . . . no matter how you organize it," he says.

That mission is to protect the nation's transportation systems and to ensure freedom of movement of people and commerce. The government created TSA, in large part, to standardize passenger baggage and security operations at airports and to restore the public's confidence in aviation. TSA also is responsible for ships and seaports, trains, trucks and pipelines. But it depends on other government agencies and industry to help develop and fund security measures for those transportation modes, and all but a small fraction of the $16 billion it spent in three years was for aviation. "It really is the aviation security administration," observes analyst Robert Poole of Reason Public Policy Institute, a Los Angeles-based think tank. "It's a joke to call it the Transportation Security Administration."

If the TSA monolith does not crumble, then government sculptors are likely to give it a very different look. Security regulators are putting the final touches on the plan that will allow airports to forsake the federal program in favor of private screeners. At the same time, TSA's third boss in three years is heeding complaints about the agency's heavy management hand. David Stone is coaxing it to let go gradually. As he told the aviation subcommittee in April, "We think it's critical that we . . . empower the federal security directors so that they are not micromanaged from Washington."

Just how many airports will opt out remains to be seen. Mica says at least 25 percent want a change; TSA officials say as few as 12 airports do. In June, TSA issued guidelines for opting out. The notice explains how airports must comply with government security requirements when they take advantage of opportunities for innovation, cost savings and decentralized management. It welcomes input from airport directors but excludes them from participating in contractor selection. Airports can apply for their own security screening contracts as long as they meet federal qualification criteria. But TSA would retain many of its current roles and responsibilities, including assessing threats, enforcing standards, providing baseline equipment, developing technology, and balancing security and customer needs with a minimal impact on commerce. Poole fears the opt-out plan is too limited to attract many airports. "It's still too centralized in Washington and leaves too much under direct control," he says.

Letting Go

The 159 federal security directors are TSA's ranking authorities at the airports, responsible for directing daily security operations. They are held accountable for everything airports do-or fail to do-to keep air travel secure. But some say they have been hampered by a one-size-fits-all approach to security. Most who responded to a Government Accountability Office survey (GAO-04-505T) in April said they needed much more authority.

TSA's focus on decentralizing is welcome news to Tampa security chief Compain, who is getting greater say-so in local operations and the hiring and training of screeners. "The main thing I learned in [federal security director] school is that when you've seen one airport, you've seen just one airport," he says. "Every airport is different."

Tampa is in line to become TSA's regional assessment center for a large section of Florida. The center will evaluate prospective screeners through interviews, medical exams, and tests of their technical knowledge and physical abilities. It also will conduct the all-important credit and criminal background checks. Once the center is established, Compain and federal security directors at neighboring airports can choose to do it all themselves, let the assessment center do it all for them, or ask for help. Compain looks forward to the day when TSA will grant him license to terminate problem employees, rather than just recommend their dismissal to higher-ups. Until then, he is allowed to discipline and to enforce suspensions. "It is difficult to separate the training and personnel pieces," he says, "[but] I feel that we have been empowered to do quite a bit that, before, wasn't heard of."

Many of Compain's day-to-day decisions are based on a menu of pre-approved actions. He is trusted to modify them to meet local concerns such as the network of roads around the airport. "It affords me the opportunity to work with the airport and develop the strategies that are sensible, that are financially affordable, and yet that will provide us the level of security that we need here, depending on the threat," he says.

The results, such as Tampa's inline baggage screening plan, can't be overlooked. Because Tampa's 635 federal agents are touching an estimated 70 percent less luggage, more of them are available to staff passenger checkpoints. The airport can get by with about 80 fewer screeners now that TSA has trimmed the force to comply with a nationwide cap of 45,000 imposed by Congress. Compain shifts screeners between checkpoints and bag rooms to keep people and luggage moving.

Tampa's traffic has far exceeded pre-Sept. 11 totals. Passenger boarding records have been toppling since October 2003. In March, traditionally its busiest month of the year, the airport struggled with wait times of up to 50 minutes-five times the TSA target-at some security checkpoints. Backed by Compain, airport chief Miller rallied the airlines and his employees to help manage the lines and expedite passenger screening. Afterward, Compain sought TSA's permission for a seventh security lane at the busiest checkpoint. He got it in only three weeks. "He can't approve it himself. However, by taking the approach that it's got to be done, he's helped us rush [requests] through," says Miller. Given the results Compain has achieved so far, "I don't think he really needs any more authority," Miller says. "But the more authority he gets, the better."

What makes more sense to the Reason Institute's Poole is for TSA to hand over security authority to Miller and let Compain keep an eye on him. Doing so could help the agency reconcile what the policy analyst views as its dual missions and divided interests. TSA controls passenger security, for instance, but it has let airport operators control access to restricted areas-with some regrettable results. In addition, the spring and summer travel seasons were punctuated with news reports about airport screeners alleging they were ordered to cut corners when security lines got too long. "Congress essentially created something with built-in problems, giving TSA both a major service responsibility and the regulatory authority," Poole says.

He argues that three reports issued in April explain why airports need greater control of all security screening, not just opt-out programs. The reports compare the performance of federal screeners nationwide with that of TSA contract screeners under test conditions at five airports. Approaching the end of a two-year run mandated by Congress, the tightly controlled private screening pilot program known as PP5 was designed to show how aviation security would fare at airports that opt out.

In a TSA-funded study, the McLean, Va.-based consulting firm BearingPoint concluded that contract screeners met or exceeded the standards set for federalized screeners in the 2001 Aviation and Transportation Security Act. Homeland Security Department Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin told lawmakers at the April aviation subcommittee hearing that contract screeners "performed the same, which is to say, equally poorly" in limited covert testing by his office. GAO observed in its report that PP5 provided scant opportunity for the contractors to demonstrate innovative approaches.

All three reports faulted TSA for overcentralizing management. BearingPoint noted that because private contractors are exempt from federal personnel regulations, they can discipline poor performers expeditiously. But GAO pointed out that contractors and federal security directors alike must rely on TSA headquarters to authorize hiring and establish applicant assessment centers. "The inability to conduct hiring on an as-needed basis has limited their ability to respond quickly to staffing shortages," GAO wrote. The Washington bureaucracy is so lethargic that "some local TSA and contractor officials found it easier to make their own decisions rather than seeking headquarters approval or guidance," Ervin testified. Rep. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., whose district includes Newark International Airport, scolded TSA Administrator Stone for failing to use the management tools Congress gave the agency. "If I didn't know better," he said, "I'd almost think that TSA is complicit in trying to ensure that we don't succeed."

Stone said TSA ran PP5 conservatively to ensure that federal security standards were being met. Despite the agency's death-grip on the experiment, the pilot airports managed to pre-screen applicants to ensure they met minimum federal qualifications, employ a mix of full- and part-time staff, cross-train all passenger and baggage screeners, and let security screeners do other airport jobs as time allowed. These are the kinds of innovations that devolving the agency's responsibilities to the airport level would trigger, according to policy analyst Poole.

Poole is not suggesting a return to the approach that allowed 19 terrorists to fool screeners, hijack four jumbo jets and use them as guided missiles. Airlines were responsible for security then. He proposes a European model that requires each airport to run a seamless, integrated security program under strong government oversight-"so the buck stops in one place." A few lawmakers have shown interest, but Poole admits the idea would encounter much turbulence in Congress. "Remember, the federalization approach we have passed in the Senate 100 to zip. Only the House passed an alternate approach along the lines of what I'm advocating," Poole says.

Miller and Compain are not ready to hop aboard the plane to independence, either. "I see absolutely zero benefit in opting out," says the airport director, predicting that security standards will slip if the government is not in complete control. Compain defends TSA leadership. Their only desire, he says, is to serve the country well. "We have imported talent from so many federal agencies that are really security conscious. The decision-makers . . . have been in this system providing security for over 30 years. We've got the experience that we need. We just need the time to get there."