WASHINGTON — After a year spent racing to improve airport security, the head of the Transportation Security Administration said yesterday that the agency will pay more attention to securing railways, buses, ports and pipelines, according to the Washington Post.
The TSA, which was created after the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001, has been credited with improving the screening of passengers and luggage in the past year. Security experts and government officials point out that loopholes remain in areas such as air cargo security.
James M. Loy, chief of the agency, said now that the agency has met 36 deadlines over the past year to improve airport security, he is assigning officials to start pilot programs to improve security of the nation’s highways, railways, ports and pipelines, which are also under the agency’s mandate but have not received as much attention.
“Inconsistent security measures will only direct terrorists from one transportation mode to another with lesser security,” Loy said in a speech yesterday to transportation officials gathered in Washington. “And it cannot happen in our nation that one mode or one dimension of our system, due to neglect, finds itself as the abandoned mode. We must make sure we have consistency across our entire mode network of our national transportation system.”
Loy said he wanted to form relationships and begin pilot programs with other agencies overseeing highways, railways and ports before the TSA leaves the Transportation Department in March. The TSA is the largest of 21 agencies that will become part of the new Homeland Security Department.
For example, Loy said the TSA is starting a pilot program at ports in Miami and Vancouver this year to screen cruise ship passengers’ luggage at an off-site location before those passengers board airplanes. He said his agency is launching a national program on intermodal preparedness for terrorism, a program under which the TSA would work with local and state agencies to develop response drills in the event of a terrorist attack.
On Tuesday, the Transportation Department announced $148 million in grants to fund port security and bus companies, such as Greyhound, that transport passengers among cities.
Loy also said he wants to improve and expand the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, a pilot program for airport workers who have access to secure areas of the airports.
Isaac Yeffet, former security director for El Al Airlines who now works as a consultant for a security technology firm, said the TSA needs to pay attention to other transportation modes but that the agency still has a long way to go to improve airport security, as well.
“We know aviation is the most attractive target for the terrorist, because the world reaction is so strong and the disaster can be so bad,” Yeffet said. “Terrorists would prefer to use aviation. Why? Because it’s easy for them.”
One area in airport security that remains a major loophole is air cargo that is placed in the belly of commercial airplanes, according to a report released yesterday by the General Accounting Office.
The TSA now scans most checked passenger luggage for explosives by sophisticated machines. But very few cargo shipments that are put on planes are scanned.
The GAO report found that “vulnerabilities” remain in air cargo, and, although the TSA has expanded a program to identify companies that ship goods by plane, additional security measures “are either ongoing and not yet been completed by the TSA or have not been implemented.” The report recommends that the TSA develop an air cargo security plan, with specific deadlines to increase inspections of cargo, background checks on workers who pack and ship goods and scanning for explosives.
Yesterday, Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who requested the GAO report, introduced legislation to improve air cargo security.
TSA spokeswoman Heather Rosenker said the agency was not surprised by the report and that its conclusions were not new.
She declined to comment on whether the agency plans to scan cargo for explosives. “We appreciate having others point things out so we can improve the system,” Rosenker said. “We have done a lot, and we recognize we’re by no means 100 percent on air cargo.”