Airport Baggage Screeners Got Answers to Job Test

Airport Baggage Screeners Got Answers to Job Test, Investigation Finds
By Leslie Miller Associated Press Writer
Published: Oct 8, 2003

WASHINGTON (AP) - Airport screeners hired by the government to check baggage for bombs were given most of the answers to the tests they took to qualify for the job, according to an internal Homeland Security Department investigation.

In addition, job applicants were not required to show they could identify dangerous objects inside luggage, a "critical defect" in the written tests, according to acting department inspector general Clark Kent Ervin.

"It is extremely disturbing that most of the questions were rehearsed before the final examination, that a number of the questions were phrased so as to provide an obvious clue to the correct answer, and other questions appear to be simplistic," Ervin wrote in a letter to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

During classroom training, screeners were given the questions in open-book quizzes and then the answers. The course ended with a closed-book examination of 25 questions. Nineteen of the questions on the final test were identical or virtually identical and three were similar to those on the quizzes, Ervin said.

One question asked "How do threats get aboard an aircraft?" The possible answers were (a) In carry-on bags; (b) In checked-in bags; (c) In another person's bag; and (d) All of the above. The correct answer is (d).

Another question asked why it's important to screen bags for improvised explosive devices (IEDs). A possible answer: "The ticking timer could worry other passengers." The right answer: "IEDs can cause loss of lives, property and aircraft."

Schumer, who asked for the probe, said the point of federalizing airport security was to improve safety by employing better-trained workers.

"The ludicrousness of this test undercuts everything Congress was trying to do in that regard," Schumer said.

Ervin's letter to Schumer was dated Aug. 29 but was not released until Wednesday. The senator's office said the letter was meant to be distributed sooner, but got lost in the mail due to problems with the Senate mail system that have been occurring since the anthrax scare about two years ago.

The Transportation Security Administration, created by Congress after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and later incorporated into the Homeland Security Department, was charged with a massive task: hiring tens of thousands of government workers in less than a year to replace the poorly trained, poorly paid, privately employed screeners who checked passengers before they boarded airplanes.

About 30,000 of the screeners have been cross-trained to inspect all checked baggage for bombs using newly installed explosive detection systems or wands that detect traces of explosive chemicals. The agency is continuing to cross-train passenger screeners.

TSA spokesman Brian Turmail said the agency has already reviewed and improved its training and may make further improvements. But he also said the inspector general did not look at the entire training program.

He said the one test reviewed by Ervin is part of a broader training program that includes 40 hours of classroom training, 60 hours of on-the-job training and four tests. The tests no longer use the questions cited by the inspector general.

No one becomes a baggage screener unless he demonstrates he can find a bomb in a suitcase using detection machines, Turmail said.

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House aviation subcommittee, plans to hold a hearing Oct. 16 about the TSA's operations, including training and testing of screeners.

"Anytime you have a government undertake a program of this size and scope, it's going to be fraught with problems," Mica said.

A recently released report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded the agency collects little information on screener performance in detecting threat objects and is falling short in making sure the screeners are effectively supervised.
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