As Delivered
Keynote Address
Kip Hawley
Administrator, Transportation Security Administration
Aero Club of
Luncheon at
Good afternoon
everybody. It’s a great pleasure to be here with you during this ninety-ninth
year of the Aero Club, and it is a great pleasure to occupy the Marian Blakey
Memorial Seat at the head table.
And 99 is a lucky
number in Chinese culture, so we are fortuitous and so is ‘08. Ninety nine
signifies a doubly long time, like eternity, and ‘08 foretells prosperity. So
in a year of unprecedented growth for aviation—unfortunately in fuel prices—it
is no wonder that ‘08 will be remembered as a year that went on forever, maybe
even The Year Of Eternal Pain. And as for prosperity, umm, I don’t know. But
anyway, with all the bad news that seems to be hovering around the aviation
industry these days, perhaps you’re wondering, “As if that’s not tough enough,
here comes TSA.” So I hope that I can at least offer a glimmer of some future
opportunities. You may have seen a flicker or two of innovation out of TSA
recently with our fabulous laptop bag that goes through the X-ray and some of
the other things we’re doing. There is some innovation going on at TSA.
I have been honored
to serve in this job now for three years and I think, to the astonishment of
myself and virtually everybody else, I have almost lasted the three years. It
has been a great pleasure to work with all of you and our TSA team, and we
share something that I think is underappreciated. That is, one of the greatest
things professionally is to have a job that matters and that is something that
we share. I feel very fortunate to have had the chance for the last three
years, anyway, to have a job I think really matters and working with all of you
together in that mission.
In contemplation of
the transition of administrations, I would like to share with you a list that I
have prepared for whoever may end up at TSA in the next administration. It’s my
version of The Top Ten Things Not To Do
as TSA Administrator. And I speak from experience.
Number ten: Don’t take calls
from friends in
Number nine: Don’t use your real
name. Or if you do, reserve the URL,
whatever your name is, like KipHawleyIsAnIdiot.com, reserve that URL.
Number eight: Do not stick around
for the “is mascara a liquid or a gel?” debate.
Number seven: Don’t ask for
clarification when somebody says, “Huh, you look different in person.”
And number six: Don’t ever speak
before checking the mute button.
Number five: Don’t read the TSA
blog just before going to bed.
And number four, this one is
particularly important: After meeting at DHS Headquarters, do not rush out of
the meeting, hop into the front seat of the Secretary’s Suburban, and surprise
the Secret Service agent on the Secretary’s detail.
Number three: Never carry your
wife’s baggie through the checkpoint. It’s a long conversation, but…
Number two: Do not forget to
keep a straight face, no matter what, if you ever find yourself on the C-SPAN
call-in show. (I won’t explain that one, but…)
I’m going to save
number one until a bit later.
So first, really, I
did say that I had the opportunity to work with so many of you very closely and
I appreciate that. We have accomplished a lot and we have accomplished it
together. TSA has stepped forward, but clearly everybody in the aviation
industry has partnered with us and I think that the country is better off for
that. The most notable event was on the night of
Our security measures
are driven by intel. We’ve made a very major focus—at DHS in general and at TSA
particularly—in orienting the measures that we do based on what we learn from
the intelligence and law enforcement communities. It is a pledge that I make to
you, and I think the organizational honor going forward, that the security
measures that we seek to put in place are in fact driven by what we see of the
threat picture or vulnerability picture.
Equally important is
the work with our international partners. We recognize—and the 2006
Every decision that
we make is about keeping the American public safe from terror, and we
understand—and I mentioned this last year—we do understand that security isn’t
necessarily at the top of everybody’s mind these days. When the term “security”
comes to mind, people think of baggies and shoes, and I understand that. But be
assured that regardless of what the media portrayal is or what we see out of
the public, at least at the surface level it does appears that people have
moved on and that simply relying on 9/11 to motivate the public does not seem
to resonate as much as it did in years past. That is one of the challenges we
have as a community because the threat is not less but the measures that we
take have to be fresh. The things we do must be done with a smart frame of mind
and with a public that fully understands that they need to participate. We need
to participate together. That challenged us last year and continues to
challenge us.
I’d like to point out
a couple of my colleagues. I see we have quite a few of the TSA leadership team
here today. TSA is in very strong shape going forward in the next
administration, with a deeply experienced and committed management team. [Deputy
Administrator] Gale Rossides has the great pleasure of appearing before a
Congressional panel at this hour, so she is not able to be here. Over the last
year and a half, essentially for three hours every Wednesday morning, Gale has
gathered our leadership team—the career professionals—together, without the benefit
of my input, and met as a team to do team building, make decisions, and have a
decision process among each other. If there’s one organization that knows about
transition, I would suggest its TSA, having been through four of them in its
very limited history. I am completely confident that the leadership team is
very strong going forward through and beyond the next administration.
I’ve had the
opportunity to be with the Aero Club a number of years and I’ll do a brief
synopsis. You’ll be glad - it’s only a sentence each: In 2005, when Secretary
Chertoff had just come in and done his second stage review, we talked about our
view of risk and how to manage it in the transportation network. In 2006, we
talked about integrating with partners both internationally and domestically.
Last year, I spoke about the evolution of TSA passenger screening and the need
to get the passengers back in the game. A consistent theme throughout my time
at TSA has been the need to change up our security process so as to be not too
rigid or too predictable. What holds across the board—whether it’s in general
aviation, commercial, cargo, and frankly any of the aspects of transportation
security overall—is the need, in the face of an adaptive enemy, to put in place
security measures that they cannot plan against and be certain of what they
will find when they do their attack. That is, in my view, the best way to
disrupt Al Qaeda planning.
Looking back after
three years, I think the strategy is well understood by this group and the question
arises, “Okay, what is in place that is sustainable that will carry forward to
make sure that the level of protection continues?” First, we have a lower
Transportation Security Officer FTE [full-time equivalent] count than we did in
2005. We are doing a lot of things, but I think the first point I’ll mention is
in recognition of our leadership team that has managed to do it with fewer
people.
The Travel Document
Checker position was a vulnerability that very much concerned me given the
importance of identifying who it is that is trying to get on an airplane. If
the door is open for somebody to fake their way through with a phony ID, that
is a considerable vulnerability. I believe it is significantly closed now with
the Document Checkers and their integration into the rest of our security.
We have talked about
behavior detection as an important additional layer. We’ve got about two
thousand BDOs [Behavior Detection Officers] out there and we’ll probably add
another several hundred before the end of the year. This is a very effective
layer of security. Every morning when I go over the aspects of what happened
the day before, Travel Document Checkers or Behavior Detection Officers almost
every day come up with the most interesting counterterrorism finds. Certainly
we have a lot of people who bring, for instance, guns or other things, but most
of them are people making a stupid mistake. Of the people of counterterrorism
interest, we find that the Document Checkers and the Behavior Detection
Officers are highly effective.
Along with the ID
requirement, if you do not have an ID, we’re going to try and ascertain who you
are before letting you enter the sterile area. In the process of setting that
up, we now have a real-time connection between our
In the years since
2005, you are familiar with our VIPR [Visible Intermodal Prevention and
Response] teams that move around in any part of the transportation environment
and pop up and pop down. They’re a good example of the unpredictable, dynamic
security that I was speaking of earlier. We’ve done over a thousand VIPR
operations now including over five hundred this year alone. We have law
enforcement, local law enforcement, canines, our regulatory inspectors,
Behavior Detection Officers: this is a very good counterterrorism package. And for the first time in 2008, working with
our international partners, we’ve had BDOs paired with security officers from
other countries operate jointly.
We also have deployed
bomb tech officers—over three hundred Bomb Appraisal Officers. This is highly
significant because they’re at the checkpoint, not just training our officers
but also resolving threat information so we can resolve an image without
calling the bomb squad or closing a checkpoint.
That’s another significant layer.
Also with the airport
community, including local law enforcement, we’ve had a much more robust
back-of-the-airport, with airport employee screening that is in place and will
continue. As you know, there are a
number of pilots going on now that we’re participating in for a Congressional
report. It is important to know that
everywhere in the country there is significant screening going on in the back
of airports as well.
None of this could
have happened without a dedicated workforce that is flexible and
committed. This workforce has been asked
to do a lot—to stand up this agency without a lot of infrastructure and to do a
very difficult job with not always the best training or the best equipment or
the best working conditions. But this
organization is blessed with people who came after 9/11 for the
counterterrorism mission and have stayed, and done so under all sorts of
circumstances, including adding these additional duties while not adding
headcount.
Then there’s
technology. This year, we are deploying
AT X-ray. This is the first major system technology upgrade at the checkpoint
in a very long time. About three hundred
have been deployed so far. Why is that good?
AT X-ray will let our officers get a dramatically improved image of
what’s inside a carry-on bag, enabling them to quickly clear bags or see into
the clutter and find potential threats.
With AT X-ray, you can take a different view of a bag, where with
regular X-ray it might be shielded. It’s
very effective.
Most important, this technology
platform has the ability to be upgraded to automatically detect threat liquids
or other novel chemical formulations that might be used by terrorist plotters.
That means that if there’s a path for us to move away from the baggie, it will
be possible through AT X-ray. We’re not
there yet, but the technology has the capability. It’s a matter of time that
the algorithms are perfected to allow us to automatically detect threat liquids
or other improvised chemicals.
Regarding the sensitive topic of
assuring that people do not carry harmful components on their person, TSA is
improving its pat-down protocols and is deploying whole body imaging technology
to do the same thing better, faster, and without physical contact. We just
announced that we will be deploying 120 of these units by the end of next
year. That’s a very significant
deployment.
We are not done yet.
Starting in September, TSA will begin a
workforce-wide retraining of everybody associated with a passenger
checkpoint—from the Federal Security Director, to the front-line TSO, to the
Administrator, to the Assistant Administrator—as part of the Checkpoint
Evolution initiative. Make no mistake, this Checkpoint Evolution effort has
nothing to do with lights and music. The point is to give us the best shot at
stopping an attack. We have a counterterrorism mission and this is a critical
part of that security mission.
I’d like to quote Admiral McConnell,
head of DNI: “Al Qaeda is improving the last key aspect of its ability to
attack the
Bob Mueller, head of the FBI said: “Our
great concern is that, while it is happening in Europe, it is one plane ticket
away from occurring in the
Secretary Chertoff has recently spoken
about the confirmed terrorist interest in
So you have the Director of the FBI,
the Director of DNI, and the Secretary of Homeland Security giving you the same
message.
I would summarize it for you in the
following way: Today aviation remains at
the center of terrorist targeting.
That’s why we’re doing these security measures. That’s why we’re doing something better,
something different, to upgrade our security at these checkpoints. It is our checkpoint, it’s our space, it’s
your space. We need to use it to go on offense.
We have the advantage.
We’ve screened 3.5 billion passengers
since the start-up of TSA. That’s more than the population of the world. That means that our officers, when they’re
not focused on the SOP [Standard Operating Procedure] and they’re not going
through our checklist, they’re going through information in their own
subconscious. This is incredibly valuable information that allows them to pick
up on cues if we train them on it and encourage them to use it. I’d like to
give an example.
We had an incident in
Our Checkpoint Evolution training is
about getting away from the mentality of, “Did I complete the checklist? If I
did, I’m done with my job.” We have to
get away from that. Yes, we have to do our job of not letting prohibited items
through, but my job is not finished until I’ve stopped an attack. The TSO has to tune into extra pieces of
information that are available to us. Engage with the passenger. Connect with
other members of the team, including our
Emblematic of that approach is our new
uniform that includes a metal badge.
There’s been some interesting commentary on that, but I think it should
be very clear that this is about recognizing the professionalism of this job.
It’s one of the hardest things I think you could do—to handle 2.5 million
passengers a year, and hopefully we’ll continue at that level. People who
really don’t want you in their face, but you have a limited amount of time and
you have to resolve real threats. You
have to look at the intel side and believe, as I do, that the threat is very
real, and it is right with us now. These are critical decisions these officers
have to make and I want to give them—and I think you want them to have—the
self-confidence to make those decisions. What we’ve seen already in Baltimore
and DC where we’re piloting these new uniforms is a more confident officer.
They have received additional training, and we’re going to see that same attitude
nationwide when we deploy these new uniforms and badges on 9/11. That’s a fitting reminder to our workforce
and the American public.
The SOP is very useful, but it is not
an end in itself. The mission is stopping attacks. It is disrupting attacks
that are in preparation and it is deterring those that are in planning. And honestly, what I’m spending my time on at
TSA are those three things exclusively.
There is plenty of work in those areas, and that’s where I’m putting my
focus.
We’ve found that people have moved on
after 9/11. That’s okay, as long as they’re tuned in and following the security
measures, because we have people around the world in agencies focused almost
exclusively on those things. And it’s a
very strong network. You’re a part of it, and it should give the American
public a lot of confidence.
Watchlists are underappreciated as
tools against terrorists. If you believe
you have to have intelligence, you should take advantage when there are people
risking their lives and giving their lives to find scraps of information to
lead us to people who are planning terrorist attacks. If we have that information available to us,
the
The No Fly list is a no kidding
deal. When the intelligence community
identifies someone who is a No Fly, we have to make sure they don’t get on that
plane. Yes, there is some residual
hassle that goes into assuring that the identity of those who are passing
through the checkpoint are not on the Selectee list. Secretary Chertoff announced in April the
flexibility the airlines have to create a system to verify and securely store a
passenger’s date of birth to clear up watchlist misidentifications. Until Secure Flight is operational sometime
next year, this is going to be where the action is to assure the public that
we’re not over-hassling people, that there are not more people on the watchlist
then in fact there are.
I’d like to go back to the lucky number
99, for I believe that TSA is well positioned to offer effective security on a
sustained basis that can stay ahead of the evolving and continuing threats
coming our way.
I think it is important to remember what
we have. We could not ask for better partners in all of you. We have a strong,
deeply committed leadership team at TSA. We have an industry that has risen to
the occasion and will rise to the occasion when the need be.
Our Transportation Security Officers
and Federal Air Marshals, our critical front-line assets, are the best in the
world at what they do. We need to give them more respect in public. They should
have your confidence because they have earned it. They are here to protect us,
to save us if needed, and I guarantee you that if given the chance they will do
whatever it takes in support of the American public, no matter what the
personal cost.
Let us remember what is important.
After 9/11, I think we all remembered
what is important. Let’s give thanks for friends and loved ones—and those who
protect us.
This brings me to the number one thing
a TSA Administrator should not do.
Never forget.