Federal Employees Of The Year High Flier

n the summer of 2001, Stephen McHale, then the Treasury Department's assistant general counsel for enforcement, was thinking about leaving the federal government. After more than 20 years as a government lawyer, McHale thought he had exhausted his career possibilities in public service.

"I was thinking that maybe it was time to leave and do something different," he says.

The opportunity to do that came a short time later when terrorists hijacked four commercial jets on Sept. 11, launching the deadliest terrorist attack ever on American soil. McHale soon found new urgency in his work at the Treasury Department as he focused on unraveling terrorism financing schemes. In late December, he got a call from his old friend and colleague John Magaw, who was then acting executive director of the Federal Emergency Management agency. The two had worked together at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in the late 1990s, where McHale had been chief counsel and Magaw was director. Magaw had just been tapped for the top security job at the Transportation Department, where he was charged with creating a new agency aimed at foiling terrorist attacks. Magaw wanted McHale to help him create the new Transportation Security Administration.

"Suddenly, I had this opportunity to be on the ground floor of a government startup," says McHale. He called friends and asked for their advice. Consistently, they told him it was an impossible job because Congress, in crafting the legislation that created the Transportation Security Administration, had placed impossible demands on the agency before it even had any personnel. "I thought about it over the weekend. I called John back on Monday and said, 'When do you want me to start?' He said, 'Tomorrow.'"

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

Michael Jackson, then the Transportation Department's deputy secretary, says the pressures on Magaw and McHale were enormous. "We had midnight meetings, problems we didn't know how to solve and crushing deadlines," he says. At the same time, ongoing intelligence reports raised fears of repeat hijackings. "We didn't really know what else was locked and loaded in the al Qaeda system to throw at the aviation system. We knew the al Qaeda operational mandate was to attack at one thing and then go back at that same thing," says Jackson, now retired.

"A huge amount of responsibility fell on Steve, and he handled it extraordinarily well," says Magaw. The challenges ranged from quickly hiring tens of thousands of employees to equipping hundreds of airports with millions of dollars worth of high-tech screening equipment. When TSA was created, there were only 32 air marshals in the country, private contractors managed airport security and most baggage went unscreened. In addition, a year after TSA was created, it was moved from the Transportation Department into the new Homeland Security Department, causing more headaches for senior managers.

Almost immediately, in December 2001, Magaw and McHale set about assembling a senior leadership team, expanding the federal air marshal program, creating federal passenger and baggage screening requirements, and hiring staff to fulfill those requirements. "[The terrorists'] primary goal was to destroy our way of life," says McHale. "Fundamental to that way of life is our freedom of movement. Our job was to get people in place as quickly as possible-quality people-and put them around the country throughout the aviation system, to restore confidence. That was the driving force," he says.

In the frantic push to get that done, they took risks, he says. "We found ourselves in March and April [of 2002] engaging in massive contract awards in administration without any infrastructure to support it. The Transportation Department tried to lend a hand . . . but we overstressed their system too," he says. TSA relied on the Defense Department for some contract management support, but Defense had its hands full prosecuting wars in Afghanistan and later Iraq.

"What we didn't have in place was enough people who could do detailed contract oversight-program managers. We were hiring 55,000 screeners and we didn't have enough supervisors. We were awarding billions of dollars in contracts, but we didn't have enough program managers," he says.

McHale says TSA now has a robust contract management capacity, but continues to clean up problems that stem from that early surge. "It was one of the many things that would keep you awake at night-knowing how much was going on out there and how much you were relying on people to do the right thing."

To keep employees at the nation's 429 airports focused on the mission, the agency has developed a very aggressive covert testing program, in which teams of undercover security specialists probe airports attempting to circumvent security. The teams' findings are incorporated into training programs and provide continual feedback to both agency leaders and to the federal security directors at the nation's airports.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, few issues received as much scrutiny in the news media and on Capitol Hill as aviation security. Not surprisingly, there have been many painful moments for those involved in creating TSA. Personnel turnover, especially among airport security directors, cost overruns, and continued security breaches at airports have drawn criticism. Last year, Magaw was forced to resign after lawmakers and administration officials lost confidence in him. His replacement, former Coast Guard Commandant James Loy, has had a warmer reception on Capitol Hill, but he hasn't escaped criticism for some of the agency's shortcomings.

What Loy and Magaw have in common is enormous respect for McHale. Loy, who nominated McHale for the Service to America Medal, lauded his extraordinary talent and the personal example he sets for his colleagues. (McHale's sister, Judith McHale, is on the Service to America Medal's 2003 selection committee.)

Now deputy administrator at TSA, McHale is proud of how far the agency has come in less than two years.

"When you have a brand new agency like this, nobody really knows what it is, or what it's going to be. If you go to work for the FBI, you have a sense of mission, of corporate culture. You know what it does and is expected to do every day. When people came to work for TSA, they all came with their own idea of what the organization could and should be," he says.

TSA's job will never be done, McHale says. "The threat is constantly changing. We've only recently started turning to the nonaviation areas [of transportation security], and we haven't completed the work in the aviation area."