Program To Teach Airplane Hijack Defense A Failure: GAO

by William Fisher

(IPS) -- The Government Accountability Office has found failings in the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) anti-hijacking programs. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said the TSA has yet to establish performance goals and lacks adequate internal controls to properly assess crew training to protect the nation's commercial airliners from potential threats.

The Sept. 6 report found that TSA lacks written procedures for reviewing training programs, assessing the quality of classroom instruction and ensuring that airlines follow up with their employees.

It also reported that while TSA developed a voluntary self-defense training program in 2004, it has yet to establish performance measures or a time line for determining its effectiveness.

TSA, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is required to monitor and periodically review airline training programs to ensure that crew members are prepared for potential threats. But the GAO found that the program has been poorly attended.

The aircrew training program, which has been available for more than 20 years, is conducted in 15 cities around the U.S. The GAO report said that part of the reason for the poor attendance is that airline employees are often unable to get three consecutive days off to attend.

Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, crews were trained to cooperate with threatening passengers or hijackers. Since then, the security response assumes a hijacking could include a threat to damage or destroy the aircraft or use the plane as a weapon.

As a result, crew members are now trained in how to recognize suspicious activity and determine the seriousness of threats, how to coordinate and communicate with each other in a threatening situation, and how to search for explosive devices.

Since its founding in 2003, a substantial proportion of the DHS budget has been devoted to securing the safety of commercial air transport.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which also is part of the huge DHS, has been severely criticized for its sluggish and reportedly uncoordinated response to Hurricane Katrina.

Another report, this one by the Department of Justice Inspector General (IG), was critical of another TSA program -- "Secure Flight." The IG found that the federal airline passenger screening program, slated to go into effect for a limited number of airlines this month, is unable to define what it will do and how it will operate.

The Secure Flight program is a system in which passenger names are checked against a consolidated terrorist watch list from the Terrorist Screening Center, a multiagency effort administered by the FBI.

The IG report said, "The Terrorist Screening Center does not know when Secure Flight will start, the volume of inquiries expected and the resulting number of resources required to respond, the quality of data it will have to analyze, and the specific details of the phased-in approach for taking the program from 'pre-operational testing' in September 2005 to full operational capability in (fiscal year) 2007."

TSA has repeatedly adjusted the implementation date for Secure Flight, from April to August, and most recently to September. As of July 31, the agency was unsure how many airlines would participate in the program's initial phase.

"This shifting of critical milestones has affected the screening center's ability to adequately plan for its role in the Secure Flight program," the report said.

For example, the screening center has been unable to adequately project its workforce requirements to cope with the expanded workload when Secure Flight goes into effect, the report said. The screening center is spending roughly $64 million in fiscal 2005 to support Secure Flight, with an additional $13 million for indirect support of the program.

The IG's report, which was modified to remove sensitive information so it could be publicly released, describes a scenario in which TSA and the screening center have appeared to be at odds in developing Secure Flight.

For example, the report said it initially appeared that TSA did not plan for the screening center to be directly involved in the Secure Flight screening process. The center's only role would be to forward the watch list information.

"However, according to terrorist screening center officials, TSA's plan did not account for having to communicate the results of the Secure Flight matches to the law enforcement agencies responsible for responding to hits against the watch list," the report said.

In addition, "TSA neglected to plan for the complex process of record additions, deletions and modifications made to the Terrorist Screening Data Base on a continual basis."

Once there was agreement about the screening center's role in helping to develop Secure Flight, "many of the processes that TSA had already developed had to be redesigned and retooled," the report said.

The delays in implementing Secure Flight are partly because of the negative reviews it has received from Congress and the Government Accountability Office over TSA's failure to protect privacy and due process rights.

Secure Flight is supposed to be an improvement over TSA's current screening programs, now conducted for 65 airlines carrying more than 1.8 million passengers a day. That screening is required at about 450 airports.

Critics of Secure Flight say the latest findings indicate that the program is poorly designed and should not become operational until the problems are ironed out.

"This report reveals a breakdown in coordination and planning for Secure Flight," Timothy Sparapani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, told IPS.

"That's not surprising given this program's troubled development. What's surprising is that TSA is insisting on rushing forward despite this report's warning," he said.

Earlier this year, a General Accounting Office report concluded that Secure Flight faced uncertainties in schedule, cost, functionality and privacy impact.