TSA Tries To Balance Security, Efficiency

Hawley, the agency's fourth administrator, took over the TSA last July. He immediately went through training classes to get a better sense of what his employees were learning, officials said.

Aware that terrorists were finding new ways to make bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was troubled by the type of explosives training screeners received. The screeners were almost always seeing fully assembled devices, which are relatively easy to detect during training sessions.

He and other top officials worried that terrorists could get on a plane and then assemble an explosive device.

In response, TSA officials began to rework education requirements. While mandating that a third of the screeners' training sessions focus on improvised explosive devices, including liquid bombs, they began to throw more images of explosives and their components at officers in classrooms and on-the-job training sessions.

To get screeners to think more creatively about threats, TSA officials plan in coming months to introduce an interactive video game that centers on security to allow employees to role-play as terrorists.

"There is a lab right now in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the bad guys are learning new and better ways to build and disguise bombs," said Michael J. Restovich, assistant administrator for security operations. "For us, it's a constant, continuous education to learn how to detect and interdict all of these components of bombs. That is our target. That is what we're looking for."

Critics and outside security experts say the new training requirements are a good place to start. But they question whether the initiatives are working.

They point to a classified report from the Government Accountability Office that found that investigators were able to penetrate checkpoints at more than 20 airports with bomb components between October and January, according to news accounts at the time.

Top officials say they want to expand teams of security officers who are trained to identify passengers for suspicious activity in terminals and checkpoint lines. Using Israeli counterterrorism techniques, the teams already operate at more than 10 airports, including Dulles International Airport. The TSA won't discuss the methods the teams employ.

That expansion is part of an effort to create more diverse career paths for screeners to try to keep them on the payroll longer. The TSA has battled high attrition rates since its inception, although those numbers have dropped recently.

Hawley even changed the job title for screeners last year to Transportation Security Officers in the hopes of boosting morale and finding a description that better describes the nature of the work, he said.

While they were revamping training, TSA officials were working to loosen some restrictions on what passengers can carry onto planes.

Late last year, the TSA removed the ban on small scissors and sharp tools. The chance of hijackers using such weapons is remote, officials say, because cockpit doors have been strengthened and pilots will not hesitate to put planes in rolls and spins to disrupt a plot. Passengers are also likely to stage a revolt.

Hawley has been lobbying Congress to change a federal law banning cigarette lighters in passenger cabins, a restriction enacted after a failed terror plot in late 2001. Thousands of lighters are confiscated every year by screeners, work that officials say distracts workers from more important tasks, such as finding bombs.

Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a sharp critic of the TSA and Bush administration security policy, said that lifting the ban on scissors and sharp tools was a bad decision. He said terrorists might use scissors and other small tools in a broader suicide bombing plot, perhaps to fight off passengers while someone assembles a bomb on board. He also says the TSA does not do enough to screen cargo shipments on passenger planes.

TSA officials counter that screening 100 percent of cargo would be impossible and said that they check such shipments after doing risk assessments.

"There is a Dickensian quality to their arguments," Markey said. "This is the best of security and the worst of security. The areas they are covering have been improved, but they have still left vast areas that are relatively unprotected. And it's just those areas that al-Qaeda has historically exploited."

Staff researcher Richard Drezen and staff writers Spencer S. Hsu and Sara Kehaulani Goo contributed to this report.