Oops -- the TSA Just Fired 10+% of Screener Workforce There

It's OK, though -- your TSA has everything under control, as usual. Don't blame that bureaucracy for firing nearly 11% of its screener workforce just in time for the biggest travel weekend of the Summer; they had to fire them.

You see, the screeners the TSA fired (after exhaustive, detail-oriented, ironclad, expensive vetting) are sidelined, either temporarily or permanently, for "security violations, mostly failure to submit to fingerprinting," according to an AP release.

Mostly -- but not all...

The AP went on to say that the City of Los Angeles, obviously more-concerned with the background of its airport's screeners than the federal spending agency that hired them, performed its own background check on a sample, and found -- though the TSA apparently didn't -- that 29 of the screeners, who have been looking through your wallets and purses, had, "criminal histories ranging from weapons charges to sexual assault." The TSA just couldn't find those records, huh.

Stepping in their own mess:

The TSA, as usual, tried to cover its increasingly-exposed butt, and had the AP report, "Transportation agency officials said its own checks had already found all but two of the screeners with serious criminal records and had fired them or put them on leave." [If the TSA had, indeed, found this, why hadn't it fired them? --ed.]

In other news [see separate story], two of the TSA's top dogs, one in Credentialing, the other in Personnel Security, have just left the agency.

FMI: www.tsa.gov