that. tsa is work hard to -- >> let's go through the numbers though. quickly because my time i'm on overtime. i'll make it up to the ranking member. there are four times as many tsa employees as there was seven or eight years ago, correct? >> again, i don't believe -- >> 2002, 16,000 in your initial authorization. so you had less than that. by 2005 you were below 35,000, you are over 65,000. in the last, let's say five years when you more than doubled in numbers have the american people seen shorter lines? yes or no? >> i do believe that american people have seen shorter lines in the last four or five years. >> but with that i'd like to you check your figures. the fact is they haven't seen shorter lines. i fly to enough airports to tell that you in fact you're not giving shorter lines, you are taking longer for each one and using more people. with that i recognize the ranking member for his opening, his questions.

>> thank you very much. tsa recently completed a test required by safe port act as i mentioned in my opening statements, i believe that to maximize the security can provide we must move to implement the use of the readers. assistant secretary sadler, tsa was responsible for the recent pilot test and am i pronouncing it right? the coast guard is responsible for promulgating the final reader rule. let me ask both of you this. will it be feasible for facilities to install readers that can read twic cards without impeding the flow of workers into ports, and to secure areas of vessels and by what date do you think the installation of the readers can be achieved? and i think seems like we ought to be able to get done,

gentlemen. some kind of way. we've been messing around with it for a while. come on, somebody. admiral. >> ranking member, i'd be pleased to answer. that as you know we've embarked upon the rule making process, getting to a final rule, before we do that we need adjudicate the comments, that will be very informative to answer that very question with the objective of not impeding commerce. there are over 32 recognized commercial off the shelf twic readers, we expect one of the concerns will be whether you use a mobile system or whether it's a fixed system that would be at a container terminal. but we would envision approximately a two-year period of time from the time a final rule was on the street to pull implementation across industry. >> mr. sadler you have a response. >> i think, sir, during the pilot we did show when the readers were installed properly,

the people who worked in the facilities were trained properly and the workers were assimilated to the cards and the use of the cards with those readers, that they did work properly. they did not impede the flow of commerce in those particular ports but it does depend on the installation, it does depend on the training and does depend on whether the facility has picked the right reader for is business need. >> admiral, the employees were successful in accessing using counterfeit twic acquired through fraudulent means and false business cases. let me ask you this. i want you to clarify an individual -- at individual ports don't have the authority and indeed the responsibility to deny admission even to those who have valid and authentic twic if they have no business on the port pratt, is that correct? >> that is correct. >> and that said, what steps has the coast guard taken to address

the gao's findings and additionally do you think the use of readers will help close the security gaps? >> ranking member, i do. we've issued policy guidance to our field units, to date they have been out in the field screening, doing spot checks. we've done over 200,000 of these spot checks in a two-day period alone last week. we ran over 450 spot checks and out of those 450 we did find 58 members who had no rightful business doing -- being at those facilities. we engage extensively with our stake holders through our area security committees and certainly the facility owners. they are interested first of all in those who may have criminal intent which is one of the slices of information that twic provides, and on a steady basis. that pool of 2 million twic card holders are being screened

against the terror screening data base so there is real time information but also a benefit to the facility owners as well. >> twic is the only part of our maritime security regime and that's very significant, the coast guard and will remain the most important element of that regime but the strains ever budget cuts on the service are obvious. in 2010, 10 of the 12 cutters deployed to respond to the earthquake in haiti suffered significant problems and two had to be taken out of service and sent in for major repairs. is that right? >> i was intimately involved with that response. that is correct. >> the g.a.o. had a new report of finding that in part due to a lack of funding the coast guard does not have fully operated interagency centers through these -- though these were required about i the safe port act to be established by october 2009, similar to g.a.o. and the inspector general and others have noted the coast guard's

inability to meet safety and security mission requirements in the arctic as the ice cover opens to allow more shipping operations in those latitudes. nonetheless, the president's budget proposes extensive cuts, both to the coast guard's and its capital account. no funding was requested for the acquisition of the cutter 7 or 8 and this budget will conclude the acquisition of the fast response cutter at a number substantially below the approved program of record. finally, this is my last question. while i know that the coast guard tries to meet every requirement can you comment on the challenges the service is facing in balancing its competing mission needs, particularly in the maritime security arena, in light of significant budget constraints. i've always complained about the coast guard not having enough money. i'm trying to figure out how you are going to do all the things you have to do, particularly

since 9/11, with regard to the budget cuts. >> i was involved in the deepwater horizon oil spill. i was the federal on-scene coordinator for over seven months and the president directed that we triple our response effort. the coast guard has no force in garris garrison, we are doing front line operations. weed that good fortune, if you want to call it that, where we didn't have another contingency occurring at the same time as deepwater horizon so i was able to redeploy buoy tenders from cordo cordova, alaska, and marshall those resources into the gulf. we were able to do the same during the earthquake in haiti though some of those ships did have maintenance challenges and we did the same during hurricane katrina. so the challenge we face in the maritime security due main is what if we have multiple threats, what if we have a turn and then we have a threat to national security, taking place concurrently. that's where we really run into

resource challenges because we have to reallocate resources from one mission to another. and we are at risk because we don't have the resources to do both. >> thank you, gentlemen. we rock the chairman of the full committee, mr. mica for five minutes. >> to my friends at tsa and otter witnesses since my last hearing which was with the appropriations subcommittee, i was not a member, am not a member of that subcommittee but was allowed to ask questions as we have extended others not on our committee. and we -- >> we recommend that system to all committees. >> yes. the funny thing about that is, mr. chairman and i won't allow this to take away from my time but i have to put this caveat in. tsa found out that i would be a witness, they sent mr. pistole

an e-mail that said when mr. mica is going to be there so when he asks the question, mr. pist pistol, take a long time answering it so you eat up his time. the problem is that, again, sometimes you think it's the gang that can't shoot straight but they shot e-mail to cq, i think that was the publication. to again reserving my time, if you would answer fairly briefly, not use the directive of that memo. one of my concerns of course is that transportation worker identification card. we spent over a half a billion dollars, is that correct, yes or no, mr. mclaughlin. >> i'll take that one. >> 511 million. >> to date on the program itself, we've expended basically

$374 million. >> i have $511. >> you may be including grants in that. i'd have to check that. >> we wouldn't want to leave -- i mean, consider that as an expenditure, money spent. well, we'll say in the neighborhood of a half a billion. and the card is supposed to allow us to identify who goes into our ports. we passed the law setting that requirement up back after 2001, right? mr. sadler? >> that was i believe that was required by the 2002. >> after 2001. thank you. they produced 1.9 million of the cards are active, printed 2.1 million of them.

we still do not have all of the components that we're required under the law including iris and thumb print as far as biometric capability. do we, mr. sadler? >> we have the capability to include an iris on the chip of the card. >> you do not have a standard for iris, right? >> that's correct. there is proposed change of the standards to include iris. >> i have to go back because this is not going to be groundhog day. but i had a hearing april 14th, almost a year ago, and we had in the, well, the director of the nhtsa information lab testified, and i have the questions here. when will you finish the iris capability draft publication, this is last year, hopefully before next week. and when will you finish the final standard? by the end of the year. that was last year. now, i was told at the beginning

of the year it might be what, this summer? is that what you've heard? >> no, sir, i haven't gotten a time. >> you don't have a time. they told us this summer. so we're now going into our ninth year. it's great that we produce these twic cards at great public expense at a half a billion, then i read that you're still in a pilot reader program. so basically we have one point million of these cards and don't have readers, is that correct? >> just to go back a second. >> do the ports have readers? >> certain ports have readers and we have 35 on the approved products list. >> how many of the ports have readers and how many of these cards are able to be read? >> we know that the pilot ports

have readers, i don't know the number of ports outside of the pilot ports that have readers. >> can we insert in the record the very small number of ports that have readers. >> without objection. so ordered. >> behave year detection. i'm going to take one more minute. >> without objection so. ordered. >> behavior technician program, we spent a billion dollars on it. can someone say that's correct? >> certainly that number is slightly below that but we'll get back to you. >> all right.

i asked, when i knew that the puffers didn't work, that they had bought, and told me they would and actually went up and had them tested, went through every time it didn't detect some trace elements that were put on me, told it was a technical problem. we just destroyed those, is that correct, that we paid $600 apiece for the -- to destroy the puffers. is that correct? >> i believe that's correct. >> and i don't even want to know how long they sat in the warehouse. then had d.o.d. destroy them. getting something else in place because the technology didn't work, and you all have seen the classified reports on the performance of the advanced imaging technology equipment, have you not? >> yes. >> so we know by that performance and the lack of performance of what we've seen with the puffers, that behavior detection is very important and others use it successfully.

the problem is g.a.o. reviewed the performance and said that 24 times, 17 known terrorists went through airports past tsa, and they have yet to detect one terrorist. that was actually a question submitted by one of the floridians we had open question on line that we allowed people. can you name any terrorists that you have actually stopped in the program? >> we're not aware of any terrorists transiting a check point where bdos were working. we acsthaept there were 24 instances in spot airports we do not know they were working at the time that those individuals came through and two, we know in hindsight that they were not operational so they were not exhibiting signs of stress, fear or deception. >> can i comment on that?

i'm the gao representative. i think our point in the report was to study the travel patterns of people associated with terrorists to see if they were exhibiting any spot behaviors. at this time i don't believe it's known whether they were intering behaviors or not. and we made that recommendation in the spirit of improving the program, to develop better performance measures. we suggested reviewing the videotapes, we thought that would abrich source of information. to help refine the program. >> at this point, mr. chairman, i will also ask unanimous consent to put in the record, we looked in boston where they have a demonstration project and i think there's still one in detroit. and we saw unbelievable -- >> without objection. >> we want to detail our findings which we also passed on to the administration. >> without objection that will be placed in the record. i now go to mr. boswell, a

gentleman i served with on the select intelligence committee who more than probably anybody here on the dais today knows what the special skills are necessary to read somebody who may be a terrorist. >> thank you, mr. chairman. you may have overstated that a little bit. >> no. i remember our times behind closed doors very, very well. and you were truly the senior statesman there on that issue. >> you are very kind. i appreciate it. first off i want to start off with a positive remark. we stood up what we do, mr. chairman, going to be a pretty humongous agency as we started out with the need we had. and the situation that caused it. and i like to compliment the courtesy and efforts that people starting new careers if you will, demonstrated. the one thing that amazes me, it's not rocket science, i've

been waiting and waiting and waiting, i was really pleased to see that we realize we could boost the air crews through quicker and not delay things. there's a number of us here, myself included, that held probably as high a clearance as one can get for years, but i still am checked as if i'm a suspect coming through the same airport time and time and time again. i know there are some people that have a malady because of things in the service. and there seems to be no effort to recognize that my gosh, they had a background check, top secret, so on and so on. do you have any intention to ever try to take advantage of that and expedite things or are you going to keep on doing it like you're doing it? >> sir, actually the answer to

that question is we're actively engaged with a number of groups to try to expand our pre-check population, again precheck is the program that's allowing expedited screening for individuals that are qualified either today in pilot phase because they are part of a frequent flyer program or opted in through global entry, we extended the program to active duty military out of reagan national airport, that started last week. we are exploring other groups we can work with. >> i understand the mill taerks and like mr. issa and myself and others, took off the uniform one day and did work the next. but the shift still there. >> sir, we are actively looking at. that our goal -- >> what is your timeline for active on this, seems like just simple straight forward, the record either is there or it's not. the case i know of at least i can speak to myself i know the record's there. >> there are two aspects really, that we focus on. one is to your point, if the

record is there, and then two, is our ability to reconcile that at the check point so there is a technology piece that allows us to verify that someone is who we believe they are. we started this process in the fall of last year and already in just march we're up over 600,000 participants in the program. so i think we're work quickly to expand the program but we're doing it also cautiously to make sure we're maintaining security at every step along the way. >> well, i appreciate that. but i still just -- i don't understand why you can't take, when it's like discovering the wheel all over or doing passing up the fact that we spent a lot of money in the past on doing background checks on a number of people, and it's like it never happened. and how many years we're doing this and seems you had time to proceed further along the way. but again, i want to stop on a

positive note. i think that the personnel of courteous, work hard and are sincere. and are following the rules that the administrators give them to operate by. i do appreciate the fact we don't have to leave pilots and air crews standing in line as we did for some time. but i thought that would probably get solved but we're leaving a lot of other people, it takes up time, clogs up the process. when it's simple identification. mofltd of us with time in the service even got a printed i.d. card that says we served 20-plus years and a lot of information on there. seems like it can be used. thank you very much. i yield back. >> thank you. i see that i'm up next. i'll yield myself five minutes. first off i'd like to thank you all for taking the opportunity to be here. i think i'm in the unique

position of being the one member of congress who serves on all three commit es that has jurisdiction over the tsa, the government committee, the transportation committee and homeland security so i spend a lot of time with this issue as well as quite a bit of time traveling and experience in the service of the tsa. i would like to say the vast majority, almost without exception but there are exceptions, the tsa employees that i have encountered in my travels have all been courteous and professional in nature. however, as part of preparing for this, just like chairman issa i opened up my social media sites to comments with respect to experiences with the tsa, and i received quite a few negative comments as well and without objection i'd like to get those entered into the record as well. so ordered. i do want to talk about some of the problems that people have reported with the tsa.

and i understand we're in a situation where it's a stressful environment for people traveling. the tsa is squeezed into spaces in airports not designed for the level of screening. but if you look at some of these instances and we had one in the news last week of the gentleman in the wheelchair being -- it seems at some point if we could use common sense and slow down a little bit. you know, offer to do some of these screenings in a private area or in a screened off area. maybe it's worth spending effort on creating spaces that are more friendly to that. we might be able to do better there. i encourage both the tsa and the traveling public not to -- not to get worked up because i think there are better ways to do this. i did want to talk a little about the spot program. i'm concerned how effective

behavioral detection program is with the limited amount of interaction there is between the tsa agents and the general public, about six months ago i think i commented in one of these hearings i could get through the entire airport without uttering a word other than thank you. check in, hand my stuff to the tsa and my stuff to the gate agent. now at least the tsa is asking me for my full name. if there was more engagement. would you all like to comment on that. >> yes. first if i could for everyone's awareness, every passenger that travels through is entitled to private screening. we want to honor that. >> it might be something you consider offering especially to the elderly and disabled and children. >> with regard to the video from last week, that was actually a video that was over two years old and with the policy changes we put in place last fall again we've seen a dramatic decline in

the number of times where we had to pat down children and now the elderly with our new program w. regard to spot and your question sir, i agree that our spot program in its current form is largely an observation program where our officers are trained to observe signs of deception and stress that are different than the general traveling public. >> there is no way to really test that because you can't imitate those behaviors. correct? >> yes. that is correct. it's very -- as in any of the deterrence programs it's very difficult to evaluate it. >> i apologize i'm going quickly because of time. what is the roll-out schedule nationwide for tsa. i dusted off my global entry card because i'm looking forward to being able to use that. >> we have the administrator and the secretary announced in i think in february that we intend to roll out to the 35 busiest airports by the end of this

calendar year, and so far we're on target for that as of last week we're at 11 airports and we continue to roll out couple airports a week. and will be adding additional airlines as well. >> and mr. lord, you spent a fair amount of time studying what the tsa does and i've also had access to some of these classified reports to the level i'm a little bit concerned. but i wanted to ask you, do you see some things that we are not doing that we should be doing to increase security? i know that really is something specifically you study but you all spent a lot of time looking at what they are doing and how. >> i can't think of anything the top of my head. we've completed a large body of work on various layers of tsa security programs, all of our reports include recommendations to improve things so we think we're having a positive impact on the programs and tsa has been very receptive to most of our

recommendations. >> i'm out of time. hopefully we'll get to a second round of questions. i'll recognize mr. conolly, the gentleman from virginia for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you all for being here today. and i think we need to start, as our colleague mr. boswell did, positively recognizing the extraordinary difficulty of the mission here. in a free society, how do we graft onto that protective and necessarily often intrusive measures to protect the public after the tragic 9/11 especially. and in a democracy, frankly, it seems to me we ought to be arguing about this all the time. because i don't think we should ever get complacent about either side of this. right to privacy and my right to be protected and the role of government in full filling that mission. so i think it's a natural

tension and not necessarily always a reflection on the men and women who are trying to fulfill this mission. and my observation is that the men and women who have been recruited to fulfill this mission actually are doing on balance a very good job and many are very professional, but as the chairman indicated and mr. ice is issa indicated there are occasions where that's not the case. and one thing i commend you, mr. mclaughlin and you mr. sadler, simple training in please and thank you would go a long way with the public. i wish i could say that everybody remembers that but we're not cattle and we are citizens. and we're not to be presumed guilty of anything. and barking orders like people are cattle is not appropriate. and i would urge you strongly to

make sure that people -- i know it seems simple but it gets on the traveling public's nerves and it does a lot of them -- so once in a while there are people just, i don't know, they don't feel they need to do that or giving orders. and what we're really trying to do in a free society is get compliance. and most of the public i think actually understands that and is willing to tolerate a fair amount of intrusiveness more than i would have guessed actually, but they do expect to be treated with respect. so i think so long as we can do that and the training of our men and women we would also go a long way to enhancing the compliance, understanding we're all in this together. >> mr. lord, last year, tsa ranked 232 out of 241 federal agencies and entities in the partnership of public service best places to