Eideard

A program that allows airports to replace government screeners with private screeners is being brought to a standstill, just a month after the Transportation Security Administration said it was “neutral” on the program.

TSA chief John Pistole said Friday he has decided not to expand the program beyond the current 16 airports, saying he does not see any advantage to it.

Though little known, the Screening Partnership Program allowed airports to replace government screeners with private contractors who wear TSA-like uniforms, meet TSA standards and work under TSA oversight. Among the airports that have “opted out” of government screening are San Francisco and Kansas City.

The push to “opt out” gained attention in December amid the fury over the TSA’s enhanced pat downs, which some travelers called intrusive. “If airports chose this route, we are going to work with them to do it,” a TSA spokesman said in late December.

But on Friday, the TSA denied an application by Springfield-Branson Airport in Missouri to privatize its checkpoint workforce, and in a statement, Pistole indicated other applications likewise will be denied…

He said airports that currently use contractor screening will continue to be allowed to.

Pistole said he has been reviewing TSA policies with the goal of helping the agency “evolve into a more agile, high-performance organization.”

I wonder how he intends to increase agility? Dance lessons? Dodgeball practice?

To prevent attacks like the Lockerbie bombing, caused by a suitcase containing a bomb loaded onto a plane without the passenger who checked it also on being on board, airlines are supposed to remove the bags of any passengers who check luggage onto flights they do not board.

In an era of suicide attacks, that precaution no longer seems as reassuring as it once did, but it is still observed carefully enough to trigger alarms like the one on Monday [about 2 Yemeni-Americans].

But, while all passengers — and their carry-on bags and checked luggage — are screened before they board flights, passenger jets flying into the United States from abroad still routinely carry unscreened cargo, a loophole The Lede pointed out in January.

Asked about the cargo shipped on passenger jets, Nicholas Kimball, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, drew our attention to the fact that 100 percent of the cargo loaded into the holds of passenger jets alongside luggage in the United States is now screened at some stage. In January that figure was said to be “at least 50 percent.”

But in a statement earlier this month announcing that accomplishment, the agency acknowledged that one part of the loophole had yet to be closed: cargo loaded onto jets flying passengers into the country from abroad does not have to be screened…

The agency’s administrator, John Pistole, said in the statement, “International air cargo is more secure than it has ever been.” He added, “T.S.A. continues to work closely with our international partners and is making substantial progress toward meeting the 100 percent mark in the next few years.”

Or – real soon now.