The much-beleaguered Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is facing yet another crisis—its second in two weeks—after a new report from the inspector general’s office at the Department of Homeland Security discovered that the agency did not adequately screen 73 airport workers who had been placed on terrorism-related watch lists.
Far from inspiring confidence, the inspector general’s report portrays the TSA as being at the mercy of complex regulations, a deficit of information from other agencies, and bureaucratic entanglements that prevented the agency from verifying that the information they received on aviation workers was accurate.
Under the heading “What We Found” the report describes:
TSA’s multi-layered process to vet aviation workers for potential links to terrorism was generally effective… However, our testing showed that TSA did not identify 73 individuals with terrorism-related category codes because TSA is not authorized to receive all terrorism-related information under current interagency watchlisting policy.
