WASHINGTON, DC — With Memorial Day upon us and the summer travel season fast approaching, The Ripon Society held a breakfast discussion yesterday morning with three members of the Homeland Security Committee that focused on their efforts to reform the screening process at airports and make air travel more efficient and secure.
The Members were U.S. Rep. Will Hurd (TX-23), U.S. Rep. John Katko (NY-24), and U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (TX-10). McCaul serves as Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and kicked off the discussion by talking about the cause of the recent crash of an EgyptAir passenger jet that was traveling from Paris to Cairo, and the implications the crash could have on air travel here at home.
“We won’t really know until the black box confirms everything,” McCaul stated. “Hopefully it will. But I can tell you, it was a very sudden event — a very catastrophic event. There was smoke coming out of the lavatory, the window blew out, and in three and a half minutes it went into a downward spiral. That signals to me that something nefarious happened, although we can’t prove it at this point in time. Interestingly, we haven’t seen a terrorist organization take credit. However, after Sharm el Sheikh, it took about two and a half weeks before ISIS took credit in Dabiq magazine, which is their publication.”
“This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s about protecting American lives and getting the TSA lines down at the airport.”
“We’ve been very focused on what they call last points of departure airports. Cairo has a daily flight going into JFK airport. But they don’t have full body scanners, so in the modern day world of non-metallic IEDs, that concerns me, because a magnetometer isn’t going to pick that up. Their vetting process is also absolutely concerning to me. They don’t use Interpol. They don’t use any of our intelligence to vet their employees. If this was a terrorist event, it would have emanated out of two or possibly three places. One would be Cairo. They went to Cairo, Tunis, Cairo, Paris, and Cairo — all within a span of 24 hours. So the idea of a timing device — a bomb — is real.
“If you think Cairo is bad in terms of airport standards, Tunis is even worse. In Paris, while they have very good technology standards, they just rooted about 70 extremists out of Charles De Gaulle airport. Salafists they call them. I met with the French Ambassador yesterday, and these are people they’re very concerned about. If there were 70 that they weeded out, how many others are there that may still be working there? The new threat to airline aviation is the insider threat. Technology can be its best, but if you have somebody who is corrupted, bribed, or radicalized, they can put a bag on an airplane and they can get into the lavatory. Cleaning crews, food service, anyone with access to the airplane or luggage can pull something like this off.
“Fifty flights are coming out of Paris into the U.S. every day. What keeps me up at night? An inbound flight with a bomb. It would be devastating to Americans. When we get the threat briefings in the classified world, the intent is very much there. Their capabilities are growing, and they are very crafty at how they want to do this. It’s still the crown jewel for the terrorists to bring down an airliner like on 9/11.”
McCaul has served on the Homeland Security Committee since his election to Congress in 2005, and has served as Chairman since 2013. As Chairman, his top priorities include shielding the homeland from the rising threat of terrorist and foreign fighters, securing our borders, and enhancing our cyber defenses. One of his other top priorities is reforming the screening process at airports.
To that end, he noted that the new Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, former Admiral Peter V. Neffenger, testified before the Homeland Security Committee yesterday about the long security lines that have been seen at airports around the country in recent weeks.
McCaul touched on Neffenger’s qualifications and testimony in his remarks. He also discussed the actions that his Committee has taken to ease wait times at America’s airports, and how these actions are being stymied by inaction in the United States Senate.
“He’s new to the job,” McCaul said of Neffenger. “I think he’s a visionary and is capable. But it’s just really bad timing. Why didn’t we see this coming is the question. A big part of the problem – and we’ll be introducing a bill today to deal with their staffing models – is that they don’t consult the airlines and they don’t consult the airport authorities. So we met with them. And I said, ‘There is just no local input on flight times? Or coordination?’ Really fundamental stuff that you would think would already be taking place. But it’s not. So they don’t know where to put the personnel at the right time and the right place.
“We reprogrammed about 800 TSA officers two weeks ago. They’ll be online in late June. Behavior detection officers that roam around airports — 3,000 of them — are going to be put at the front line to screen. We’ll probably have a reprogramming request to move some of their workforce from part-time to full-time. We need to do it now. We are going into Memorial Day weekend. We’ve got the summer season coming up. These lines are absolutely unacceptable, and people are missing flights. Chicago probably got hit the worst. New York probably right behind it. And it’s happening all over the country. People are angry about it. They want Congress to act, and Congress is acting.
“John Katko got two bills passed that would deal with this situation. One would enhance the pre-check program to take the long lines and move them into pre-check. However, the Senate, in its usual fashion, has not acted on any of this… Now, I know that’s a broken record that we hear about — that the Senate doesn’t seem to really do anything. But when it comes to protecting American lives and when it comes to shortening these lines at the airports, it seems to me that they ought to do something. I got asked on NPR, ‘Well, it’s your party that controls the Senate.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah it is – but that doesn’t excuse it.’ I mean they have to do something. This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s about protecting American lives and getting the TSA lines down at the airport.”
Hurd – who served as an undercover officer in the CIA for nearly a decade before his election to Congress in 2014 – agreed.
“I look at the long wait lines as a symptom of inefficiencies,” the Texas lawmaker and former intelligence operative stated. “And if you have inefficiencies, then you’re not doing your job. Admiral Neffenger basically said that. They said they saw Chicago coming and they should’ve been able to prevent it. Having someone of his organizational acumen is important. But here’s the reality. The Chairman was talking about these points of last departure. When I was in the CIA, I was operating an alias. I crisscrossed a number of international boundaries illegally, and it is something that – if you have a committed, smart, well-financed adversary – there are a lot of things you can get around. And that’s what’s scary.
“The scariest scenario for me is if it was a bomb, and it was put on in Cairo, and the Parisians missed the check, then that shows all the points of failures that can be taken advantage of. On the Task Force on Foreign Fighters that I got to sit on that was commissioned by Chairman McCaul and led by John Katko, we learned that our European allies are not doing nearly enough as they should. We’re giving them tens of thousands of names of suspect terrorists. They are not checking known travelers against those databases. They were checking one out of every three travel documents. Looking at the passport and being like, ‘Is the picture the same as the person standing in front of you?’ Something that basic and they were only checking one-third.
“The French were only providing us with folks that had been convicted of terrorism, not suspected terrorists. That’s a very small number if you’re only talking about convicted terrorists. So if we get the right information to the right people at the right time, we keep terrorists on the run and off our shores. And guess what – TSA is the last line of defense, not the first line. I’m just glad a guy like Mike McCaul is at the helm, making sure to keep this Administration accountable, and using his vast experience in order to make sure that all the entities that are responsible for protecting our homeland are doing their job.”
Katko had to leave the breakfast early to Chair a subcommittee hearing on the TSA before the discussion got underway. To view the remarks of Chairman McCaul and Representative Hurd at yesterday’s discussion, please click on the link below:
The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.