WASHINGTON — John W. Magaw, the federal lawman President Bush picked to protect airports from terrorists, was forced to resign yesterday as chief of the Transportation Security Administration because of concern that his tough-cop approach was not working, according to the Washington Post.
The move is a midcourse attempt to rescue the government’s effort to restore confidence in U.S. air travel. Six months after its founding, the TSA faced a budgetary challenge from Congress and near-rebellion by the aviation industry.
Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta asked Magaw to resign yesterday after consulting with the White House, department sources said. Retired Adm. James M. Loy, former commandant of the Coast Guard and the No. 2 official at the TSA, was named to replace Magaw.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that Magaw resigned “for health reasons,” and that “the president very much appreciates the job that John Magaw did, taking an agency that had . . . no form to it and making great strides and progress on behalf of the country.”
A spokesman for the Transportation Department said Magaw was not available for comment.
Loy will take over an agency facing end-of-the-year deadlines for staffing 429 airports with federal baggage screeners and installing bomb-detection equipment. Many experts say the TSA has fallen so far behind its own schedule that it cannot meet the deadlines without causing long delays for passengers.
Even some who welcomed Magaw’s departure questioned whether it would put the deadlines even further out of reach, and noted that new leadership could affect such contentious issues as whether to arm pilots with guns and creating a “trusted traveler” card to speed cooperative passengers through security checkpoints, both of which Magaw opposed.
Loy has a reputation as a savvy politician and good organizer, adept at juggling competing interests. “When he was the commandant, he was able to effectively advocate the Coast Guard’s position but . . . he was able to disagree without being disagreeable,” said Peter Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board. “He was clearly a guy who knew how to manage a large, complex organization.”
Lawmakers, security experts and the aviation community have complained for weeks that Magaw, a former head of both the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, surrounded himself with tough ex-cops who lacked organizational experience and ignored outside advice.
That friction led to Magaw’s ouster, a senior transportation official said. Magaw’s brusque lawman culture alienated too many people who need to be allies, the official said.
“I think Magaw was handed an almost impossible task, but unfortunately he fumbled a number of times,” said Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s aviation subcommittee. “The administration, I think, was very frustrated, and something had to give.”
While Mica worried that the switch could disrupt the agency’s delicate and complex mission, transportation officials said they believe that Loy will rescue it.
“People are happy about this, eager,” the senior transportation official said. “They know Loy’s record, his leadership skills and management skills at the Coast Guard.” The agency will meet its deadlines, the official said.
Magaw’s commitment and his old-fashioned style was admired within the TSA. The appointment of the 66-year-old former Ohio state trooper was welcomed by those who feared that making the TSA part of the Transportation Department — instead of the Justice Department, as some in Congress wanted — would make the agency too tight with the aviation industry.
But as Magaw began hiring former military and law-enforcement officials, criticism mounted that the department didn’t understand aviation issues.
Magaw experienced heart problems in April, just as congressional appropriators began to question the agency’s spending and its plans to grow to more than 70,000 employees from the 30,000 that lawmakers originally envisioned.
In May, Loy retired from the Coast Guard and Mineta — a longtime admirer — appointed him to the No. 2 job at the TSA, where he assumed half the duties of Magaw’s own chosen lieutenant.
Loy wasn’t officially scheduled to start work until today, and speculation that he would take over had died down. So TSA employees reacted with disbelief shortly after lunchtime yesterday when they were summoned by e-mail to quick gatherings for a terse announcement by supervisors.
“Magaw is out, Loy is in, we’ll get back to you,” is how one TSA staffer summarized the message. Already swamped with preparations for two hearings on Capitol Hill next week — both of which promised to be excruciating for the agency — the workers wondered, “Now what changes?” the staffer said.
For starters, many involved with remaking airport security said they expect to have more of a voice under Loy.
The new management will “enable this agency to get back on course so it can fulfill its mission,” said one airline industry official. Under Magaw, the TSA had frustrated airlines with poor communications, regulations that were applied inconsistently from place to place, and slow decision-making, the airline official said.
“We always had trouble getting any response from his department,” said Jeff Zack, a spokesman for the Association of Flight Attendants.
In March, when the TSA changed the list of items passengers were prohibited from carrying on board, flight attendants learned of the move from news reports, he said.
Airport managers around the country have expressed outrage about feeling ordered around by the TSA. They maintain that there is no way the agency can meet its deadlines, even under new leadership.
“We’ve met with Mr. Magaw on a number of occasions and found him to be a sincere and honest man,” said Kevin E. Cox, an official at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. “The issue is bigger than one individual. . . . We are completely supportive of the agency and the mandate. It’s just a bad deadline.”