TSA meets baggage screening deadline

With a day to spare, the head of the Transportation Security Administration said Monday the agency will meet its final congressional mandate on time by screening all checked airline baggage for explosives by Dec. 31.

At a news briefing Monday, TSA Administrator James Loy said that 90 percent of the nation's 429 airports have explosive detection equipment in place to scan bags. At a small number of airports-Loy would not say how many-TSA security personnel will use a variety of manual methods to inspect luggage. These methods will include hand searches, the use of bomb-sniffing dogs, and matching checked bags with airline passengers.

Originally, the 2001 Aviation and Transportation Security Act mandated that all bags be scanned electronically with explosive detection equipment. When it became clear earlier this year that such a directive was virtually impossible to meet by Dec. 31, lawmakers expanded the definition to include the manual methods.

"The devil is in the details," said Stephen Van Beek, senior vice president of policy and strategic development for Airports Council International-North America, the airport industry's largest trade group. "It depends on what you mean by 'screening.' Bag match is not screening at all. If a bomber wants to blow himself up on the plane then matching the bag with him doesn't matter."

During the press conference Loy said that bag matching would be used in conjunction with one of the other manual methods such as a hand search. Later, however, TSA officials said that in some cases bag matching could be used independently.

Nonetheless, Loy said it is important to focus on how much security has improved during the past year. For instance, prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, barely 5 percent of checked bags were screened for explosives. Additionally, the agency has deployed more than 50,000 employees to screen both baggage and passengers. Some of the new employees are temporary workers.

"The skeptics insisted that we couldn't meet the mandates," Loy said. "We proved the skeptics wrong."

While agreeing that TSA has done an impressive job to date, Van Beek worried that the agency could be lulling lawmakers into a false sense of security. Thinking that all bags are being screened, lawmakers may become reluctant to increase TSA funding and ensure that airports can deploy explosive-detection equipment throughout their extensive baggage handling systems, rather than relying on more labor-intensive techniques.

"Is Congress really going to have the appetite to fund the $2 to $3 billion it will take to put this equipment in line?" Van Beek asked. This is especially true as TSA begins to compete for limited funds within the new Homeland Security Department. "They've accomplished a great deal, but right now the story is incomplete," he said.

TSA officials said the agency plans to aggressively pursue the funding it needs to improve transportation security. Loy said he plans to talk with congressional leaders about raising the agency's legislative cap on full-time employees, who currently number 45,000.