Abolish the TSA, Save Lives

The reports from London of a plot to smuggle explosives aboard planes and then combine them to murderous effect must have caused collective deja vu at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) last week. Only eight months ago, its screeners failed to detect the same scenario here in the United States.

Fortunately for passengers, it wasn't terrorists but government investigators who successfully smuggled bomb components through the TSA's checkpoints. Unfortunately, no screener has waved a magic wand since then to turn the TSA competent.

From October to December 2005, undercover investigators eerily presaged the London terrorists by trying to sneak components of an "improvised explosive device" through 21 American airports. Like London's liquids, these ingredients could have been assembled into a bomb once they were aboard the plane. As NBC's Nightly News lamented, "In all... airports tested, no machine, no swab, no screener anywhere stopped the bomb materials from getting through. Even when investigators deliberately triggered extra screening of bags, no one stopped these materials."

The TSA's response to this blatant blunder? "While random items commonly found under a kitchen sink could conceivably be concocted into an IED," it sniffed, "there are so many things that could go wrong with this hypothetical scenario that we find it highly implausible." Tell that to the alleged terrorists in London.

And to passengers stranded in four-hour lines so screeners could confiscate their toiletries and tea. Why? Aside from making travellers even more miserable than they already are, what was accomplished? Terrorists financed by Osama bin Laden first experimented with explosive elixirs 12 years ago in the hopes of blowing up planes, yet we've survived thousands of flights with liquids and gels since. Now the TSA wants us to believe that the mouthwash, mascara and medicines lying dormant in millions of carry-on bags have suddenly become lethal weapons. Toothpaste that posed no threat Tuesday was Public Enemy No. 1 Thursday, though uncounted tubes lurked in overhead bins this last decade.

The TSA has been a farce from its inception. It exists not to prevent terrorists from bringing down a plane but to prevent passengers from realizing the government can do little to thwart such a catastrophe. Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., was chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in May 2005 when he explained why the TSA squandered $4.5 billion on malfunctioning equipment; he also inadvertently admitted that the agency is merely window-dressing for the Feds: "After 9/11, we had to show how committed we were by spending hugely greater amounts of money than ever before, as rapidly as possible."

It worked. Forcing folks to remove their shoes and submit to pat-downs convinced many Americans that the TSA is an effective bureaucracy, unlike all others in their experience. When the TSA's Office of Strategic Management and Analysis commissioned a survey of passengers at 25 airports, it asked, "How confident are you in TSA's ability to keep air travel secure?" Eight-two percent were "fairly confident or very confident."

But according to the government's own investigations, that's about as reasonable as believing that Amelia Earhart still survives. The TSA routinely flunks tests of its efficacy, whether they're administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS is the bureaucratic parent of the TSA) or by other government agencies. Last year both the GAO and the DHS concluded that federalized screening doesn't protect passengers any better than private procedures did before 9/11.

That wasn't exactly news: Six months earlier, the DHS's acting inspector general warned Congress that "the ability of TSA screeners to stop prohibited items from being carried through the sterile areas of the airports fared no better than the performance of [private] screeners prior to Sept. 11, 2001." And the preceding year, the inspector general announced that, whether federal or private, screeners "performed about the same, which is to say, equally poorly." That prompted the chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee, John Mica, R-Fla., to lament, "We have a system that doesn't work." Worse, it costs taxpayers almost $17 million per day and endless aggravation.

Politicians and pundits are cynically using London's scare to call for more stringent searches by the TSA. They insist our safety depends on enduring whatever abuse screeners throw at us. But x-raying shoes simply because the TSA doesn't know what else to do won't improve security, and giving the agency even more power makes as much sense as demanding bigger portions at a bad restaurant.

Let's admit that the TSA is a colossal goof and abolish it. We'll not only save ourselves time, money and frustration, we may even save some lives.