producing and using muster gas, that gives nonstate actors the potential to initiate a nuclear war. i think that's dangerous, so i think we should clean that, clean that up. another comment in consulting with allies over the next six months in asia and in europe, they're very concerned in the way we talk about our nuclear modernization. they think it's excessive and talk about limited warhead scenarios in perphery of russia and china. but if you're in the baltics or

poland, even japan, it's your neighborhood. so that's why i think there's a thirst and an opportunity to work together with the coalition of countries, nuclear and nonnuclear to get us back from what bill perry calls the brinker, the tipping point of the new potential qualitative arms' race. >> with that, unfortunately we have to close the panel before giving round of applause to speakers, i would ask you to please stay in the seats and if speakers, secretary is going to give remarks and with that you can applaud. >> thank you for a great discussion. as i said at the beginning of the day, we have tried to put

together a very substantive and thought-provoking program. we've only skin the surface of some of the issues heer today but we will back to explore several of them in greater depths at events like this one on the pages of arms control today our monthly journal where you would find, if you looked at that you will find several articles about issues that we have been discussing today. and i just want to pick up on a point that andy weber brought up that we are in a challenging time for nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation and that's going to require creativity and persistence, there are new challenges that we are facing, the world, and it's going to take your credittivity, common effort with organizations and experts and i've learned a lot today. i hope the rest of you have learned a lot also.

before we close i want to thank our colleagues that make our annual meeting possible and in particular i want to thank david and gina as well as dean who provider generous sponsorships, so thank you david and gina and dean. [applause] >> i also want to welcome the newest members of board of directors who were elected this spring as we prepared for this meeting, and those incoming are debra with the preventive at stanford and dr. philip coyle, somebody named andy weber and also greg kilman who is senior fellow at the arms association and has been for the last seven

years, he is retiring for a second time from service but he's going to be back on the board of directors and look forward to working with with greg in the months ahead. i want to welcome director tony flemming and i want to announce that we have a new staff member joining us next month, our incoming chief editor for arms control today, he's the veteran editor with the chicago tribune, bloomberg news, world report, that's terry who i think is still here this afternoon. welcome, terry. [applause] >> and for all of you registered online or had trouble online you'll know that shervin was mind the logistics for the meeting.

i want to thank shervin for her help. and finally we have a post event reception at 5:00 p.m. if you have enough stamina. it's just a few blocks away. there's a map on the card on the table and we look forward seeing many of you there at 5:00 p.m. to wind down and talk more about the issues that we have discussed here today. thanks for joining us. thanks for our panelists here and earlier today and thanks for the support for arms support association. we are adjourned. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

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>> the morning on c-span2 on improving security issues in u.s. airports, live at 9:30 the senate returns for work on the 2017 defense policies and programs bill. >> madame secretary, we proudly give 72 of our delegates to the next president of the united states. [cheers and applause] >> today senator bernie sanders

holds a campaign rally here in washington. earlier in the day he'll meet with president obama at the white house. see the rally live at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. democratic national committee platform hearings continue today in washington, the hearings will help finalize the platform for the party's convention in philadelphia this july. we will join them live starting at 9:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3. >> amy parnes is white house reporter and also coauthor of hrc, state secrets and the rebirth of hillary clinton, she's joining us on the phone here in washington. thank you for being with us. >> thanks for having me, steve. >> how does hillary clinton go from making history as presumptive nominee to the next step bringing together senator sanders and his supporters moving ahead to the general election?

>> that's a very hard task, what you're going to see is sort of coming together. first she has to get with senator sanders in a room the way she did with then senator barack obama where they can sort of hash out their issues, their differences and make peace and then she has to rely on him to sort of take that message and go forward and help bring the party together and i think a lot of that will come also with the meeting tomorrow with president obama at the white house, bernie sanders is meeting with the president. part of that is also trying to bring the party together and in order to defeat donald trump. >> we remember that meeting eight years ago, brokered by senator here in washington between then senator obama and then senator clinton. who would broker any meeting between president obama and bernie sanders, maybe elizabeth warren from massachusetts? >> definitely, she would be a good person to do this, she's very popular with progressives,

obviously. she's remained natural in this whole thing. so a lot of people would see her as a likely party to do so and that's one of the reasons why also she's being talked about as a running mate for hillary clinton because she's neutral and hasn't dirtied herself and sanders supporters to the hillary side. >> what's the process moving ahead for her and her campaign, what would she be looking for? >> well, there are two, one that's basically aligned with elizabeth warren or brown, someone that's aimed at progressives that would lure the supporters to clinton but at will have of people that people like senator from virginia, i spoke to clinton having aits --

surrogates that secretary clinton would lead and he's smart and they get along and he can help lure some of the independents and even some moderate republicans over. so i think that's still where the clinton are and why not be risky, this is such an unconventional cycle, why not double down and have someone like elizabeth warren and why not make gender an issue against donald trump. you know, there are two on this. >> in their speeches last night, both hillary clinton and bernie sanders taking shot at each other and how nasty the campaign is going to be over the next couple of months. >> it's going to be graduate graduate -- graduate grueling, a message throughout much of the primary but what you saw last

week and last night the foreign policy speech she gave last week where she sort of labeled donald trump as unfit and and last night is she found her voice in sort of going after trump, you know, capturing the moments, the nomination and pif toll and important that was for a woman and going after him rather and, you know, really sort of giving people a taste of what she might be like in a get them election. we haven't seen that side of her . i think we are going to see a different kind of clinton, gloves off. >> your book focused as secretary of state and we are waiting report from the fbi or any report, we did see the ig report from the the state department, is the clinton

campaign worried about what's going to happen next? >> i think there's always worry about you don't know what she was going to drop but i think they feel -- of course, the e-mail scandal controversy has haunted her for much of the campaign even before she announced. so it's always going to be there, but i think they've kind of come to terms with it. they feel that they have a grasp on it and it's full-speed ahead against donald trump. they don't feel so comfortable obviously because he is where he is because he knocked out all of opponents and clearly appealing to lots of people, but i think they feel good about their chances in a general election versus trump. >> let me go back to the meeting between president and bernie sanders, what your reaction issued by the white house press secretary, certainly a lot-substance in the statement than past readouts from the administration? >> the president has been

sidelined and, you know, hasn't really been choosing a side but he has in a way. he sort of signaled that he wants hillary clinton to be do nominee and would support her and obviously stake right now, legacy is on the line and secretary clinton is the one to carry the torch forward, you know, they formed, i wouldn't say they're good friends but they formed a real bond when she served on cabinet and he asked her to stay a little longer and served as secretary of state in second term and she refused obviously because she wanted to pursue other things and, you know, but i think they respect each other and i think he's willing to go forward and give it his all and campaign for her and he's a great -- he's great on and great camp inner and chief for her, i think. >> wouldn't you love to be in the room? >> every reporter would pay to be there.

>> what do you think the president will tell him? >> he will find out what he wants, the issues on the minds of people going forward and will take into consideration but i think he's going to say, come on, senator sanders, your time -- you ran a great campaign but it's time to step aside and, you know, let hillary clinton fight donald trump. >> and finally, are the clinton campaign staffers prepared for what donald trump will unload in the weeks and months ahead? >> i think that they are ready for it. they've seen what he has done so far, talked about everything and they're prepared, they are preparing right now for monday and that could be a good day for president obama to maybe come out and endorse her on that day and who knows what they'll counter with, but they're ready for the speech that he's about to unleash on monday and i think -- they know that this is an unconventional cycle and they're ready for almost anything that

she's going to throw at them. >> amy parnes who covers white house and also author of hrc, rebirth of hillary clinton, thank you for being with us. >> thank you. >> tsa administrator peter neffengre testified on airport security, this is an hour and 45 minutes. [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] >> good morning, this pleating will come to order. i apologize for my tardiness. what should have taken ten minutes, took an hour. i want to welcome the witnesses. i'm trying to catch my breath. i appreciate your testimony. obviously there's a fair amount of interest in this hearing. i think at the heart of what is

currentlyialing ts au is the fact that we have two completely contradictory goals. on the one hand we want to get passengers to flights on time and at the same time we need 100% security. all of this is being driven, we have to understand the root cause of the problem is islamic terrorist. we have spent about $95 billion just on tsa alone. the cost of islamic terror to the world, civilized world is enormous. so if you want to talk about addressing the root cause of the problem is we have got to defeat islamic terrorist where they reside, but again, i appreciate all the witnesses' testimony, the fact that we consciously made the decision to increase the number of tsa workers,

obviously didn't work out very well. i appreciate the fact we are beefing up training, effort, all are positive signs. i appreciate the fact that neffenger you are working hard with the inspector's office and comes clear in testimony. i just apologize for being late. do ask opening remarks, my written opening statement be included in the record and with that i will turn it over to senator carpenter and i will catch my breath. >> mr. chairman, i'm glad you are here. i know the feeling. thank you all for joining us this morning. we are delighted. this is going to be a good hearing. this is going to be a real good hearing, this is a timely hearing. the transportation administration was created in the attacks of september 11th, we are understand the agency was created to combat.

having said that, though, we often fail to acknowledge undeniable tension alluded by the chairman of the core of tsa's mission. we ask tsa to screen millions of passengers and luggage carefully every day to prevent explosives, dangerous items from finding the way our board in aircraft. on the other hand, millions of passengers we have been among them, want to get on board our airplanes on time and without the aggravation that security screening can often times bring. giving the long wait times we recently witnessed, we know that it's difficult to strike the right balance between security and convenience. some might even be tempted that we can't have both, that effective security measures bring with them inconvenience, lines and even missed flights. i disagree.

i believe some are imminent solvable. first we need to understand the scope and genesis. after inspector general produce a very troubling report last year, vulnerabilities at tsa points, neffenger took steps and have long await for some, there are other reasons why tsa has struggled lately and we will talk about a couple of them. resource constraints have played a significant role. tsa is being asked to do more with less. leadership in some airports have been a major factor staffing has dropped by more than 10% since 2011. at the same time staffing has gone down and passenger volume has increased.

tsa must handle growth and air travel specially that occur during busy travel season like we see now and other times during the year. the good news is they have moved quickly without compromising security. is there more that we can do, sure there is. efforts are already beginning to air fruit. but security, let me just say this, security in our airplanes, security in airports is a shared responsibility. it cannot all be on tsa, admirable neffenger, congress needs to assure that tsa has resources it needs for mission. i just want to say, folks, you're going a good job with

respect to funding levels for tsa and the bills move us and move tsa in the right direction. we need to enact those bills, but airport and air carriers have a important responsibility to reduce wait times as well. i've been very encouraged by the willingness of private stakeholders with whom we've met to step up and contribute resources and ideas to solve this problem. a longer-term solution is being demonstrated, we just talked about. and in the spirit of find out what works and do more of that, tsa launched a similar initiative last month, innovation lane, there's a couple of them down in atlanta. i'm sure we will hear more about them today in partnership with tsa and airlines. and while that concept shows great promise over the long-haul airline, they've taken a number of other steps that can make a difference now such as reassigning employees to help tsa in some places.

perhaps the most important step we can take to continue to dramatically grow participation and traveling programs like precheck that speed the vetting and screening of vetting passengers. and i'm encouraged by steps that tsa has taken so far to increase precheck enrollments, enrollmented from 3500 people per day getting into precheck a year ago to roughly 16,000 a day last -- the end of last month. we look forward to learning more about additional ways we encourage enrollment in this program. in closing, t important to keep in mind that there are still very real security threats to aviation system. they're not going away. these guys aren't stupid. today's solution may not work tomorrow. those seeking reck havoc, we

constant adjust airport screens and on airplanes. finally, we need to stay on top of growing travel so tsa are not caught like we were recently dealing dealing with challenge. leaderships a lot like integrity, simpson used to say, integrity, if you've got it, nothing matters. the same is true in leadership, we are blessed and grateful for your willingness to serve. the burden is not just for you, your team to bear, this is a shared responsibility. let's roll. thank you. >> thank you, senator carpenter. the commission to swear witnesses, if you'll all rise and raise your right hand. you swear the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god. please be seated.

>> our first witness is admirable peter neffenger, transportation security administration, tsa, manages workforce of nearly 60,000 employees, responsible for security operations at approximately 440 airports throughout the united states. prior to joining tsa he served as the 29th of u.s. coast guard. >> thank you, chairman, ranking member car per and distinguished members of the committee. i sincerely appreciate oversight in tsa and counterterrorism mission. i traveled to observe operations and meet with our employees and they are truly impressive, patriotism, sense of duty and commission to national security mission is complemplary, when i appeared before the committee one year ago i commit today addressing the challenges we faced in our security mission

while positions tsa for the future. to that end over the past 1 # 1 months we have taken a deliberate transformation of tsa. strategy included three complementary elements, first focus on security effectiveness in the wake of inspector general's findings that was our fundamental mission and most important mission. second, resourcing to meet demand and holding ourselves accountable and we are supporting our front line officers in critical counterterrorism mission. we renewed focus on security, we revised resolution and we've retooled our performance measures to ensure we stay focused on mission. with congress' help we overhauled our approach of training in all levels of agencies including leadership training with initial course offerings focused on training

security officers. the intensive training enables tsa to achieve consistency and develop common culture and instill core values an raise perform performance across the entire workforce. we are making investments in new technology, converting part time officers to full-time, shifting screeners and k-9 resources and began hiring fire marshalls and we are conducting our operations more effectively. we completed a review of personnel policies and practices which led to a number of significant changes and we are designing a human capital management system to address recruitment, development, promotion, assignment and retention. third, we are transforming tsa in fundamental ways to ensure enterprise approach and to address real and sustained terrorist threat. we reinvigorated partnerships

and we are working closely with congress to address the ongoing security mission demands. we are overhauling management practices across the agency, we conducted an independent review of program and developing a program bucketing process add modernizing and taking advantage of existing technology to establish automated lanes and check points. we recently installed two automated lanes and became operational last month in atlanta. initial results so dramatic improvement. we have similar projects with other major airlines and airports in the coming months. this year tsa will screen some 742 million people projected by comparison, tsa screened 643 million people. so our approach to screening requires a similar transformation, we are meeting that challenge head on. with the support of congress for

recent programming request, we brought on board 768 new tsa officers, federal security directors have redeployed detection officers as needed to screening functions, we placed additional k-9 teams in highest volume airports and activated to serve airports of greatest need and we are begin to go see positive results. nationwide over memorial day 99% of passengers waited less than 30 minutes in standard security lines, 93% of passengers waited lest -- less than 15 minutes. over that 6-day period we screened 10.3 million passengers, that's a 3% increase over the same period last year and we did so effectively and in a way that protected the system. four factors that contributed to our ability to move people efficiently and effectively through check points, first the new resources that we received from congress through the reprogramming and other

proactive efforts have allowed us to effectively open more check point lanes at peak point periods. second, strang points in largest airports in the system, if you prevent problems you don't have problems that cascade throughout the system. third, we established command center, this allows us to focus daily on screening operations, hour by hour at the seven largest airports to see what the challenges are as they develop and move resources in time to adjust those challenges. we now expanded that to the top 20 largest airports. this is a full-time command center that will stay in operation. finally we are operating dale -- daily operations from the center to ensure collaboration, information sharing and real-time movement of necessary resources. none of this would have been possible without the tremendous

efforts of officers and they deserve our thanks. we are not celebrating and not letting up. passenger volume will remain high throughout the summer and will need to continue resources aggressively. tsa airlines, airports and travelers can improve the passenger experience while maintaining security. i would like to thank the airlines an airports to hire nonsecurity officers in the airports. we have to continue to make sure we meet the demands placed upon us. we look forward to working with congress and developing new approaches to aviation security. our front-line officers are focused on security mission. it's up to us to ensure that they have what they need. thank you for the opportunity to appear today. thank you for the committee support. >> our next witness is john roth. before joining the office of the inspector general he served as director of office of criminal

investigations at the food and drug administration. >> thank you, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify this morning. about a year ago i testified before this committee at a hearing about tsa, during that hearing i testified that we remained concern about tsa's ability to execute the mission. at the time i testified that tsa's reaction to vulnerabilities that audits uncovered the failure of gravity of the information. since that time we have conducted more audits and released more reports that challenged management and operations. however, i believe that we are in a different place now than we were last june. as a result of audit reports and vigorous response by dhs, tsa is now in the first time in memory critically assessing its deficiencies in light, it appears to be addressing vulnerabilities.

however, we should not minimize the significance of challenges that tsa faces and the risk that failures bring. the stakes are enormous. no where it's more evident than in the area of aviation security. tsa cannot afford to miss a genuine threat and yet terrorists only need to get it right once. ..

in fact we have a round of covert testing schedule for thie summer and are presently developing a testing protocols. we will report our results to this committee as well as other committees of jurisdiction. we applaud tsa's effort is risk-based passenger screening such as precheck because it allows ts the user to focus on high-risk or unknown passengers. however, while reliance on intelligence is necessary we believe psa in the past has overstated the effectively lots on intelligence in the risk-based approach. the hard truth is that the vast majority of times the identities of those who commit terrorist acts are simply unknown to or misjudged by the intelligence community. what this means is there's no easy substitute for the checkpoint. the checkpoint must message with the intelligence driven by the nature of terrorism means each and every passenger must be screened in some way.

unfortunately tsa made in greater budget assumptions in 2014 and 2015 about the impact the risk-based security would have on its operations. but administrations 2016 budget, tsa believed that could reduce the screener workforce by more than 1600 screeners, full-time employees. staving risk-based security requires your resource i would allow tsa to transition to a smaller workforce. likewise, in the administrations fy '2015 request tsa as for reduction of over 1400 full-time screeners based on claim deficiencies and risk-based security. however, our testing and audits found tsa had been enduring unacceptable risk in its approach, tsa has limited some of the more dangerous practices, eliminate some of the more dangerous practices that we identified. we believe even if tsa had not changed its approach to screening for plan declines in screen workforce was too

optimistic. as a result the long lines we are seeing in the summer are not mysteries. because of decisions it made in 2014 they have fewer screeners and are facing more passenger volume than ever before. we will continue to examine tsa's programs and operations the report our results. in addition to the new round of penetration testing we are looking at, we are in the process of kentucky a number of audits and inspections. including the inspections. including a look at the federal air look at the federal air marshal service, the use of behavioral detection officers and tsa's oversight of the patches used to get access to secure parts of the or. this concludes my testimony. i welcome any questions you may have. >> our next witness is this jennifer grover, director of homeland security and justice team at the government accountability office of gao. in his position she oversees the review of programs and operations. ms. grover? >> good morning chairman

johnson, country, other senators and staff in recent weeks travelers, members of congress and others have raised concerns about long airport security lines. as you both noted, one of the challenges inherent in tsa's mission is a tension between taking the time to do the job right and nothing passengers to as efficiently as possible. first and foremost tsa is responsible for ensuring transportation security. my statement will focus on to point. first, changes that tsa made to improve the security effectiveness of its expedited screening programs which likely contributed today's long lines. second, new information showing tsa should improve its oversight of screener performance to ensure that screeners are carrying out their tasks accurately. first regarding expedited screening. as we've heard already this morning, tsa has made recent changes to tighten security that

likely contribute to the long screening lines. november 2015 tsa modified its risk assessment rules which reduced the number of passengers that were automatically designated as low risk. at the same time tsa cut back significantly on issues of managed inclusions which is used to divert non-precheck passengers into the precheck lanes when they would otherwise be underused. tsa still uses the program at airports where passenger screening canines are available but has discontinued its use otherwise. according to tsa these changes were necessary to improve the security of expedited screening programs and result in a 20% decrease in the number of passengers receiving expedited screen. despite the concerns of tsa has made gao continue to be concerned about the effectiveness of the remaining managed inclusion program. we await the results of tests that tsa's plan to evaluate the

security effectiveness of the program as we recommended in december 2014. my second point is about tsa's oversight of its screener performance. our recent review of screener training and testing showed that tsa could improve its oversight of the screeners of italy to identify prohibited items. tsa conducts tests to monitor screen performance. however, with a much of the testing data was missing over multiple years. for example, screeners are tested on the ability to identify images of the items hidden in carry-on baggage and tsa policy requires fsd is what the local tsa officials to send the data to headquarters. in every year from 2009-2014 tsa headquarters did not receive any of this data for a substantial percentage of airports. we recommend tsa ensure that fsd

complete imaging results to headquarters as required for airports across the country. to confirm the screen image test is being carried out as intended to allow for future national analysis of the data for trends that could inform screener training. we also found that tsa's covert test results are not reliable. fsd's conduct covert at airports. and abroad in a contract last year to individually perform the same test, the contractor obtained noticeably different results. specifically screeners perform more poorly on the test conducted by the contractor. tsa is in the process of determining the root cause for the differences but initial results suggest fsd's may have trouble obtaining anonymous role players to keep the tests cover.

tsa has breathed its fsd is on the results and continues to work with the contractor to examine the issue. in conclusion tsa has taken positive steps to for the security effectiveness of its expedited screening programs. though these changes likely contribute to today's long screening lines. yet more work remains for tsa to ensure that screeners are carrying out tasks accurately tsa should improve its oversight of screener performance by more effectively collecting and monitoring screener testing data and by assuring the reliability of its covert testing data. chairman johnson, ranking member carper, this concludes my statement. i look forward to your questions. >> i appreciated it and it' it't because we produced unintended we will limit questions for five minutes and i'll start. administrator neffenger, putting an awful lot of weight on the expedited screening procedures, tsa precheck, that i think of what method do you use for what we know about what is the

fastest throughput of the program speak with the difference between expedited and a standard link, roughly at the g7 efficient team working you can move about 250 people per hour through a preacher going. it's about 150, 160 per hour through standard link. >> it's pretty speedy significant improvement. >> we know the number of people that have signed up for precheck but we don't know how often they travel. what percent of passengers currently are in tsa precheck? >> on a daily day-lewis -- daily basis we move come accommodation of people who have signed up for precheck, people were in cleared populations like department of defense the individual the security clearances and the like and a very small piece based upon rules. >> we are all concerned about the algorithm, correct? this is what inspector general and gao were concerned about that. i just call the management

inclusion. >> i wouldn't call that management inclusion. that was the practice of taking random people and randomly assigning. we don't do that anymore. these are people who looked at through a rules-based calculation, assigned a risk value. again it's a very subtle population. >> you are looking at that? >> yes, sir speed and there are about 200 adjudicated that waiting to be approved by tsa. in milwaukee people can't sign up and get their application, they can't apply. that's about a 45 day waiting period where are you at in terms of improving those so more people can sign up for precheck speak with we have been working with them. we have all the capacity we need to improve the. as long as we get a completed application, you don't have to fill up the standard form we also offer security clinton. we get a completed application that we can process tha the inse of seven days and that's the turnaround spewing they are waiting at the milwaukee

airport. that application office is clogged spirit i'll check on that one. >> i would appreciate that. where are we at in terms of new technology? you talked about two new automated lanes in atlanta. can you describe those in greater detail? >> these are two lives, existing department, equipment that i first saw when i visited london heathrow airport last year. if you think of the current system is a fully manual system. you have to push your bag along the table, engaged the conveyor belt and then you've got to pull you back out the other side. it's a single file system. you in line behind whoever is in front of you at until their stuff moves through. so first it's an automated conveyor belt so it's an automated row system. automatic been returned. tthere are five stations at whih individuals can stand the you can defy people at the top up to the checkpoint. as you put things and push on the conveyor belt you can cycle right in. so there's no waiting for the person in front of you.

on the other end it has an automatic dover. the pins have rfid technology and that makes it much easier to divert about if there's an image of concern and pulls the person uzbek has been covered off the line. bottom line is we are seeing just the initial phase of property these delays about a 30% increase in throughput at the same level of effectiveness. it also allows us to be much more effective on our end to gao's point, one of the problems we have is getting real-time right now feedback to an officer on their performance. this does that the it allows us to do real-time performance monitoring. >> are you get better detection technology works better than the ait machines? are you going to? >> what we're looking at is the next phase would be to incorporate so-called cat scan technology, computer tomography technology and the checkpoint. we have a couple of approved systems that we can put in the

we are looking to prototype, pilot one of those this summer. that gives us a much more defined the ability to see what we're looking at. it's a system we use in checked baggage and is a substantial improvement over the extra speed and we held a hearing about the dogs at dhs and the ability, the nose of the dock of the technology that can be it. where are you in terms of trying to beef up the number of k-9 units we have? >> tsa itself operates a little over 300 k-9 teams of which 148 have been trained to do passenger screening. my goal is to get the rest of those train for passenger screening. that will take another nine months or so. i would like to see up to about 500 dog teams. that would allow the to address the highest volume airports in a very efficient way speed and i want to be very supportive of those efforts. senator carper. >> thank you, mr. chairman. apple, want to go back to a

conversation you and i had several weeks ago. there have been long waits, a lot of frustration at o'hare. i urge you to go there. to see for yourself what had happened and what had gone wrong. i want to thank you for going. tell us what you found them tell us what has been done and what lessons that you learned, have you been able to take away and to spread to other airports, two of the security stations across america? >> thing so that entity for the opportunity to talk about that early to. there's a couple pieces to the answer to the first is what happened in chicago, that was truly in my opinion and in my investigation, he was just a failure to get enough lanes open in advance of what was anticipated significant increase in volume for the day. it was sort of the first as a volume season. we saw about a 13% increase in volume from the previous week. we didn't have enough lanes open, and once you are behind it is challenging to get your. the first thing we did was to

look at what caused that it did make some immediate operational changes, opened the checkpoint earlier, making sure the lanes are fully staffed when you do. we put a new temporary management team in which i'm pleased to say within 24 hours will return the situation around and we haven't seen a repeat of that. what we learn out of that that is you do need to pay attention to these large hub airports. out of that really came the development of a daily national command center focus on screening operation. we've always focused on our deadly operations but you need to look at screenings, checkpoint by checkpoint of the major airports across the country. in this case we decide to focus for the memorial day weekend on the seven largest airports, the big multi-hub airports where all the traffic originates essential because you startup problems in one you'll cascaded across the system. by doing that are taking the resources we are able to get into place as result of the

reprogramming overtime hours, new hires as well as converting people from part-time to full-time, we dramatically increased the staffing available and simply watch it very carefully on a daily basis to make sure it is applied to the right location. the lesson learned was you have to be laser focus on actual operations airport by airport at the the largest airports. you can't let yourself get behind it once you're behind it's like a traffic jam. it's very challenging to clear it out. >> i talked earlier about leadership, i think we are blessed with leadership that you provide. talk to us about your ability to put around to the leadership team you did in your chili tsa. and also the flexible you have to put in place with its own. or other airports, the leadership team so that ensure we don't see that kind of jam ups and confusion we witnessed at o'hare spill i've made a number of the changes over the course of the past year. some just in the past few months. it's critical you get the right leaders in the right places.

for the first time ever we now have a chief of operations are tsa. before that we had a series of operational programs that, in my opinion, were not fully integrated. and as a result you can have a problem that arises without a vision of how to deal with that. we have a chief of operations know. i have a new deputy administrator and avenue chief of staff and a new head of my screeninmyscreening operations . doesn't make a substantial difference and we made some field changes are necessary to ensure the right people. >> thank you. that chairman asked about the issue of a project backlog of hundreds of reports that there was a backlog in the folks that actually vet the precheck applicants, though not enough of the and it was delayed as much as 40 days doing that and i think i just heard you say earlier in response to the chairman's question that is a

seven day wait and that's not exporter come is that correct? >> we fix the problem with respect including the contractors people who do the vetting work. we've got a process in place but we can handle anybody they get this and turn it around quickly. we are now working with a contractor on expanding the number of mobile enrollment centers ensuring we balance their staffing workload so that they provide staffing to the highest volume location. >> very briefly tell us what do we need to do? we want you to do your job. we want your folks to do their jobs. what we -- what do we need to do to make you more effective? >> that's a great open ended question. congress has been excellent supportive this past year. you've helped us to grow back some stuff that we needed. oddly tsa is more than it needs to be to meet the demands of the system. it was significantly helpful to get those 65 people that we were slated to lose back on the books. the tsa academy has been a

cultural game changer for us, and more important this reprogramming, another one approved pending before the house right which would allow us to bring on additional staff and allow us to continue to convert more part-time to full-time. those are important because that helps us to address the challenge of just giving lanes man at peak periods. the second piece is this very real need to transform the system. i mentioned this to automated lanes. that's an example of the way in which we need to modernize and bring tsa into a 21st century. this is the technology that doesn't exist. is using existing technology. i have acknowledging i.t. backbone systems that have to be upgraded. i need to connect my citizens and within the curly connected. i can't see the health of a system because i've independent operating entities that can't be networked together because of cybersecurity reasons. and i neede need to do a betterf

giving real-time performance of david on my workforce that i currently can do. it's a very manual system right now. so those are the kinds of things i can to bring for to congress over the coming weeks to show, i think of a good plan forward and a good strategy for addressing the. it will help us address a lot of the concerns the inspector general and gao have raised with respect to performance, and there would've been critical in informing how we go forward. >> continue to let us know how we can help spam yes, sir. >> we are going to do question in order of arrival. senator tester. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for your service, administered enough and year. and i want to thank you for your employees. they do about the fight ended with one exception these folks have been very, very, very professional and that's over the last 10 years so thank you very much not only for you but for the people who serve under you. i want to talk about advanced imaging technology for second we talked about it before and they need to get to point to the

country. could you talk about i know you're under budget and the mighty something we could do as it applies to whole body scanners but could you talk about your progress on getting full body scan is to the airports that don't have imperfect? how is that progress going? >> we have identified a number we need to do that. let me preface it by saying i agree with you. i think it's important that we get that capability everywhere we needed. because we know that terrorist groups are focused on the ability to get into the system. >> the weakest link. >> we are working through the administration right now, department of the initiative afford what we hoped would be a request i would allow us to purchase the additional equipment we need. not anyplace except one but whatever we can put one, that's our goal. >> for the gao and the ig, have you guys done any research into

the effectiveness of magnetometers versus full body scan and whether we should be concerned by the side of the dais with airports that only have magnetometers speak with during our covert testing we sort of saw both types of machinery and without getting into details that is a cause of concern of not having an ait any specific silty speed and did you find the same? >> they do different jobs so they're looking for different things, and they have different purposes. there is a cost if you don't have an ait. >> and administrator neffenger come to talk about a new scanners that you're working on now that would be more effective. which is good for you. i always worry about scanners. i know if i'm getting radiated or not. do you guys, do you have protections, are there parameters you worked under for health situation? >> the scanners that i was

referring to are really the ones that are, that check to carry on baggage spirit you said it would be similar technology apply to us. >> if i did that i misspoke. that technology we are currently using is not penetrated is just a radio waves bouncing off. >> when i get on an airplane i look out and the passengers that were through the magnetometer or the full body scan, but as people who work for airlines, people work for the airport. can you tell me do they go through the same procedures as the passenger? >> very few go through the the same procedures as passengers. this is a population that is already been vetted against criminal databases and terrorist databases. some airports do screening in the form of magnetometers and what might be called a stadium check out the back and then they subject to random screening throughout the day. the passenger screening

environment is unique to the passengers spin more intense than the people who work there, which is a? >> remember, we know something about these individuals that have badged access. you are doing continues abetting of those individuals against terrorist databases and betting against the criminal databases. >> tell me what recurring betting means. what does that mean? spent every single day if you hold a badge you are continuously betting against the terror screen base and the categories that the that database. >> so you're comfortable with, as administered of the tsa you're comfortable with where we are at on those employers and the folks who work quick step on what to do. if you're not comfortable -- >> i think we need to keep our eye on the inside a population. if you have a trusted population you need to verify the trust and do it in a way that is designed

to deter, detect and disrupt. >> when you find contraband item with those employers, do you keep a record of the? >> we do. and just, contraband items, we work with local law enforcement to deal with whatever conflict that might result from the. >> do you have the ability, if you find somebody that has contraband items, to get them terminate? >> yes, sir, we do. >> thank you. >> senator enzi. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and i thank you for the testimony that you've done. i go home pretty much every weekend to wyoming which means flying, and i tried to get into some businesses are there because i found out that believe this is that i'm not familiar with looks pretty simple and to take a look at it. so that's probably what we see as we go through airports. but i am worried about the

management at the security points themselves. not for whether they are stopping the bad stuff or not, but whether they're getting people through the lines. several times i found a manager at one of these checkpoints and ask them some questions, like why they had three people training one person on how to look at a driver's license, instead of having two of those people helping somewhere else. i also find to check podiums for one line to be able to get through the screening. so they are continually holding up the line, because if they let more people through, they get stacked up and can't get through the extradition to begin with. and yet there will be another one over there that is not being used with x-rays. i'm always wondering why the management doesn't say just open one podium if you're only going

to open one flying through there, or otherwise take that second person from the podium and help to staff a second line over there. i just am not seeing any, and i'm seeing the lines growing and growing behind me. and my result of which i have called it about some of these things has been a call later saying, when you are coming to the airport an, if you just lets know in detail we will make sure you get through security to i want you to know that's not the point. the point is i want my customers to be able to get through the line just as easily, and want to be able to do that. i've also seen one screener taking three times as long to look at the screen for the item coming through and calling for somebody to get a bag check on almost everything that comes through. and nobody checking to see if that person is just extra careful or if they are actually

finding those kinds of things. also at dallas i really like the little sign that says how many minutes of wait out the different lines. one of the things that fascinates me here in d.c. is that almost everybody is precheck. so the regular line is usually one minute. the precheck line is 20 minutes. now, in casper, wyoming, when you go through the don't have a precheck line and a regular li line. but if you precheck on your ticket into this orange card that you can take through with you, and then you have the same thing, except for having to remove your computer. get the same thing as if you were in a regular precheck line. it kind of expedites things. so instead of taking regular people included in a precheck line, sometimes maybe we are to be taking precheck people and putting them in the regular line in yemen on jacquard so they can be expedited.

another thing that i hear frequently is why i do so many people that don't appear to have anything to do at the checkpoi checkpoint. and my suggestion on that is the same as, if they don't have anything to do, is there some kind of a collection point where they could be out of sight at the moment so that people are not counting how may people are just standing around? and then there's a pool to draw on when there's another use for them. so i guess what my question is, besides observations that are done, is there some kind of an incentive system for people to suggest improvement, people that work for tsa to suggest improvements, and how does that incentive system were? >> there is, into your observations, one of the things that i found, that we have

found, is that by focusing daily on screening operations, you start to identify some of those challenges that maybe you've seen. i suspect those are problems here and there. because we are not seeing that big across the system. but what we can do is rapidly identify those kinds of problems and then get the best practices out of there. it is about frontline leadership, supervisor leadership and it's moving the measuring performance and been looking, moving those measures of good performance to other places. that's been very helpful. i happen to believe that frontline people are probably some of, your best source of information for how to improve a process because they see. they live with it every day. when the people who are now operating those new automated lines down in atlanta first took a look at it, our transportation security officers immediately found even more efficient ways to operate it because they instantly saw how much they could do different as a result of that. we do have a program.

i'm happy to give you for the record at detail on how it works and how we collect information and the kinds of information that is coming and then how we put it to use back through the system. >> my time has expired but i will be submitting some questions on rural airports within a very few passengers and some things that could be done there. thank you. >> thank you, senator enzi. senator urged. >> thank you, mr. chair and thank you to senator ayotte to align the to jump ahead here in the questioning. and thanks to all of our witnesses. you all have a very important topic we want to make sure that our constituents not only are they traveling comfortably of the also want to make sure that they are traveling safety. so thank you for taking on the roles that you have. administrator neffenger, it seems as though a lot of the issues that we're seeing a lot of the underlying problems for tsa come from simple mismanagement of resources. we've heard a number of them

today, and so i do think that something that we need to really hone in on. inspector general roth written test when he noted that recent odds reflect issues with tsa stewardship of taxpayer dollars, and a straightforward example, pretty blatant, but recent media reports revealed he is a spent tens of thousands of dollars on a mobile application, and maybe you know where i'm going with this, with the randomizer. a mobile application called the randomizer. it's an arrow on the screen of an ipad that randomly tells passengers to go to the left or the right line. this is government spending here. this is the epitome of wasteful washington spending. and what we would like to hear is how you will usher in the american people that tsa will take those taxpayer dollars and be responsible stewards of those

dollars. >> thank you for that question. i found that pretty outrageous, too. as you know that was purchased i think in 2013 timeframe. we don't use it anymore because we have stopped that process of randomly including people. i'm concerned about the one of the things when i did was in the coast it was work on reform our entire acquisition process, setting clear requirements for why we do what we do, chewing those requirements lead to capability ensuring you don't buy capability that you don't need at a higher price than you should be paying for it. which i first got here within the first month i bought in the defense acquisition university which is a semi-independent arm of the defense department that looks at how would you government procurement. they conducted a pretty in depth review over about a three-month period of our acquisition program. they made a number of recommendations which were beginning to put in place and we're working with the department and are over others used to do that.

i do want to see us spend that kind of money. the money that we have is so critically important to the mission of security added to what is india that wasted as we go forward. i've committed to be as open and transferred as a need to be with our current, without on our current expenditures of the things we have carried forward from the past to ensure we don't do that. and have invited oversight in to take hard look at that. so i folded into camp on that score. i can't justify some of the actions that were taken in the past but i can assure you that i will at least utter by what i will keep them from happening again. >> and we can't blame you for previous years administration, but just the thoughtful approach that you're taking is very much appreciated by many of us. we hope we can see that all levels to the tsa and we hope to the continuous improvement. so thank you very much. i appreciated. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator ayotte. >> thank you, chairman. want to thank all of you for being here today.

i wanted to ask admiral neffenger, there was some pieces of the reauthorization bill, the at the eighth of easily passed the senate, including an amendment that i was part of to address insider security threats as well as an amendment that is focused on the tsa precheck enhancement act to ensure that you are able to expand that program. are both of those pieces important to get past? >> we are supportive of both of those pieces of legislation. they codify some things we're already doing. i think that's important because you want to ensure a patchwork of institutional practices in place for the future. both of those are positive for tsa. >> i hope that the house will take up the faa reauthorization. i wanted to ask about, admiral,

as you state that there concentrate on improving tsa protocols can return and refocusing the workforce and driving technological improvements, one thing that you haven't really met you as an existing tool that could it is the screen partnership program. we are tsa acts of the oversight entity but not the steady operator contracting with security companies. what i've heard is that there's long waiting lines to get applications approved and that the tsa attitude doesn't seem to be that supportive of this program. particularly as we look at this program, just use an example, in portsmouth at the national airport, that is an sbp airport and one of 20 to airports in nashville in the stb. unfortunately, what i've heard from my local airport is that tsa has impose contracting limitations and security contractor that limit the flexible of staff at the airport respond to dynamic needs.

i guess i would like to know, it seems to me when we have seen for example, the implementation in san francisco of the partnership, are you interested in also look at a fiber screen partnership program and how does the agency seek spp as a way to consider reducing lines? what is your view of this program? i do have a follow-up because have you looked at what the inspector general and also the gao has looked at on this program, i know there's an outstanding issue where tsa has not shared with the congress or with those who look at oversight the cost estimates so we can have policymakers really compare the spp programs versus of the tsa folded when programs and decide what's the most efficient if it would have secured at the airports. >> thanks, senator.

when i came to this job i was interested in understanding the program better. adjuvanted program that airport can request to bring in a other contractor screening workforce. that is contracted through the federal government through tsa but they can choose to do so if you like your i think committed to making that a straightforward process as possible. extremely significantly the application process over the course of this past year so that they don't have long waits. it's covered by the federal acquisition rules so there's a certain amount of weight required just for the announced that, the bid process and so forth. we've streamlined a significant. i don't know the problem in portsmouth and a look into that for you but i'm not aware the specific case that will check into that. i would hope it's not the case that there's anybody making it more difficult. we are officially neutral. if an airport wants to go to private security contractor we will work with them to ensure --

>> the one thing i want to follow up with ms. grover on, assistant even though congress has made this request, tsa has not yet reported cost comparison between the federal and the private screening to assess policymakers. is that true? >> at the time of our report, which was a november 2015, that's what we found out about if tsa has taken action over this past winter what we did recommend they should provide regular information to you about the relative cost. >> to my knowledge it has not been produced. has it been speak with we have a deadline so we have done the. it now includes the so called imputed cost. the issue was that we were using just the cost to tsa, but it didn't include retirement costs and so forth that the rest of the federal government would pick up your now those think that outside the tsa budget but are still cost to taxpayers or

an applet at tsa. that's the piece that needed to be added in to give the full burden caused of -- >> are we doing any comparison of white lines between the different programs, on this issue of management in terms of efficiency between the two programs or are we going to get that information? >> we have done that. what we sing his comparable across the system. whether you're a private screen workforce or a federal work force. it has to do with making sure the staff is a place and the staffing allocations are correct. right now we are seeing roughly comparable wait times across the whole system. as i said, really focusing on the biggest volume airports has been a dramatic improvement in our ability to manage the light effectively. >> i hope with the information being transmitted to gao that will have an opportunity to see the analysis as well. thank you. >> thank you, senator ayotte.

one thing i love about this committee is the members asked great questions. i want to put follow-up on the stp program. we talked about cost, talked about the metrics. isn't the exact same process? are those come onto able to do a giveaway or the exact same we tsa doesn't? >> so they trained with tsa the a train at the tsa cabinet they are trying to the same standard and get the federal security director, a tsa employee who manages the contract of the workforce, or works with the contract to manage the workforce. so they should be performing to the same standards across the system. >> so there wouldn't be innovation on the part of those borders in terms of screening. they are done the exact same way. >> currently yes. >> base of the required to do the same way speak with their secret set of standards provided, you are right. >> senator peters. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i would like to thank our

panelists for being here today and for your work. this is tough work and the fact that you have defined a needle in haystack based on the numbers that are going through, but if the needle gets through, obviously the impact could be catastrophic. so we appreciate your efforts to keep us safe but also moving us through their it officially as people are getting on those airplanes. it's going to take a concerted effort. we have heard the horror sort of chicago, the delays that occurred there and do that but i think on a few occasions. i want to get a sense of what's happening around the country. utah to a year focus on some of the major airports but obviously we have many, many airports where people are going through. where are we in terms of the overall system of airports? are the end of airports that you're concerned about? how would you break it down as a percentage of places where we have problems in the whole system? >> i think that the positive side of this is about we are not

seeing problem, if you take the top 20 airports which represent about 58% of the daily travel volume, these are the big hub airports and then the lesser of airports associate with it. the remaining 430 or so are really doing pretty well, pretty healthy system. i look at this pic i see the results of every airport every day. we are generally moving people for effectively through the small airports. every now and then you get a spot problem because you have an unexpected surge of people coming through but for the most part they are moving very well. where we've seen the problems consistently have been in the top 20 airports. that's where when you get stories of long wait times it's there, which is why i really wanted to retool our approach to this, to focus specifically on those airports, making sure you get the resources and their to get ahead of the expected surge of people coming. we get good data from

reservation systems and airlines on who to expect, and make sure you get shorelines manned at the time i think that's the positive side is that if you get to work on the 20 airports you can for the most part solve the problems in the whole system. >> speaking of all those airports, the detroit airport which is what i hear about regularly. i will say from my experience when i traveled at least the times i've traveled, the volumes have been similar to what i've experienced over the last few years. although we still get complaints from my constituents particularly in the morning hours. could you address what's happening in detroit, the good, the bad and lessons learned that may be helpful in detroit as well as other airport speak with detroit is a good example. you have exceptionally strong workforce there. good workforce, stable workforce. we been able to convert more of those to full-time. that's helpful because that reduces attrition to a lot of people want full-time jobs and when they can't get them to nearly 40 full-time job.

you've got a good the management staff in place and have strong relations with the airports and airlines that service if it i was in detroit and had a chance to meet with various partners in the airport environment. they all had i believe honestly had good things to say about our folks. what we've seen there is this really a matter of ensuring that you get a checkpoint opened well in advance of the time that you expect a surge of passengers to come in, but you were close with the airlines and airports to manage that surge as it's moving from curb to ticket counter to checkpoint. more importantly he a fully staffed lanes. so that's the absolute key to doing that. if you can do that, then you can for it officially moved those people to align while doing the job the way we should the lesson we learn from detroit is they've really got ahead of that. if you notice over memorial day weekend they had exceptionally good number is going to do. people moved through for efficiently. we didn't have any extended wait

times at all there. >> in the remaining time here, admiral, appreciate your efforts on acquisition reform and procurement and changing the system. certainly it was a very disturbing to members of this committee and others with some of the media reports that occurred last year about equipment was not performing the way it was advertised, and the people were able to get through items in some of the tests that were done by the ig and others. to what extent do we board are we going to hold contractors who designed and built these machines to much higher standards than they been held to in the past? they must be held accountable because we simply cannot accept the types of failures that we've seen in the past. >> i spent a lot of time with our major equipment contractors when i first came on board, and we've had a lot of lengthy discussions about performance

standards and performance of equipment, maintenance and so were going for. i'm very interested in seeing more participation by the private sector in the types of things that we are looking to of capabilities we need. i think that we need more open architecture we need the ability for some of the really talented innovative minds out there to participate in increasing our ability to do the job more effectively. >> thank you, senator peters. by the way can when you are connecting in, it's great for my big challenges with my wife to a lot of long walks. senator lankford. >> not as much as charlotte to hope for that but that's a whole different issue. thank y'all for being here and for your testimony today. i think i don't has reiterated the same thing we want to make sure you hear it loud and clear from all of us. safety is the primary consideration. that was part of our conversation even a year ago when you're going through the confirmation process when the

conservative precheck line is projected to become a projectile is another randomized and we had people going through it was all about speed and resistance to say we were losing a sense of safety. for the i.t. support to say we are overly optimistic on staff and so we have a drop is that a rapid increase in passengers and it's not rocket science to try to get why we have long lines. i just want to make sure everyone hears loud and clear we are still for subsidy. it's not just about speed but are plenty of people that as we travel to airports we see tsa workers standing around or not in a hurry when people are weighted in favor of long lines. i think people understand the safety but also want to see some deficiency in the process. let me highlight a couple things i want to bring a. we've already briefly discussed. that's the innovation that happens in atlanta, and i'd like to be up to talk more about how that we multiply the biotin is delta air lines spent about $1 million researching a better

way to do the tsa check line in the airport in atlanta. developed a system can partner with tsa, if with tsa, if we did this isn't and it is proven to be much faster, and for $1 million at the airport there checking is much faster the concern i have is where do we have more opportunities for the private sector to be up to engage with tsa to help innovate in other areas in to give do not believe that private sector folks in places that are nonsecurity but better innovation in the process as well? >> this is were i see the greatest promise going forward. originally the whole idea came about as a result of seeing some of the work that has been done in europe to create more efficient, more automated systems as you move through. in discussions with a number of airports and airlines shortly after i came in, i said i was looking for opportunities to partner to do some innovation pilot your coverage of it was can we do a couple of pilot

projects. delta airlines offered to jump in and purchase a couple of these automated systems, this happens to be one that is growing in use at heathrow airport. they move very quickly, and you are right. just the first two lanes of the have shown tremendous promise in terms of improving efficiency. about a 30% improvement either own count what we go through. i think that is certainly a critical element of transform the system. other airlines and airports have come forward and said they want to do the same thing. we put together an innovation project team, which is focused specifically on these public-private partnerships, managing it. you don't want to create a hodgepodge of systems. you want to do something that makes sense and takes advantage of existing technology. not just automate billing for to look at the technology that could be added that could eventually lead to electronic gates to let you in to checkpoint that could move the

id check out to a kiosk and then you keep the person sterile as they come in, really creating a curb to get security environment, as opposed to just focusing on of the checkpoint. i'm excited them with a predefined forward. it's mapped out. we opposed the architecture for.net with there is airlines and airports that if interested we've got about a dozen airports that is important along with airlines that service them to talk of doing some of this transformation. this is happening over the course of the next six months. i'm happy to provide you with a more detailed briefed on that but i think you would find promising. >> i think would find plenty of people willing to help innovate in the pinch points like the backstabbing noted to try to find ways to be able to evaluate how do we actually people faster through this spot and still keep the innovation we have. with the innovation, the technology, i they would still beat expectations the fed on this dais. early on in tsa's history there

were a lot of over promises made by some. we offer purchases of berries and ended up having in warehouses lots of equipment sitting unused. we don't want to see that nor have equipment put in place that says one thing and actually can't fulfill what it stated to actually do. so we want to make sure that process is in place and al all f our equipment are not only purchasing the right amount, having the equipment that proposal was asked to be. thank you for that and as for your continued attention of things like the tsa precheck. in oklahoma we had a computer glitch for a while that suddenly you couldn't sign up for tsa precheck for a period of time. your lots of other ways to be able to not only have innovation but getting people registered for project. so project is really project, and more people able to actually go through the process to be able to be checked out the i would appreciate continued attention to the vessel from all those contractors around the country. thank you. i yield back. >> senator portman. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

admiral, great to have you here before us. you're talking to a pretty tough audience because we're all frequent fliers. i go back and forth from ohio every week a couple of times i guess. we are also though all precheck i would think the answer when i'm in the precheck line in cincinnati and columbus and cleveland and it's a lot shorter the it's not like dulles were a lot of people in precheck. a lot of questions we're asking you are about not precheck but how do we be sure expect everybody. and by the way, the tsa folks who i deal with eddie week our courteous. they are professional. the vast majority of them. vast majority. i remember being here at a hearing recycler senator carper says he thinks in ethicacy. and i say thanks for giving us a pic you look at you funny like nobody has ever said that to me before. again that was your experience. on the other hand, they do all the work for us as taxpayers.

that customer service site -- >> what i say they can people say to me, are you rob portman? [laughter] not yet. >> i ago incognito. but utah called it about the training and performance management. and ibm i appreciate your leadership and i'm glad you're there. we talked a second ago about what you done with regard to the report that came just before you confirmed in june of last year. in terms of the training just was on the customer service site, what are you doing in terms of measuring performance entering? >> that was one of my big concerns when i came in. in fact, i extend beyond customer service the this is what true public service is all about, providing an important service to the public in a way that treats them with respect, dignity, and that recognizes the inherent in convinced that what you're doing. so that's an important thing to do the we've built that into our new tsa academy could all of our new hires now, there's an entire component on what it means to be

a public servant. and what the public is that you serve. these are people who are your fellow citizens. there's a partner with you think of these agile family members. think of these agile family members as they're coming through. so i hope people are seeing him and anecdotally we're getting reports that people are seeing a difference among the workforce at the country. we have done that back through the entire workforce. that takes front line leadership to make it work. we are also working on that first line supervisor leadership training. that's critical. we need to do more of that in tsa to it just had that been done consistently spent i appreciate that attitude and that approach. that's your personal approach that you think it expedites the process as well. there's a safety aspect to this also in addition to the fact that it is a matter of customer service for the taxpayers who were inconvenienced. this report last june was incredibly troubling.

mr. ross housing can't answer many questions so i may not give you change it either. i'll tell you about report. 95%, 95%. so in 95% of the time tsa was not finding dangerous items can security screws failed to detect weapons, mock explosives 95% of the time. shocky. this is before your time. we also found that there were 73 individuals employed by the aviation industry who were on the terror watch list at the time i get some questions as part of your confirmation. you indicated you put in place secretary johnson was talk about to address those issues and look at the more systemic problems. can you give us a quick report where we are on the 95%? mr. roth says your continued to do testing and audits at you didn't knows what the percentage was. either of you. >> i can't talk about process of what we find in open session but whawhatever it is we are better. as you know one of the biggest concerns i had was first of all to find out why did we have a

failure rate of that magnitude. as it turns out it was really that we are asking for frontline report to do something to record in opposition to what their job was to get the job is to do something doesn't get past a checkpoint, then you can't write them about moving people faster through a checkpoint. so if i put myself in the shoes of a front-line officer, they are torn between, until i can't hold things up that i've got something to look at your we agree kind of the whole workforce of the whole workforce and think we're sadistically better. i'm hoping the inspector general's testing bears that out as we go forward. >> mr. roskam anything to say on the? >> as a indicated we are going to do some covert testing this summer. i will be tentatively take a look at some of the red team testing the tsa has done. we think that our testing will be more objective, and i think those results will be more accurate so we will not wait to see what happened. >> this committee will be interested in the results of

that test. >> just we understand, there are to list the one is the terror watch list and the a busy high database to the larger lesson which the small list gets nominated they didn't have access to the larger list. it was largely your credit ownership not on tsa's part but on the edges -- dhs is part to rethink tsa has all the information he needs to be able to adjudicate those things spend mmy time is at the bottom would ask equation for the record with regard to cuba. i'm concerned about the agreement the ministrations made. i have heard about tsa opening an additional two airports without any kind of screening that we would consider acceptable. these are all going to be as understand points of departure to the united states. i know there's been traveled from afghanistan to cuba and so on. i will ask question for the record on the issue i want to express my concern right now that we be sure those airports are fully vetted and have the proper security screening in

place. >> senator heitkamp. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thanks for stepping up and serving once again your country, admiral. we really appreciate this and very glad to confirm you. and i can tell you from this testimony and our dialogue, our trust has been well served. but we have some business that needs to get taken care of, you know, i kind of tell people done occasionally if you've ever been to a penitentiary and have the warden bring out a box, they have a box of handmade weapons, you know, from toothbrushes had been shaved off to simply plastic knives that are then used to kill other people. and so we have to be really careful that we don't overstate the risk that there is. because even though we are looking for traditional weapons, we the people on knitting

needles. you know, we sometimes frustrate the public because they look at this in a lens of common sense. one of the things i want to ask is whether, when you look at the metrics, it is for anybody, and wwould look at this transition now to back tees that has resulted in more people doing carry-ons, i believe. has studied the problem and is there way to do prescreen for baggage on carry-on that would help align move quicker and also would provide greater security in terms of what's in the bag's? >> i will start the answers on that. the first thing is we've been working really closely with the airlines to the extent possible to enforce the one plus one rule. it is the case more stuff coming to a checkpoint, more carry-on baggage by definition is going to slow things down.

lef.. coming through to a minimum. the 1 plus 1 rule is very important and many airlines are working hard to enforce that and ensuring that passengers just double-check before they come through because one it's an inconvenience to the individual who forgets they leave something in there. it's true that we find a lot of contraband items coming through. we had loaded number of weapons last year. it always astonishes me that

people forget they have a weapon. that's part of the technology improvement that we are thinking of. >> i would really encourage you to think kind of beyond the box on what could happen with carry-on luggage because more time to screen that, we're all standing in line with our carry-ons, right? the carry-ons with a couple of extra lines be screened ahead of time as we're moving through the line. and i think that would give you more time to actually check the carry-on luggage. you know, i can tell you it's incredibly frustrating when you see someone bring something through that they shouldn't. just a couple of weeks ago i had a bottle of water in my back pack, how often do i fly and make that mistake. you don't always know.

i want to ask about the 2013gao report noting that tsa could not provide evidence to justify its spot program and that screening of passengers by observation techniqueses. gao recommended that congress should consider the absence of scientifically validated evidence for using behavioral indicators to identify threats to aviation security while assessing the potential benefits and costs in making future funding decisions for aviation security. obviously, dhs did not concur with gao's recommendation. my question is, have you reviewed that report and since you've been there, do you come to the same conclusion as dhs did, department of homeland security did when they initially did the review? >> i have review it had report and there's a couple of elements to this that i think are important. the first thing i did was to figure out is anybody else doing behavioral detection of some sort and quite a few law enforcement agencies around the world use it.

there are other security agencies that do it. i think that there is some value in considering to look at whether behavioral detection is a valid element to add in. it's never going to be a perfect system. that said, we are looking at how more effectively we have used people that assigned detective officers. we are pushing a lot of those people in security screening duties, we are having them work with k-9 teams because i think there's work to be done on the validation of the indicators on the way which we do behavioral detection. there may be modifications that we have to make to make it more scientifically valid. >> i don't want to belabor the point. there is science to this, the question is are you apply to go right science? mr. chairman, thank you so much for the time. >> thank you, senator. just to pick up, that's really

what israel does, correct? >> they. do in fact, a lot of what the israelis are doing has informed what we're doing and we have trained on behavioral detection. >> that's a far more intensive process, correct? >> it has more elements than were currently using, that's correct. >> there are a number of people propose to go force airports or airlines to drop the baggage fees to force them to allow more people to check bags. does that really gain us anything? we still have to run those bags through detection system, correct? >> now e, it's hard to know whether it would dramatically change the way things are. i think there's more to be gained by reminding people to minimize their carry-on baggage to the one plus one that the airlines require. that makes things smoother at the check point. i have concerns about the baggage's system to handle check bagged wowed modifications in some airports.

so what i've committed to doing with the airport, airlines, minimizing carry-on because a lot of that stuff gets gate checked anyhow. ensuring that we have the appropriate staff to handle it. >> you're confirming my suspicion that that may not gain us a whole lot. i think there's awful lot to be said for having the passenger with their bag just in terms of security as well. without getting the detail of the failure of the ait machines, has there been any thought given to an ait machine followed by a metal detector? >> we have looked at that and, in fact, as we look at the transformation, but really changing the thinking behind screening, you know, i want to get away from what is essentially a static system. we are looking at system that is integrate that technology, the

challenge is that you have to be careful because metal detectors set off people with artificial hips. there may be a way to do it. we are looking a way to integrate the technology and that's why i want to activate the private sector than we have because i think there are ways to do this that are smarter. >> generally people know can talk about somebody. that would really improve security dramatically, wouldn't it, if people went through both? general roth? >> two different machines look for two different kinds of things. >> correct. >> my understanding as far as tsa protocols now when there's an alarm on the ait, suspicious, they have the ability then to run people through. >> but, again, i don't want to get into detail but i've seen details. there's a real problem in terms of what one machine detects and what the other doesn't. if you go through both, i would think you would dramatically increase level of security.

>> i will defer to tsa on that. >> what i would say there's probably -- it gets challenging to talk about this in open session and i would be happy to sit down with you in closed session to do so. but we are looking at those kinds of capabilities. i'm concerned about what one can do and what the other cant do. i think the k-9's play a role here. >> so do i. we will talk about that in closed session. >> okay. >> reading the testimony it came across very clear as general roth talked about, is you're doing a great job at really looking at this honestly, admitting you have a problem, critically assessing what's happening in the agency. so i want to ask inspector general, on the scale of 1-10 in terms of critical assessment, we've gone from what to what in terms of improvement? >> we have gone from night today.

we went from a cultural situation where we were fought in every turn and now embrace oversight in a way that i think is a very positive method. >> so admiral, thank you for your service doing that. let me ask you the harder question. that's the first step in solving the problem. how about actual implementation of the solutions? where are we at? let's say we are at 1, where are we at now in scale 1 to 10? >> we have a number of challenges. i will not jurpd estimate with regard to check point and covert testing. there's a 23-point plan that tsa put in place. we are satisfied with progress they are making. it's by no means complete. there are issues not just at check point but regard to tsa as a contract administrator. there's issues as far as tsa regulator with local airports, how well they are regulating with local airports. we have considerable concerns about insider threat and the

fact that there is a -- while the administrator talked about the recurrent vetting that occurred, it's a very static process. you're either convicted of offenses or you are not but there isn't a holistic look at airport who has unrestricted access on aircraft unescorted unrestricted access to aircraft. they're either convicted or not convicted and if they're not convicted there's no holistic vetting, for example, with employees, where we look at whole range of things to determine whether they're trust worthy. >> i hate putting words in people's mouth. we have really taken that step, but in terms of actually involving the problem, you say we have a long way to go? >> that's correct. we didn't get this overnight. >> aid mirrorral, you would probably agree with that, right? >> i would agree with that. i think that we have made

substantial progress in enumerating what some of the issues are but these are issues that will take some time to correct. trust me, i don't envy you your task. god bless you for your service. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i would like to talk about sen our executive service. i understand that the bonuses that were paid to the former assistant administrator happened before your watch. but there was $90,000 in bonuses paid to the assistant administrator of the office of security operations at the same time that all of those tests were failing. that the ig was conducting the tests and showing that 67 out of 70 weapons got through. and those bonuses were paid in a way to hide them. they were paid over time. obviously, clearly exceeding a 20% cap. i know that you have made changes to make sure that doesn't happen again. but this is really a symptom of

this ses service, i think, in the lack of reform that has occurred with the senior executive service. i would like to point out every time i get a chance on the record how senior executive service began. it began frankly as an idea that i think the chairman would agree with that you need to get talent in management and government, so the idea you would hire competitive with the private sector and these managers would go from agency to agency and get expertise. well, that's long since been abandoned. these are people who are burrowed in, one agency that hang out long enough to figure out how to get ses and they get paid a lot more and this is where we have seen a lot of abuse in terms of bonuses. let me ask you this, with your reforms, is there any connection with bonuses paid on whether the agency is succeeding? you know, in the private sector the bonus pool changes based on how the company did. and that's not been the way in government.

i don't think anybody looking objectively at tsa over the last couple of years would say that the bonus pool should be really big. so are you now tieing bonuses to the performance of the agency and not just performance of the individual? >> it's a combination of both now and i want to just also preface that severe limited both the type and the number of bonuses that can be handed out in an agency and i've put controls on it above me. my concern was that the agency had the ability to independently assign bonuses. i now require the department oversight for that and i've asked the department to do that. so i'm a strong believer in control. i believe there's a need to have the ability to give bonuses when people have done good work. you want to keep good people in government. so the notion and the practice of bonuses is not a necessarily a bad one but there has to be managed carefully and controlled and it has to be appropriate. >> because if you look at the data, no one could objectively

look at the data and say that tsa has high marks in terms of the things you look at in management, in terms of morale, you know, in all the measurements out there. i'm just hoping, i think you're trying to do better in that regard. i just think we need to look at ses reform in a larger capacity and not just at tsa, but i think there's a lot of issues with senior executive service. i also have serious concerns related to this is retaliation, i read with interest the article that was published in early about the high level of whistle blower retaliation at tsa. the case that struck out, struck me was a man took his case all the way to the supreme court and won. on whistle-blower retaliation that he had been wrongfully fired and lost ten years, it took him ten years to win. he lost ten years of promotions and tsa said, well, we can't speculate how much you would

have been promoted in ten years. they put him back at his other job and frankly he's still getting passed over to this day. i'd ask you, mr. roth, how does tsa compare to other dhs components as far as the number of whistle-blower complaints and retaliation complaints? >> we haven't done a study of that. that's something certainly that would be interesting to know. so i can take that back. >> yeah, and what can we do about the lost years of salary and compensation and promotion for the time period that someone litigates them being treated unfairly? >> well, the individual you're speaking of did get full back pai for that full ten-year period along with all of the associated cost of living increases that would have occurred during that time in addition to other things. so he got a sizable payment for back pai and it included the cost of living increases. i understand that there is a --

that he has ongoing litigation so it would be inappropriate for me to comment any more upon that because i want to make sure that he get it is appropriate due process. i'm committed to supporting people who bring forward complaints. i'm exited to them being treated fairly and i absolutely will not stand for retaliation inside the agency. i understand that there have been allegations of that and in one case proof of that in the past. my position is i don't want to bias any action going forward so if you've got pending litigation, we will support that going forward and we will work with the special council if necessary and more importantly, i won't -- i will take swift action against people if they do something in my watch that indicates that they retaliated. >> i would love a response to the people that were laid out in "the new york times" article as to the agency's position on these people and what occurred and how they've been made whole, the woman who was force today

leave her assignment after she complained. there's a number of them in here as you know. it's pretty damming and it says it's much higher than, for example, the irs that has many more employees in terms of the rate of complaints. it went up significantly the number of complaints. so i wanted to take a look at that. my time is up. i would say on the record that i hope you're thinking about every airport -- you've got a group of frequent flyers up here. everyone flies home every weekend. no one uses tsa more than all of us because we are flying twice a week and we see awful lot in airports. i'm bombarded with kiosks wanting to sell me anything from sunglasses to pillows to cases for my iphone. i would like to see a kiosk for precheck. how simple to put a kiosk in the airport for someone to sign up for precheck? it wouldn't be that expensive and you could probably staff it specially in the nonpeak hours

with people waiting and people coming for flights. i bet you could do it pretty cost effectively at $85 a pop. that's a lot more than cell phone covers. kioks. not an office some where. i'm talking about right there neon letters with a big smiley face, maybe we can sell cell phone covers at the same place. thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator carper. >> when you come to delaware we have collect tolls on i-95 but there's a fairly easy visible place to stop off. the same thing with north south highway and goes off to beaches,

ez to pull off and get an ez pass. i think that's a good idea. i will ask a very series of questions. i apologize to general roth and i apologize for jennifer for not asking more questions but my colleagues have asked several that i wanted to. thank you very much for your job more making tsa better, make them better. admiral, i am struck by the efforts to reduce wait times ahead of the memorial day holiday according to reports, check point were mostly average, i think 99% waiting fewer than 30 minutes, just take a minute and tell us how you and your team meat able to cut wait times in short order? >> first thing is we got new resources through the reprogramming, thousands of overtime hours, we were able to convert people from part time to full-time. we moved additional k-9 units into the largest airports.

that was the number one. second was the standing up -- focusing on the top 7 airports primarily, looking across at the top 20 in addition to that. that allow us to address problems at the places that they begin. third was the command center to manage that on a daily basis to look specifically at the check point screening operations and then a daily phone call with the each airport, federal security director and the airline partners in that airport, airport by airport across the top airports. >> all right. i mentioned in my opening statement that we have included in the appropriation legislation report out of committee by the senate appropriations committee some additional moneys for human resource, personnel resources for dogs, k-9, and maybe for infrastructure improvement. do you still believe those are going to be needed? >> absolutely, yes, sir. >> that's all i need, thanks very much. talk to us about the role that

your employees have played in terms of -- you know in front lines in they see the stuff every day. how do you ask them for their ideas, make sure that their input is gathered and act upon? >> we still need to work better at that, but what i try to do is both anecdotally solicit information about how best to do the job that we are doing. so we bring them in on short-term details to our technology office, they work on test facility. they give us ideas as to how to improve what we are doing. when we look at automated lanes, we brought in front-line and say how would you run this thing? there's a lot of just tactical knowledge on how to do job better from day-to-day and we are trying to capture that in a more systemic way. >> one of the ways aye always found to improve employee morale whether it's in federal government or state or regard is

the training. folks of my staff, particularly folks in delaware love to come to d.c. now, not only do a better job but sense of self-worth is enhanced as well. i want to continue you to do the training. the other thing i want to ask is you talked a little bit about the range of -- of weapons that we find that folks find on passengers trying to get into a plane. and i think you have actually have an instagram feed to display some of those. can you take a minute and tell us, if you will, speak about some of the dangerous items that tsa scrieners discover in carry-on baggage and checkpoint in order to identify and some of those overt threats? >> we have seen a lot of loaded

handguns. 2,700 handguns con fist caited at check points. many of these are not just loaded but rounds in the chamber. these are weapon that is are dangerous. you need a lot of items that look like grenades but are concern too. you can't tell from a distance. quite a few knives, you name it. somebody is trying to bring it through a checkpoint. throwing stars, brass knuckles, all sorts of stuff you don't want in an aircraft environment given the way we know the way people have been acting lately. >> last thing i would say is i would like to govern november '92 along with other newly

elected governors in november '92, we went to government school. governor of florida and i learned a lot. it was three day it is faculty was existing governors and their spouses, the veterans as i call them and the newbies. when you have a problem, when you face a problem in your state as governor, don't make a one-day problem a one-week problem or one-month problem or a one-year problem. own the problem. own the problem. take responsibility for the problem. this is what we are going to do. we are going to fix this problem. apologize and then do it. and the way i watch you perform in your role as head of tsa, i'm reminded of that advice and i don't know that you will ever be a governor, but you're certainly prepared to with training you've

gone through as well. i want to close with the preamble and constitution, delaware is the first state with constitution and pretty good week. the preamble of the constitution begins with these words, we the people of the united states in order to form a more perfect. it doesn't say a perfect union. the ideas always get better, how do we get better. clearly tsa is doing a better job. we are grateful for that and anxious how we can help make that more expeditiously. we want to thank for the office and keep up the good work. last thing is we were in africa about a year ago in family vacation, i heard an old african