Cherie Briante unwittingly left 35 rounds of ammunition in her carry-on luggage, but airport screeners in Fort Lauderdale didn't detect the bullets. They were discovered on her return trip from New York in October.
"If I got through with 35 rounds, what are other people getting through with?" asked Briante, 48, a saleswoman from Tamarac who owns a .38-caliber handgun for protection.
The Transportation Security Administration assumed responsibility for protecting U.S. air travel two years ago Tuesday in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. TSA promised tighter security, but critics say it has failed to make air travel substantially safer, primarily because of poor management and inadequate training of screeners.
As evidence, they point to the TSA's numerous failures to notice guns, knives and potential bombs, resulting in about 40 concourse evacuations a year.
Other security concerns: airliners remain vulnerable because ramp workers do not undergo thorough background checks and the cargo loaded onto passenger planes is not always screened for explosives.
"When I go to an airport, I see smoke and mirrors. I don't see security," said Charles Slepian, a former TWA security consultant. "We are probably no better off today than we were before 9-11."
TSA officials insist airline travel has never been safer.
"I don't dispute you can get a blade or a box cutter through the system," said James Loy, deputy secretary of the U.S. Homeland Security Department. But measures such as impregnable cockpit doors, armed sky marshals and pilots, explosive detection machines and bomb-sniffing dogs stack up as "as a challenge for any terrorist to deal with."
The TSA also works with 22 federal intelligence agencies, which have extensive lists of potential terrorists. Based on intelligence reports, several international flights into the United States were canceled during the holiday season and earlier this month.
A computer-assisted passenger prescreening program is expected to begin this summer, which would rely on public databases to identify dangerous travelers. In all, the TSA has spent about $11.7 billion to enhance air travel security.
Just the same, Loy said the agency's $5.3 billion budget for the upcoming year is not enough to develop the technology to make the nation's 429 commercial airports foolproof and improve customer service.
Loy concedes it is unlikely screeners will detect all dangerous items.
Battered image
"The performance, I would love to see it be twice as good," he said. "And we are making every effort to make sure that occurs."
As the TSA struggles to gain public confidence, high-profile blunders have battered its image.
In October, college student Nathaniel Heatwole planted box cutters, a clay substance resembling plastic explosives and other potentially dangerous items on two Southwest Airlines jets to show that security measures were easy to circumnavigate. He even emailed his plans to the TSA five weeks beforehand.
The items were found in the planes' rear lavatories while parked in New Orleans and Houston, after Heatwole went through normal security.
Heatwole was charged in federal court with taking a dangerous item on board an aircraft, a felony that carries a potential 10-year prison term. He was released without bail, returned to classes at Guilford College, in Greensboro, N.C., and is awaiting further hearings.
"I think he deserves a medal," said Slepian, CEO of a New York risk-analysis firm, for exposing weaknesses in the system.
The same month, five undercover Homeland Security agents carried knives, a bomb and a gun through security at Logan International in Boston. Because two of the airliners hijacked on Sept. 11 took off from Logan, Massachusetts state Sen. Jarrett Barrios called those breaches "an embarrassment."
In September, Charles Mckinley, a former shipping clerk for a New York warehouse, hopped in a crate and shipped himself 1,500 miles from Brooklyn to Dallas on a cargo flight. He wasn't discovered until a delivery truck driver dropped off the crate at his parents' home and saw him crawl out.
The next month, the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said such serious lapses were unacceptable and called for improved training.
The TSA counters that its screeners have intercepted 10 million prohibited items in two years, including 1,630 firearms, 57,000 box cutters and almost 3 million knives. It also arrested more than 1,000 people for security breaches and other violations, such as joking about having a bomb.
Screeners receive 100 hours of training and are randomly tested to ensure they can identify threats, said TSA spokeswoman Lauren Stover.
"We feel that security under the federal government is better than it was in the pre-9-11 era," Stover said. "And it continues to improve because what we do today we can likely do better tomorrow."
On another front, the TSA each week trains about 100 pilots to carry firearms, and about 1,000 of the 90,000 U.S. pilots are certified. By the end of this year, up to 6,000 pilots, including those who work for cargo airlines, could be carrying guns. The TSA also is training flight crews to use stun guns.
Clinton Van Zandt, a security consultant and former FBI profiler, said the TSA deserves credit for improving security and creating the perception that security has been "tremendously enhanced," a deterrent unto itself.
"Terrorists don't want to go through a strong, fortified door. They want to go through a weak door," Van Zandt said. "It's testament to the TSA, the FBI and to police departments that we haven't had a significant incident of international terrorism since Sept. 11."
Many passengers say they feel safer with the TSA in place.
"I didn't feel very safe after 9-11," said Janixx Parisi, of Wellington, who recently boarded a plane from West Palm Beach to New York. "Do I feel safe now? Yes, because there's more of a presence."
Agency in disarray
Yet serious mistakes have prompted security experts to question the TSA's leadership.
In June, the TSA revealed it failed to complete background checks on thousands of screeners. More than 1,200 were fired, most for failure to disclose a prior arrest, misrepresentation or failing a drug test. Eighty-five were convicted felons.
In a report released earlier this month, the Homeland Security inspector general blamed poor management and oversight of its contractors for the insufficient background checks. David M. Stone, acting head of the TSA, acknowledged "deficiencies in TSA's screener vetting process," but added the agency has corrected them.
In addition, the agency has been under attack by Congress for hiring too many screeners and wasting up to $250 million. In response, the TSA reduced its screener workforce from 55,600 to 48,000, mostly by attrition. Congress has ordered more cutbacks, to 45,000, by October.
David Forbes, president of an Evergreen, Colo., aviation security analysis firm, said the overall impression is the TSA is in disarray, and he blames its management.
He said the problems started with John McGaw, the original administrator, who created a quasi-militaristic organization to deal with terrorism. It was a bad mix with customer-service oriented airlines, Forbes said.
"The TSA is full of people who were very good at what they did before they were with the TSA, but unfortunately, it wasn't airport security," said Slepian, the New York risk analyst.
Loy said the TSA is developing a system to better judge screener effectiveness, including hiring "world-class" behavioral experts to provide immediate feedback.
Further, screeners are pulled off the job if they make mistakes. For instance, Loy said, the TSA uses a team of undercover agents who attempt to sneak items past screeners.
"We are probably doing three times as much red-team covert testing than the Federal Aviation Administration did before 9-11," Loy said.
The TSA says it puts passengers through the same intense checks, even if they are young or elderly.
To show that scrutiny is justified, TSA officials point to an incident in July, when screeners at Orlando International Airport found a loaded .22-caliber handgun inside a teddy bear belonging to a 9-year-old Ohio boy. The boy's parents told investigators a girl staying at their hotel gave the bear to the boy as a gift.
That the TSA subjects all passengers to an equal level of scrutiny is horribly inefficient, said Stephen Luckey, of the Air Line Pilots Association, representing 67,000 pilots at 43 U.S. and Canadian carriers.
He said while it may be politically correct, it wastes too much time on "good people," while more effort could be spent on identifying potential terrorists.
"We have to get away from this fear of passenger profiling," he said.
First line of defense
The problem, Luckey said, is that "if we get one more real terrorist hit, people are going to quit flying."
That would devastate the airline industry and the U.S. economy, which is why even a single security breach is scary, he said. Yet since the TSA took over in February 2002, more than 80 significant breaches were reported, according to published reports.
For now, the TSA's first line of defense is identifying dangerous objects with X-ray and explosive detection machines -- nationwide 3.5 million passengers check more than 4 million bags onto more than 30,000 domestic flights each day.
In some cases, screeners spot what appears to be a dangerous item but the traveler picks up the bag and disappears.
That happened in May at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, when a screener noticed what appeared to be a knife in a bag, and the passenger ignored the screener's order to wait. A concourse was cleared for more than an hour. The passenger was found and questioned, but no weapon was found.
In other cases, travelers bypassed checkpoints by walking through security area exit lanes. In February 2003, a man late for his flight at Palm Beach International Airport darted through an opening intended for wheelchairs, prompting an evacuation. The man was found and charged with a second-degree misdemeanor. He was permitted to continue with his trip to San Diego.
Sometimes screeners let down their guard. On Dec. 28, during a high-terror-risk alert, a TSA supervisor at Newark Liberty International Airport allowed a 25-year-old woman to pass through a checkpoint with a scissors, wrapped as a gift. It was later revealed he allowed the prohibited item because he was infatuated with the woman's looks.
Stover, the TSA spokeswoman, said the agency frequently seeks civil penalties for infractions, ranging from several hundred dollars to $10,000. Local law enforcement agencies decide whether to lodge criminal charges, she said, which usually depend on the degree of malicious intent.
Usually travelers who create breaches are questioned and released. That included New Hampshire state Rep. Howard Dickinson, who in July failed to remove a loaded .38-caliber handgun from his carry-on before it went through security at the Manchester airport.
Dangerous soft spot
As the TSA works to shore up security, critics say the agency has failed to adequately address a dangerous soft spot: air cargo, including that on passenger planes.
Not every item is screened for explosives, they say. In addition, at many major airports, many workers who handle fuel, catering, maintenance and baggage loading have not undergone background checks and do not have to be screened for weapons before working on a ramp.
The TSA says it randomly checks ramp workers and plans to require transportation workers have stringent background checks. For now, it is concentrating on security in passenger terminals.
"On a pass-fail basis, the TSA is failing," said Jeff Zack, spokesman for the Association of Flight Attendants, representing 45,000 flight attendants at 26 U.S. carriers. "We understood from beginning that things would take time. But we're going on 21/2 years now since the Sept. 11 attacks, and it's getting kind of ridiculous."
Zack said the TSA should ensure that ramp workers are carefully screened, and inspect all supplies placed on an aircraft. Further, he said, the agency should mandate that carriers provide in-depth training for flight attendants on how to deal with terrorist situations.
TSA officials say they are working on a detailed flight-attendant-training curriculum as well as a plan to ensure 100 percent of air cargo is either inspected or screened for explosives.
But the TSA acknowledges the pressure to make major improvements because it does not doubt terrorists will attempt another attack.
"We have to get it right every day and the terrorists only have to get it right once," said Stover. "So we have to be ahead of the game."
