TSA's Hiring Practices to Be Probed

Homeland Security Office Questions Background Checks

The Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General said it will begin a probe into the Transportation Security Administration's hiring process, after dozens of security screeners on the job were found to have criminal records.

The inquiry, which will be conducted by the agency's inspections division, will look into "clearances of personnel hired in TSA," said Nancy L. Hendricks, deputy associate inspector general for audits. "This is self-initiated by the inspector general."

The probe is the latest sign of the growing scrutiny of the new agency's hiring process. The TSA was created after the September 2001 terrorist attacks to improve airport security, in part by hiring thousands of federal airport screeners.

TSA spokesman Robert Johnson said the agency will fully cooperate with the inspector general. "We believe our process is sound and understand there's much work to be done to make it steady for the long term," Johnson said. "Whatever oversight is necessary or required, we'd welcome that and move through it as efficiently as we can."

The inquiry comes after The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times reported earlier this month that dozens of airport screeners in Los Angeles and New York had serious criminal histories. At Los Angeles International Airport, six TSA screeners said they had been convicted of felonies in answers to questions on an application for an airport security badge.

In its rush to hire 55,600 screeners by last November, the TSA did not have time to thoroughly check the backgrounds of all of its hires, the agency has said.

The TSA said it has confidence in its workforce and maintains that it has completed three steps in a four-part check of each screener, which includes name- and fingerprint-based criminal history reviews as well as employment and reference checks.

About 20,000 screeners have yet to pass a final, more thorough background check conducted by the Office of Personnel Management, an independent agency that conducts background checks for federal agencies. Each investigation takes an average of at least two months.

Meanwhile, several private contractors who conducted background checks for the TSA are being questioned in a widening probe by the House homeland security appropriations subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.)

In its scheduled hearing June 3 about the agency's background-check process, the committee plans to question ChoicePoint Inc., an Alpharetta, Ga., firm that conducted initial name-based criminal and employment checks; NCS Pearson, an Eden Prairie, Minn., human resources firm hired to recruit and assess thousands of screener applicants; PEC Solutions Inc., a Fairfax firm that collected fingerprints from screener applicants; and DynCorp Systems and Solutions LLC, a Reston company that adjudicated applicants who had questionable background checks.

The Office of Personnel Management has also been called to testify.

ChoicePoint, which was paid $19 million for conducting criminal, credit and other background checks on airport-screener applicants last fall, said it assigned a "green" flag to 39,578 TSA applicants who appeared to have clean records.

The company said it assigned 216 applicants a "red" coding, indicating that the person had committed one of 28 serious crimes or felonies that would prohibit applicants from working at an airport. It assigned 47,662 applicants a "yellow" code, meaning that the person either had committed a less serious crime or the company could not verify a reference or a previous employer.

TSA spokesman Johnson said the agency might have hired some screener applicants in the "red" pool, but they would not have been able to work until their backgrounds were cleared through an adjudication process.

"In many, many cases, the colors change because the process of adjudication helped us sort through those issues and told us indeed the employee was fit," Johnson said.