John Mica Attacks TSA 'Chat-Downs' As 'Idiotic,' Says Screening Failures Are 'Off The Charts'

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the House committee that oversees the Transportation Security Administration blasted the agency's recent test of "chat-downs" of airline passengers, calling the pilot program "idiotic."

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) told reporters during a briefing Monday that the TSA's experiment at Boston's Logan International Airport -- in which officers engaged passengers in brief conversations to help detect suspicious behavior -- is "a mess."

"This is no joke," said Mica, who has pummeled the TSA as a bloated bureaucracy with a mission he believes could be carried out more efficiently and cheaply by private companies under federal government supervision.

Mica laced into the pilot program, slated to be tested next in Detroit before rolling out to airports nationwide, as a pale imitation of the interrogations routinely conducted by Israeli security at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv. He noted that the expanded behavior detection pilot builds on an existing program that the Government Accountability Office said lacked scientific validity and has cost "a quarter billion" to hire thousands of screening officers.

During a recent visit to Logan to observe the pilot, Mica said he watched about a dozen officers quiz passengers in the terminal. "I put my ear up and listened to some idiotic questions," he said of the questions that delved into where travelers were coming from, why they'd been there and where they were going.

"I talked to them about their training, which was minimal," he said of his conversations with security personnel. He went on to say that even though passengers selected for further screening were supposed to go through hi-tech scanners, on the day he visited the machines were out of service because there weren't enough trained personnel to run them.

"It's almost idiotic," Mica said. "It's still not a risk-based system. It's not a thinking system."

This isn't the first time Mica has denounced the agency he helped to create in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- on Monday he even trashed the TSA's blue uniforms and badges. But his latest harsh criticisms offered a preview of an upcoming committee report on the TSA's first decade.

The assessment will likely recount TSA's controversial record of using imaging technology that has raised the hackles of privacy advocates and has proven less than effective in spotting the dangerous materials they were designed to detect.

"The failure rate (for imaging equipment) is classified but it would absolutely knock your socks off," Mica told reporters. The number of times TSA pat-downs failed to detect contraband is also secret but, according to the chairman, is "off the charts."

Mica said the report, due out in the next couple of weeks, would be "sort of like the record of the Marx Brothers."

Comments

[dbrett480]

11:13 PM on 10/27/2011

The idea would be good if the TSA employees asking the questions were trained by El Al. That airline has been using this method for many years with great success.

[Rixar13]

12:21 PM on 10/26/2011

"But his latest harsh criticisms offered a preview of an upcoming committee report on the TSA's first decade."
"Mica believes could be carried out more efficiently and cheaply by private companies under federal government supervision."

Private for profit is not safe.... wink ;-)

[EaglesFly]

06:18 PM on 10/25/2011

Actually, TSA is worse than the private screening company's that were in place prior to 9/11. At least then, when someone really messed up, they were fired. TSA workers are backed by a large government protection process and cannot only be incompetent, but they can steal, lie, cheat, engage is other criminal behavior and still be on the job. Mica is actually right on target and is telling the painful truth about TSA. You don't know how bad it is until you have been on the inside.

[Jeffin90019]

05:57 PM on 10/25/2011

It's hard to take a man seriously when he's wearing a toilet seat cover on his head.

[Jeffin90019]

05:55 PM on 10/25/2011

Janet Napolitano should have been fired after the first terrorist slipped by with his shoe bomb. Then she should have been fired after the second terrorist slipped by with a bomb in his briefs. Both attempts failed only because passengers were looking out for themselves, not becuase of anything this useless lump has done since she was appointed. Everyone needs to remember that Michael Chertoff, one of the Bushboys, is on the board of the company that makes the scanners. His company benefited in the billions for fake security equipment.

[StopMakingSense2]

05:40 PM on 10/25/2011

If it's idiotic why aren't the rubepublicans supporting it? They trying to set a precedent?

[Maac]

04:43 PM on 10/25/2011

"could be carried out more efficiently and cheaply by private companies under federal government supervision." Either he owns a security firm or he knows someone with one!

This isn't the first time Mica has denounced the agency he helped to create- guess he feels like he created it, he can destroy it!

[DustinTime]

04:40 PM on 10/25/2011

Completely ineffective at what they're allegedly there for?

Well, good thing we gave them so much money to molest and radiate citizens.

[CaWa]

04:35 PM on 10/25/2011

So we should go back to how it was when contractors ran security before? Ten people standing around while 1 person actually did the job. The contractor pocketing most the money and hiring barely qualified, untrained people who didn't have the first clue what they were doing. Many of the workers those contractors hired were undocumented workers, isn't that supposed to be one of the biggest problems for conservatives? Oh, that's right, conservatives don't mind handing those contracts over to their buddies and scr*w actual security.

I think it has been proven time and again that when it comes to security it costs about 4x as much to hire contractors as it does for the government to handle it. And, we get much better security.

[Jennifer Mead]

04:05 PM on 10/25/2011

They touch your junk and it is not helping one bit. As we lose all of our liberties trying to defend against the boogeymen that conservatives would have us believe is behind every corner, it does nothing more than give a false sense of security as billions upon billions is spent.

[DustinTime]

04:40 PM on 10/25/2011

Bingo! Thank you.

[TheAnorexicSumo]

03:51 PM on 10/25/2011

"This is no joke." Maybe not, but that squirrel sitting on top of your head is sure making me laugh.

[dtschuck]

03:43 PM on 10/25/2011

Turn TSA over to the private sector....oh, boy, there's a real winner of an idea. Kinda reminds you of turning the Student Loans over to the private sector to "reduce costs and save money".

The only thing that was reduced was the students wallets. The government overhead to run the Student Loan program was $5B to $8B before going private. In the last year of the privatized Student Loans, before Congressed "unprivatized" it last year, the overhead had ballooned to over $70B, student loan interest rates had skyrocketed and fees were starting to be more common than fleas on a dogs back.

The only upside is EdSouth, EdAmerica and the other entities that formed to "service the students", made billions of profit with some of it from students in the form of higher interest and fee and the rest from taxpayers to pay off the defaulted student loans for students that couldn't handle the higher interest rates.

While TSA is not my favorite organization, we will be best served by improving what we have, and not turn it over to the profiteers.

[msogriz]

10:09 PM on 10/29/2011

Turn TSA over to the private sector..oh yah! It worked so well with the wars in the middle east. Sixty Billion dollars vanished into thin air. OH YAH!! Another licence to steal from the taxpayer by the insiders.

[tiko l]

03:19 PM on 10/25/2011

Mica, who has pummeled the TSA
as a bloated bureaucracy with a
mission he believes could be carried
out more efficiently and cheaply by
private companies under federal
government supervision.....

also known as a mission statement,
money, money, money!

[ctcadguy]

03:13 PM on 10/25/2011

Privatization of all government is the latest in Capitalism consuming itself. No wonder we are marching in the streets.

Airline TSA agents feeling up our teenage daughters or body scanning them all beause of that inside job back in 2001.

PATHETIC AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Druxmei]

03:09 PM on 10/25/2011

The TSA should be immediately disbanded, and we should return to pre 911 screening. If Cheney and Rummy hadn't stood down our defenses that day, running drills simulating the exact same thing we wouldn't be where we are today.

[DustinTime]

04:41 PM on 10/25/2011

Exactly. Spot on.

[EaglesFly]

06:20 PM on 10/25/2011

Druxmel: You are absolutely correct.