OPINION:
It should come as no surprise that the Transportation Security Administration is “a study in bureaucratic ineptitude” because its primary objective is to satisfy the need of politicians to be seen as doing something about airport security (“Lax airport security,” Editorial, Wednesday). The link to unionized labor is a dead giveaway that the fundamental issue is politics, not security.
The original concept of increasing the odds of stopping terrorists from repeating the disaster of Sept. 11, 2001, is a valid one, but it is doubtful that the creation of the TSA was the correct response. This many years after the Sept. 11 attacks, no studies have been published (or leaked) evaluating the possibility or probability of another such attack being stopped or deterred by submitting passengers to intrusive searches, making them remove their shoes or prohibiting liquids and gels, nail clippers, etc. Little is said of efforts (or the lack thereof) to monitor other areas of air travel, such as baggage handling, employee access, ancillary industries, etc.
But everyone who travels on aircraft sees up-close and personally the efforts made by politicians to ensure that air travelers are safe. That is why TSA spends massive amounts of money on unproven technology, why the TSA fails to apply risk or cost-benefit analyses, and why Congress approves collective-bargaining power for TSA employees. The basic premise is that all those individuals who benefit from congressional largesse (unionized TSA employees, “safe” air passengers, government bureaucrats) will return each individual representative and senator to office in the next election. If, in the process, the TSA increases security at airports and with respect to air travel in general, so much the better - but it is not a requirement.
The TSA is “a study in bureaucratic ineptitude” because politicians are spending taxpayers’ money. Its existence is based on a faulty premise.
JAMES L. ZACKRISON
Chief executive officer
Mater Navis LLC
Falls Church
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