New Jersey’s US senators today urged the Transportation Security Administrator to “conduct a full review of security screening procedures” at Newark Airport after The Post exposed how TSA screeners there recently failed to spot a bomb hidden in an undercover agent’s pants.
“We are writing to express our concern with repeated security breaches occurring at Newark Liberty International Airport,” wrote senators Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez to TSA boss John Pistole.
“Due to the the seeming lack of progress to close these gaps, we urge you to conduct a full review of security screening procedures. The American people deserves to know that every effort is being made to ensure safe and secure air travel.”
The letter came after The Post revealed last week how on Feb. 25 screeners at Newark the screeners colossally failed a security test at the Terminal B checkpoint, allowing an undercover fed to get an improvised explosive device through a magnetometer and a secondary pat-down.
And it comes as Pistole is set to appear this afternoon to testify today to the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security, where he likely will be grilled about the failed Newark test, according to Capitol Hill sources.
“Reports indicating that the undercover agent was able to smuggle the simulated explosive in his pants suggest that we have not made much progress since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to ignite a bomb in his underwear on Christmas Day 2009,” Lautenberg and Menendez wrote. “This attack was only thwarted because the bomb malfunctioned and passengers and airline workers took brave and immediate action to subdue the terrorist.’
“While we were fortunate then, we cannot afford to rely on luck the next time.”
“That is why we are requesting a full review of security screening procedures, including but not limited to, the vulnerabilities that allowed this recent breach to occur,” the two Democrats wrote Pistole.
The senators said they want to know how the agent thwarted two levels of screening, whether the breach is “a Newark-specific problem or does TSA need to alter procedures to prevent these types of breaches,” and “what specific steps are being taken to address the vulnerabilities revealed by this test?”
“With millions of travelers flying through Newark International Airport each year, the stakes are too high to fall short on this effort,” they wrote.
Earlier today, The Post detailed how the TSA was whining that it’s just too darn hard for agents to find bombs — unless the terrorists use explosives straight out of a Loony Tunes cartoon.
That was the agency’s sorry excuse to explain how Newark Airport screeners were completely outmatched by the undercover fed who with the IED stuffed in his pants.
“It’s not like they’re using a cartoonish bundle of dynamite with an alarm clock strapped to it,” Bob Burns of the TSA Blog Team posted on the agency’s Web site.
“The items are extremely hard to spot.”
Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), who heads the powerful Government Operations Subcommittee and helped create the TSA, said Burns violated national security protocols by disclosing details of the Newark test on the blog.
“The first thing I have to do is investigate how much they’re paying for their blog team,” Mica told The Post.
“Here you have some guy on a blog, which is a questionable expenditure of that agency, confirming that it was a failure. That’s the last thing TSA should be doing on a blog or publicly . . . This [blog] should be a primary candidate for sequestration.”
Mica — a former head of the Aviation Committee who once directed similar drills at airports and was always forbidden from publicly disclosing results — said, “It’s unbelievable.”
No one was disciplined for the failure at Newark — the same airport where 9/11 hijackers were able to smuggle boxcutters onto Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania before it could reach Washington.
Rep. Peter King also has demanded “immediate answers” in a letter to Pistole.
The TSA blog also took on a Sunday Post story about a former Newark TSA screener who blasted silly policies and lazy workers, calling the charges “uninformed generalizations painted with a wide brush.”
A reader of that blog noted in the comments section: “I (and others) noticed you didn’t address any of the specific issues raised by the ex-employee.”
The TSA did not respond to requests for comment by The Post.
Letter from Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez
philip.messing@nypost.com