Disorient attackers by shutting off lighting or sounding alarms and pilots can depressurize the cabin and knock out the attackers due to the heart rate. It could save the lives of others on the ground. You can assign air marshals in airports to find terrorists and bombs before they go up in the sky. Hiring thousands of flying air marshals after 9 11 was a natural reaction, but it should have been a temporary detail and not a career. Not very many young and ambition people yearn for a career in the airline seat. They said half the job would be flying and the rest would be time to recover and investigating. 14 years later, air marshals tell me there are still not ground opportunities. We should train federal and local Law Enforcement officers to quickly deploy as a reserve air marshals in order to respond to specific threats. Finally all federal employees are reluctant to report money wasted in dangerous security lapses because they do not want to gamble with their careers, and the tiny underfunded agency, for instance, faa cabin inspector blew the whistle 12 years ago, and her case was remanded to an administrative judge, and she had a hearing 18 months ago, and still the judge has not made a decision. If i had a jury i would have won six years ago. Federal employees are the only workers in the u. S. Who do not have access to jury trials. A restaurant cook reporting spoiled food being served has more due process than an air marshal reporting security lapses that could kill hundreds and crimple the aviation industry. I have availed myself all week to meet with members of congress and my fellow tsa force. Many may think my proposals are risky or crazy, but i am limited to go into detail about how the benefits can greatly outweigh the risks and other air marshals and i are doing our best to think like a suicidal attacker, and i hope we dont need another 9 11 to prove we are accurate. I look forward to answering your questions. I apologize for going over time. We appreciate your testimony and your courage to blow the whistle. Our next witness, Jennifer Grover the director of transportation security and ghost guard issues for the Accountability Office and her work includes assessing the vulnerabilities throughout the tsas screening process. Thank you, and good morning chairman and members and staff. Last week renewed concerns arose about tsas screening systems and whether they are sufficient to identify prohibited items. Tsa has developed a layered security approach that is sound in principle and the reports towards tsas risk screening, but to fully deliver the promised security traditions, tsa must do two things. First, take more rigorous steps to insure each layer of security works as intended, and second put systems in place to continuously monitor their effectiveness. Over many years gio reported weaknesses in staes oversight of screening systems raising questions about whether tsa is falling short on providing security. Tsa has taken steps to improve oversight of the systems but additional actions are needed. Today we will focus on four areas. First the secure Flight Program which matches passenger information against federal Government Watch lists to identify those that should not fly or receive enhanced screening. Second, the ati systems which are the full body scanners used to screen passengers for prohibited items at the check point. Third, the managed inclusion screening process which tsa uses to provide expedited screening to passengers not previously identified as low risk and fourth criminal history checks done to airport workers. Regarding secure flight, we found in september 2014 that tsa did not have timely or reliable information about the extend or causes of systemmatching errors, which occur when secure flight fails to identify passengers who were actual matches to the watch list. And in response to our recommendations, tsa has developed a mechanism to keep track of known matching errors and is considering methods to evaluate overall matching rates on an ongoing basis. Second regarding the ait body scanners. We found in march 2014 that tsa did not include information about screener performance when they were evaluating the effectiveness. Rather tsas assessment was limited to the accuracy of the systems in the laboratory and after a machine identifies a potential threat a screening officer has to do a targeted pat down to resolve the alarm and thus the consistency with the screeners identify all threat items is key to insuring the effectiveness of the ait systems in the airport operating environment. Consequently we recommended they assess the ait effectiveness as the technology and the screening officers that operate it. Tsa concurred with the recommend nation and recently sent updated information about their efforts to address it which are under review with gio. Third, in december of 2014 we found tsa had not tested the Security Effectiveness of the managed inclusion process. As part of managed inclusion tsa uses multiple layers of security to mitigate the risk associated with the randomly selected passengers in a system designed for low risk passengers, however is the security layers are not working as intended then tsa may not be sufficiently screening passengers. Tsa has tested the security used in manage inclusion and reported them to be effective and gio raised concerns about the detection behavior officers. Finally, regarding tsas involvement in airport worker vetting we found in december 2011 tsa and airports were conducting background checks based on limited criminal history information, specifically tsas level of access to fbi criminal history records was excludeing many state records and in response to the recommendation tsa and the fbi confirmed there was a risk of incomplete information and the fbi since reported expanding the criminal history records it provides to tsa for the Security Threat assessments. In unconclusion, tsa made progress progress, and by working with the fbi to obtain access to more complete criminal background information. Yet more work remains to insure that secure flight ait and managed inclusion are working as tsa intends. Chairman johnson and Ranking Member carper, this concludes my statement and i look forward to your questions. Thank you mrs. Grover. I want to start with you, mr. Roth, and i want to be careful in the way i ask the question. Can you speak to the level of preparation, the level of sophistication of the people on the red team in trying to assess the effectiveness of the system . Thats going to be a very difficult question to answer in this environment. I will say that the testers we used are auditors. These are members of the oig workforce. They dont have any specialized background or training in this kind of work but, again to go into more detail about this it would be problematic. There are a bunch of accountants, and i am one as well. Did we see some airports perform better than others so we can see what does work and what doesnt work . I cant get into the specifics of the actual results of the testing and we have done field work in the area but have not written a report yet. The chronology is we do field work and then analyze the results, sort of do the kinds of comparisons you are talking about and then report them out. I will say the results were consistent across airports. I wont go any further than that. I would like to talk about the number of protocols, and how many are there . I see a briefing and i have seen all the acronyms and the point i am trying to make is how overwhelming the detailed Standard Operating Procedures are for individual tsos. Thank you for the question. Yes, sir our number of Standard Operating Procedures off hand, i dont know the specific number but i can say there is a check point sop, and a checked baggage sop, and sop for the ticket documented checker position, and a known crew member sop, and bdo, and a passenger screening k9 sop, and those are the ones i can think of off the top of my head. There are a lot more. How detailed are they . Very detailed. We are humans and its hard to have the training involved of having somebody be able to follow the sops with the volume that we are trying to achieve its a real problem isnt it . There are a number of very specific procedures in the sop. During the training process the sops are separated out so when you are being trained you would be referring to the sop that applies. Some of the sops dont apply to all the officers across the workforce, like the bdo the sop would a normal tso would not need to know about those sops as well as passenger screening and k9 sop, so while there are a number of them you dont have to be proficient in every one of the sops. My concern in the Precheck Program of what i think is a really good idea and most people would agree its a really good idea, but only if completely followed and if we only do complete background checks. Whoever is best able to answer the question in terms of how many people have been cleared for precheck . I have information for about 100,000, and i am not sure thats accurate. Of the number that have been cleared how many went through a thorough vetting that you would expect versus under pressure to, again, accomplish the objective, and how many have been approved in a watered down process. Mr. Grover . I believe there are about a Million People now that applied for precheck, but there are about 7. 2 Million People who have a known traveller number who would routinely get a check on the boarding pass because of their affiliation with certain groups, such as people who are in the trusted Traveler Programs or dod active duty military, and then of course n. , in addition to that, people could get precheck on a onetime basis through the Risk Assessment or at the airport through random collection from managed inclusion. Talk to me about automated the last thing you talked about automated Risk Assessment . Yes, sir. The first thing that tsa does is they check to see if a passenger is on one of the terrorists watch lists. If they are not, then tsa checks to see if the person is already a known traveler, so signed up with precheck and has a known traveler number. If not then all of the rest of the passengers are screened against a set of risk rules that tsa has designed based on intelligence, and based on certain characteristics of the traveling passenger including information about their flight that that specific flight that they are looking at and the individual can receive the precheck on their boarding pass. Anybody else want to comment on the watering down of the vetting process . Just so you understand, tsa has increased dramatically the use of precheck over the last several years. It has gone from a test kind of a case into a situation where between 40 and 50 of all the traveling public gets an expedited screening whether its through managed inclusion or a government trusted traveler program, or whether as mrs. Grover talked about the Risk Assessment rules. Was it conceived with a full vetting process, how many people received the full vetting process to 40 or 50 of the traveling public qualifying for precheck . The tsa recently celebrated 1 Million People who have the applied for precheck through the vetting program, and as mrs. Grover says there are other trusted traveler program, and its similar to precheck and more expensive than precheck, so those folks get grandfathered in and members of congress and other trusted populations get grandfathered in, and you are talking about 1. 8 Million People per day traveling and you are talking about the significant portion of the flying public is that truly unknown to tsa and and they are waving you through. I am out of time. Thank you for joining us today and for your testimony and for your work. Before we talk about some things that tsa needs to do better, lets talk about give us one thing that they are doing well and give us just one thing they are doing well. John, would you lead us off there, please . Certainly. Thats the hazard that i have in this occupation i only focus on the negative as opposed to the pause tv. We never do that in our jobs. People sitting to my left have the courage to see something that has gone wrong and try to fix it and within the tsa population there are everyday thousands of people that get up and go to work and try to do their best every single day and, again when you only focus on the negatives you forget about the overwhelming majority of that population that really wants to do the right thing and cares about their job. Let me interrupt you for a second. When i i fly a fair amount and not as much as my colleagues, and most of my travel is on trains, and when tsa is doing a good job, polite and courteous, and i thank them and they have no idea who i am, they think i am ron johnson. Daytoday, its probably mixed. But thats something you might want to think of. One of the things that makes people like their job, they know what they are doing is important and they feel like they are making progress. People, we just had an interesting study about a month or two ago, it said why people are leaving, and one of the things is as hard as they work they dont get thanked. Its a little thing and something we want to keep in mind. And when somebody is out of order and doing things out of order, i will tell them, and then i tell them who i many a. Let me get to rebecca, give us one thing they are doing well . I think Risk Security is a good procedure, and as long as there is not risks associated with it 99. 99 of the traveling public simply wants to get from point a to point b safely and security and we need to focus on a way to quickly expedite the passengers and focus on the small percentage of people that pose a threat to the Aviation Security and the only way we can do that is using a Risk Security approach. Once again, i really like the Precheck Program and it just blows away hay from that hay stack so we can get down to the one needle. The other program the viper teams, the prevention and response teams. I really want officers down deep in the airports establishing relationships with a guy whose job is to mop up hydraulic fluid. Hold it there and i will run out of time. Good points. Thank you. Mr. Grover. I want to echo what you previously heard and say riskbased security at tsa has the opportunity to offer tremendous efficiencies, so i would encourage them to go ahead and continue to work on that. Good. Most important element of any organization i ever been part of or seen, its leadership. You have great leadership and you have a fighting chance to be successful and if you dont you are probably doomed. John pistol is a good leader, and he has a lot of respect my me and on a bipartisan fit. We will have a hearing and we are doing our vetting right now. Again, give, if the admiral were here and you had an opportunity to say this would be a top priority for you, what would it be, mrs. Grover . I would go back and echo the remarks that chairman johnson made at the beginning and point out tsas primary mission is to insure Aviation Security. Another important competing mission is to insure the free flow of commerce and passengers, and those goals are intention and so at this time when questions have been raised about whether or not the fundamentals are working properly, its important to have a strong leader in place to be able to guide the organization to figure out how to balance those two elements. Thank you. One piece of advice for the admiral if he is confirmed . More emphasis on protecting the flight deck or cockpit. I think the leadership of the agency is one that really focused on wait times and we need to focus less on wait times and be more concerned about detection rates and giving our officers the time they need to process the passengers and bags in a manner they feel is comfortable, the bag does not contain a weapon or prohibited item. John roth . I have the good portion of meeting with the admiral prior to one of his hearings and i think the biggest thing that he needs to understand, and i think he does understand this, is an acknowledgment that there is a significant challenge here. I am not sure that has been embraced tsa wide, so in order to fix a problem you have to fully understand it, and i think he is committed to doing that. My last question is similar to my first two. Give us some good advice. Come back and pick up one good to do list for us. Give us just one great todo for our list, maybe from confirming a good leader, but give us a good one. Understanding the risks you are attempting to manage, and understand the risk behind the technologying and understand the risk behind the management processes and manage against the risks and if you dont understand the risks you will not be able to manage against it. I will take one out of my statement and that has to do with the fact that we have nobody in the field overseeing the numerous contracts that tsa has engaged in and no way to performance the contracts are acceptable, and technical representatives in the field would let us manage the contracts better so we are not wasting taxpayer dollars. I would pass a law that gives flight attendants more training and authority to have passengers save their lives. Thank you. Mr. Grover . Its i would like you to see the top leaders accountable by asking for data on the effectiveness on their operations. What you cant measure, you cant manage. Thank you. I have to give a shoutout to my tsas in the milwaukee airport, and i travel light but i did attend a boy scouting event and they gave me a package i put in the briefcase, and it was a boy scout knife and they caught it. Again, the vast majority of tsa and tso employees that have a difficult task they do stay alert and protect the public. That was my own experience and i got caught. Un senator urnst. Senator carper touched on a lot of the questions that i really had. I do believe there has been an issue with the lack of consistency, and i think its something that tsa has been suffering for from across the various aspects of the organization, and its mission for a while now. But referenced in all of your testimonies, really across the board, is varying degrees of lack of certainty and consistency with people, processes and operations, and these problems whether its the morale of the organization, the personnel or the daytoday operations they are just so< systemic. You mentioned some ideas on where you would like to see leaders