NeW leAder TApped fOr SecurITy AGeNcy
WASHINGTON — A U.S. Senate panel on Thursday approved the nomination of Peter Neffenger to lead the Transportation Security Administration, days after its acting administrator was reassigned amid reports that airport screeners failed to detect mock weapons in tests.
Neffenger’s nomination, approved on a voice vote by the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, will be taken up by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday before it goes to the full Senate for confirmation.
Neffenger, a Coast Guard vice admiral, was nominated by President Barack Obama in April.
The committee’s vote followed the leak of a Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s report that found TSA agents failed in 67 out of 70 tests by undercover officers trying to sneak fake weapons past security checkpoints.
The TSA was created to tighten travel security following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
REUTERS
(TSA officers), and they know what the response protocols are. So couple that with the fact that they can devise and construct and conceal these devices with the luxury of not having to worry about a (military) drone overhead or they’re not out in a hut in Yemen someplace.”
Pistole came to the TSA as a career FBI agent and immediately set out to transform it from a wall of airport security guards into an intelligencereliant agency. When terrorists try to sneak into the country or onto U.S.bound flights, there is a terrorist watch list. When plots are hatched, there are informants and a vast network of communication intercepts.
“Compared to a reallife terrorist situation, what’s missing from these covert tests is the ability to collect any intelligence,” Pistole said. “That is often the most important part of detecting and deterring a putative terrorist. When you take out the whole intelligence element of it, it really skews their ability to get through.”
He pointed to a pair of bombs built in Yemen and bound for the United States in 2010 that were intercepted based on Saudi intelligence. And in 2012, the second terrorist to attempt to use an underwear bomb, Ibrahim alAsiri, was foiled by a doubleagent inside alQaida’s Yemen branch, he said.