September 13, 2021 • 23 mins
Nico Melendez was hired as the Transportation Security Administration's first national spokesperson just 45-days after the agency was created. Melendez talks about the growing pains of an agency that would be tasked with the security of all modes of passenger transportation. Soon after he was hired, Melendez was transferred to Los Angeles to assist with opening the TSA's first field office at LAX. Melendez also talks about how he and others in his position defended the constant criticism of the agency. This episode also features a portion of the very first press conference announcing the deployment of newly trained TSA screeners.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
On November two thousand one, President Bush signed the Aviation
and Transportation Security Act into law. It required screening conducted
by specially trained federal employees, one percent checked baggage screening,
expansion of the Federal Air Marshal Service, and reinforced cockpit doors.
The new law would spin off into the creation of
the t s A to oversee security and all modes
(00:31):
of transportation. We set a very clear goal to achieve
world class security and world class customer service. This is
nine eleven, two decades later. I'm Steve Gregory in Los Angeles.
Congress gave officials with the newly created agency one year
to achieve its security objectives. On November two thousand two,
(00:53):
the t s A reached a major milestone. Here's the
press conference at Reagan Washington National Airport with Transportation secret
Erry Normanetta and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge. Now Rich
was just an advisor to the President at the time
because the Department of Homeland Security didn't yet exist. Well,
good morning, everyone, Thank you for joining us this morning.
(01:14):
Nearly one hundred years after the miracle of flight began.
We are here today to celebrate another historic milestone in aviation.
Tomorrow tomorrow, every one of our nation's four hundred and
twenty nine commercial airports will be staffed and secured by
professional screeners. More than forty four thousand dedicated men and
(01:37):
women have been hired, trained, and deployed to screen passengers
and ensure the safety of our skies. Each has received
more than one hundred hours of classroom and on the
job training for this important responsibility. The bottom line, the
Department of Transportation, under the extraordinary dnership of their Secretary Normanetta,
(02:02):
Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson, and Admiral Looy, will successfully meet
the one year deadline said by President Bush when he
signed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act on November two
thousand one. Within ten days of the passage of that legislation,
(02:34):
I can recall Secretary Monetta coming to the White House
for the Oval Office with a blueprint for building this
unprecedented new agency. The Transportation Security Administration began in January
with a mission statement and about a dozen employees, and
look where we are today. Now shortly, I'll have the
(02:58):
privilege of introducing Secretary Manetta, and he can chronicle what
I consider to be one of the most extraordinary organizational
achievements they've seen in this town in a long, long time.
And again to the Secretary and do Michael Jackson into
the Admiral in all of the hard working men and
women at the Department of Transportation and t s A,
(03:20):
we say congratulations on a job, very, very well done.
I might add that Norm's team not only beat the deadline,
they beat expectations. I remember watching the television and the
(03:42):
talking heads, listening to the talking heads and reading all
the journalists and all the opinion leaders who said there's
no way, as the secretary, you can possibly meet this deadline.
No way. But we are here today to prove that
they were wrong. However, we might us temper our pride
and this achievement, knowing terrorism is a permanent threat and
(04:05):
our airports on enduring vulnerability. We have seen the lenks.
Terrorists will go to penetrate airport security. They are just
as determined to destroy innocent lives as we are determined
to protect them. And make no mistake, we must be
ever vigilant because they will try again. That is why
(04:29):
we must now take the next historic step in securing
our homeland. I'm going to take this opportunity to encourage
the Senate of the United States today and tomorrow to
complete their work on the new Department of Homeland Security.
We will enable us to unify our homeland security responsibilities
under one department with one primary mission, the protection of
(04:52):
American citizens and their way of life. Having one department
will make it easier for us to build partnerships with
state and local god from it with the private sector,
including the aviation industry. This is absolutely critical if we
are to find solutions to our most pressing security challenges.
We all understand that airlines are critical, vital arteries of
(05:18):
our global economy. The right brothers would be astonished to
learn that eight million flights, near least six million passengers
and twelve billion dollars in freight go through US airports annually,
and I'm confident that this new agency will continue to
look for ways to improve service as it seeks to
(05:41):
improve security. In time. I suspect we will employ twenty
one century technology biometrics, smart cards, and other forms of
positive identification, as well as even more sophisticated explosive detection systems.
And of course, we rely on the training in the efforts,
(06:02):
the instincts, and the experience of the forty four thousand
men and women who work at T s A to
make sure that on a day to day basis, we
use good old fashioned common sense at every gate, at
every airport around this country. Admiral Roy likes to talk
about some of the rules that add to passengers stress
(06:23):
levels without reducing the risk, and I suspect in time
you'll eliminate or modify all of those as well. In
this new era, we must all think a new We
must keep in mind passengers daily routines as we provide
them with this new measure of protection. I'm confident we
(06:44):
can do this. In fact, early results suggest that up
to of passengers are being screened in ten minutes or less,
and that's great news for the traveling public. So today
is a milestone, but it is not an ending. New
and important deadlines boom ahead. Meeting those deadlines will not
(07:06):
guarantee that we are one secure from terrorism, but based
on the progress to date, we can look forward to
a far, far safer future. Mr Secretary, you have built
a terrific model here. I remember that first meeting in
the Oval Office. I remember the Mission Statement, a very
(07:30):
complex piece of legislation. A lot of people inside and
outside government. I just really didn't think you'd be able
to build this structure, train forty thousand folks and get
them all deployed within the year time frame because of
your leadership, surrounded yourself with some great people who have
identified earlier, and you've got the commitment from those four
(07:53):
thousand men and women who volunteered to help you secure
the airlines and our skies. You did it. So just
on a personal note, I think it's important to recognize
what an extraordinary job Secretary Normanetta has done. He was
passionate about meeting the deadlines, getting these individuals trained on time,
(08:16):
deployed on time, made a commitment to the President that
he could get it done. He could meet those deadlines.
So we celebrate the success of this organization and extraordinary
accomplishment a great public service. Is my great pleasure to
introduce to you our Secretary of Transportation, Normanetta. Norman Tom,
(08:36):
thank you, thank you very very much for that very
kind introduction. Governor Ridge. Last fall, President Bush turned to
an extraordinary leader to head up the Office of Homeland Security,
Governor Tom Ridge. As many of you know, I've known
(08:58):
Tom since two when we served in the House of Representatives,
and we did a lot of things together, and so
I know of his capabilities. And Tom has done an
outstanding job since his start just over a year ago,
and there will be much more that he will accomplish
(09:20):
in the days and the years ahead. Tom, I am
grateful for your friendship and your counsel and advice, and
the strong support that you have given to our important
security mission at the Department of Transportation. One year ago,
(09:42):
President Bush stood in this room and signed the Aviation
and Transportation Security Act, and with the stroke of that pen,
the Transportation Security Administration, otherwise known as t s A
was created m And at the time of the signing,
(10:03):
America was still suffering from a widespread fear of flying.
A half mile from here, burnt walls at the Pentagon
were a visible reminder of nine eleven, and at airports
throughout the country, long lines of nervous Americans watched as screeners,
(10:29):
ill prepared and ill equipped for the new wartime reality,
struggled to check passengers. National Guard troops patrolled our airports,
and the press and the public wondered if adequate security
could ever be restored. President Bush sent legislation to Congress
(10:55):
proposing the creation of the Transportation Security Administration. Congress soon
passed t s A legislation, and the President's signature set
in motion the largest peacetime mobilization in our nation's history.
(11:18):
Nico Melendez was hired by the t s A and
January of two thousand two, just forty five days after
the t s A was created, he was the agency's
first public affairs spokesperson. On the morning of nine eleven,
I was working for a small consulting firm in Arlington, Virginia,
and my main client was the director of Surface Warfare Pentagon.
I had a nine thirty meetings scheduled with my client
(11:41):
in the Pentagon, but because all of us in the
office we're watching the events in New York City on TV,
we got delayed, so ultimately the meeting was obviously canceled,
but we were all heading over to the Pentagon for
a meeting that day, and the people that we were
supposed to meet with actually are the ones that started
jumping out of window. Was in catching people trying to
(12:01):
evacuate the Pentagon. So it was very near and dear
to me and my family because fifteen minutes later I
could have probably been in that building. How did you
get attached to the t s A. Well, shortly after
nine eleven, I was approached by a colleague of mine
who worked at the Department of Transportation, and the t
s A had been created on November two thousand and one,
a short two months after the events of nine eleven,
(12:23):
and this colleague of mine asked me if i'd be
interested in the job at Department of Transportation. So I
submitted my my resume and my application and I got
I got a job offer working in the Office of
the Secretary. So I started on January three of two
two and a couple of weeks later, I was asked
to be the first public affairs representative for this new
agency t s A, which frankly, at that time I
(12:46):
had never really heard about, I didn't know much about,
and it was only about forty five days old when
I started working for them. So what was your understanding
this agency would do and what its function was? After
learning about the agency working at the Department, they were
going to be the new federal mechanism for security, providing
security at our nation's airports, to screen passengers and cargo,
(13:07):
and provide for the secure movement of both of those things.
Did you know out of the shoot, kind of the
scope and the responsibility this agency was going to take on.
I don't. I don't really think that anybody knew the
scope and the responsibility of this agency was going to
take on. You know, twenty years later, I looked back
and think, how did we how did we even do that?
(13:29):
You know, when we started the agency, I remember it
was it was a laugh to us that nobody really
had any sense of how many airports there were in
this country. Nobody had a sense of how many screeners
there were in this country because it was a completely
different structure back then than it is today. So the
(13:51):
scope of the of the mission, while it continued to
change almost on a daily basis, the guidelines that we
were given by Congress or something that I don't think
anybody anticipated, not even Congress themselves. What was security like
for air travel twenty one years ago as opposed to
what it is today? Yeah, you know, I remember going
through airports and it's it's almost funny when you think
(14:12):
about it now. I remember going through an airport checkpoint
and you walk up to the magnetometer or the metal detector,
and I take my keys out of my pocket, throw
them up in the air and catch them on the
other side, and you just stroll through. But it was
that quick, It was that insincere. But when we were
created in two thousand one, while the FA had oversight
(14:34):
responsibility for security in our nation's airports, there was no
guide book, There was no instruction manual on how security
was supposed to be performed. The airlines were responsible for
paying for these security firms, and as is most cases
in business, you always go for the lowest bidder. So
at an airport that has five or six terminals, you
(14:57):
could have five or six different security companies providing security
at each terminal, and the turnover rate of those screeners,
in some cases we found to be as high as
a hundred and fifty. People would leave the job as
quickly as they got there. So the training was lacking,
the concentration was lacking, and the predictability was lacking. So
(15:19):
when we got in, nobody knew. There was nowhere that
we could find any documentation of how many screeners there
were in our nation's airports because it was so many
different companies, there were so many different airports, so many
different airlines paying all these people we kind of had
to start from scratch and determine what's a good number
of screeners. Do you think the general public is good
(15:40):
at this now? Do you think we have it finally
or do you think there's still a lot that the
public needs to know. Well, you know, in the early
days of t s a are, our goal was to
be unpredictable. We didn't want the bad guys to be
able to gain the system, so we kept it unpredictable
from one airport to another. But now it's very predictable,
so we've kind of fallen into what was there before.
(16:02):
While the training is consistent from airport to airport, screener
to screener, the entire screening mechanism is rather predictable, So
we've kind of fallen back into where we were, but
with people who have made this a career rather than
the the attrition rates that we used to experience. So
the agencies created you're kind of figuring things out. There's
(16:24):
a big learning curve. It sounds like now you're trying
to hit your stride a bit. What were some of
those growing pains and big challenges overall for you as
not only spokesperson that is an employee of this new agency.
I think that the biggest growing pain, that the biggest
challenge that we had was the expeditious nature in which
we had to carry out this mission. And what I
(16:44):
mean by that is on September tenth, two thousand one,
for instance, less than five percent of all check bags
were screened for explosives. Well, Congress created this law, the
Aviation and Transportation Security Act, that required all bags to
be screened for explosives by December thirty one, two thousand two.
So they gave this brand new agency about fourteen months
(17:08):
to identify the types of technology, purchase the technology, get
industry to produce the technology, and build the machines, deployed them,
and find places to put them. Well, some of these
machines required a lot more energy than was available to
us through electric outlets at the security checkpoints. So in
(17:29):
some cases we had to restructure the entire electrical mechanism
that that provides power to these machines, and we had
to do it in fourteen months. And that was curculian
effort because at the time, there were only a couple
of companies that made the technology that we needed to
put into the airport, and a lot of people today
(17:50):
will remember back twenty years ago, when you walked into
an airport lobby, we had the big, huge baggage screening
machines sitting in the lobby that therefore displaced passengers out
into the street. So it was a real it was
a real trying time because airport managers were not happy
that we had these big machines and the terminals. Passengers
(18:11):
weren't happy, and Congress wasn't happy because we weren't doing
it fast enough. But we had to figure out a
way to do it, and at the same time, we
were trying to hire fifty thousand people to go in
airports frankly all over the world because the reach of
t s A goes from the Northern Marianas Islands all
the way down to Port Puerto Rico. So it was
it was a huge effort, and the biggest problem was
(18:33):
the time that we had to do it. There's been
a lot of criticism against this agency. You know, a
lot of people have said that maybe they feel safer,
maybe they don't, and they've equated t s A employees
to you know, just going through the motions. How have you,
as a spokesperson be able to defend your agency and
sort of counter that sort of negative stigma. I think
I always had to put the agency with the backdrop
(18:58):
of the mantra never forget. It seems that as the
American public, we have a very short attention span. Is
as we all say, we'll never forget, We'll never forget.
But when I worked for T. S A. It was
very clear to me that a lot of the traveling
public very quickly forgot. You know, they were calling for
a better airport security on but a year later, those
(19:19):
same passengers were upset with the lines they had to
stand in, with the invasive screening protocols, with the different
machines that we had in the airport. So the challenge
was informing people, reminding them, and keeping them aware of
the fact that the reason we're there was to prevent
another nine eleven. And I think that was the biggest
hurdle that we had, is is keeping the attention of
the American public on what we were doing and why
(19:40):
we were doing it. What do you think we're lessons
learned or something. If you could go back and you
wish the agency would do it differently, I think that
if we if we could have worked with Congress um
a little better in that first year to maybe extend
some of the timelines or change some of the requirements
that they put in the law. If we hyped hire
fifty people in a twelve month period and have them
(20:04):
trained and ready to go, mistakes are going to be made,
you know. I remember very early in two thousand, two
thousand three, we had to have fire like four screeners
at one airport because the baggage or the background checks
came back and we found something in their background. So
we took a black eye because we hired these people,
(20:26):
but we had to hire them fast. So the goal
was to get them on the line and then finish
the matriculation process, and then once a matriculation process completed,
then we would clean our clean our roles. But that
was a that was a black id our agency. We
hired a lot of people that had something in their background.
We didn't want them, the federal government didn't want them,
passengers didn't want them. But we needed people to fill
(20:47):
these spots, and we just hired people quickly, and we
spent a lot of money. We spent a lot of
money on technology, We spent a lot of money on restructuring, airports.
We spent a lot of money getting people to where
they needed to go because it was an unpresented time.
Had we had more time, could it have been done
more efficiently and more effectively, Probably, But we had a
(21:09):
fourteen month deadline to meet and we were being beat
up from the very beginning that we weren't doing it
fast enough. His air travel safer today than it was
years ago. I think security is more effective. I think
that we have people in place that know what they're
doing and know what they're looking for. And I think
that from the time that I was there, we knew
(21:32):
that the bad guys were probing our system, trying to
figure out a way to get in. We know they're
out there. We know that in caves in Afghanistan or
caves in Pakistan they have found information about the airline
industry and about T s A operations and what we're doing.
So I think that the having this organization in place,
(21:55):
it's good for the traveling public, is good for our government,
is good for commerce. But we always we're always going
to need to fine tune it to make sure that
they stay on the cutting edge and make sure they
keep their eyes on the ball. Finally, is our country
safer today than it was twenty one years ago? I
think ebbs and flows, I really do. I think that
(22:17):
going back to the mantra of never forget, we have
a short attention span, and with the border issues that
we have and not knowing who's coming through the border,
with people being disingenuous about their desire for their constitutional rights.
In one perspective, you have passengers saying why don't you
be more like Israel where they don't have a constitution
(22:40):
and they can screen all of their passengers the way
they want to to us, where we implement body scanners
and they say it's violation of their constitution, but then
they want us to profile. It's just disingenuous to say
what you want and then be opposed to the things
that we put in place because we're trying to make
the system more effective. So I think as a country
(23:01):
we are, we are more secure, but it adds and flows,
you know, from month to month, day to day. We
just need to do a better job of remembering why
we're doing what we're doing. Coming up in episode four,
there was an extreme focus on are we going to
be hit again? Will there be another nine eleven Securing
the Homeland nine eleven, two decades Later, is produced by
(23:24):
Steve Gregory and Jacob Gonzalez, and is a production of
the KFI News department for I heart Media Los Angeles
and the I heart Podcast Network. The views expressed are
strictly those of the guests and not necessarily the hosts
or employees of I heart Media.
On November two thousand one, President Bush signed the Aviation
and Transportation Security Act into law. It required screening conducted
by specially trained federal employees, one percent checked baggage screening,
expansion of the Federal Air Marshal Service, and reinforced cockpit doors.
The new law would spin off into the creation of
the t s A to oversee security and all modes
(00:31):
of transportation. We set a very clear goal to achieve
world class security and world class customer service. This is
nine eleven, two decades later. I'm Steve Gregory in Los Angeles.
Congress gave officials with the newly created agency one year
to achieve its security objectives. On November two thousand two,
(00:53):
the t s A reached a major milestone. Here's the
press conference at Reagan Washington National Airport with Transportation secret
Erry Normanetta and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge. Now Rich
was just an advisor to the President at the time
because the Department of Homeland Security didn't yet exist. Well,
good morning, everyone, Thank you for joining us this morning.
(01:14):
Nearly one hundred years after the miracle of flight began.
We are here today to celebrate another historic milestone in aviation.
Tomorrow tomorrow, every one of our nation's four hundred and
twenty nine commercial airports will be staffed and secured by
professional screeners. More than forty four thousand dedicated men and
(01:37):
women have been hired, trained, and deployed to screen passengers
and ensure the safety of our skies. Each has received
more than one hundred hours of classroom and on the
job training for this important responsibility. The bottom line, the
Department of Transportation, under the extraordinary dnership of their Secretary Normanetta,
(02:02):
Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson, and Admiral Looy, will successfully meet
the one year deadline said by President Bush when he
signed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act on November two
thousand one. Within ten days of the passage of that legislation,
(02:34):
I can recall Secretary Monetta coming to the White House
for the Oval Office with a blueprint for building this
unprecedented new agency. The Transportation Security Administration began in January
with a mission statement and about a dozen employees, and
look where we are today. Now shortly, I'll have the
(02:58):
privilege of introducing Secretary Manetta, and he can chronicle what
I consider to be one of the most extraordinary organizational
achievements they've seen in this town in a long, long time.
And again to the Secretary and do Michael Jackson into
the Admiral in all of the hard working men and
women at the Department of Transportation and t s A,
(03:20):
we say congratulations on a job, very, very well done.
I might add that Norm's team not only beat the deadline,
they beat expectations. I remember watching the television and the
(03:42):
talking heads, listening to the talking heads and reading all
the journalists and all the opinion leaders who said there's
no way, as the secretary, you can possibly meet this deadline.
No way. But we are here today to prove that
they were wrong. However, we might us temper our pride
and this achievement, knowing terrorism is a permanent threat and
(04:05):
our airports on enduring vulnerability. We have seen the lenks.
Terrorists will go to penetrate airport security. They are just
as determined to destroy innocent lives as we are determined
to protect them. And make no mistake, we must be
ever vigilant because they will try again. That is why
(04:29):
we must now take the next historic step in securing
our homeland. I'm going to take this opportunity to encourage
the Senate of the United States today and tomorrow to
complete their work on the new Department of Homeland Security.
We will enable us to unify our homeland security responsibilities
under one department with one primary mission, the protection of
(04:52):
American citizens and their way of life. Having one department
will make it easier for us to build partnerships with
state and local god from it with the private sector,
including the aviation industry. This is absolutely critical if we
are to find solutions to our most pressing security challenges.
We all understand that airlines are critical, vital arteries of
(05:18):
our global economy. The right brothers would be astonished to
learn that eight million flights, near least six million passengers
and twelve billion dollars in freight go through US airports annually,
and I'm confident that this new agency will continue to
look for ways to improve service as it seeks to
(05:41):
improve security. In time. I suspect we will employ twenty
one century technology biometrics, smart cards, and other forms of
positive identification, as well as even more sophisticated explosive detection systems.
And of course, we rely on the training in the efforts,
(06:02):
the instincts, and the experience of the forty four thousand
men and women who work at T s A to
make sure that on a day to day basis, we
use good old fashioned common sense at every gate, at
every airport around this country. Admiral Roy likes to talk
about some of the rules that add to passengers stress
(06:23):
levels without reducing the risk, and I suspect in time
you'll eliminate or modify all of those as well. In
this new era, we must all think a new We
must keep in mind passengers daily routines as we provide
them with this new measure of protection. I'm confident we
(06:44):
can do this. In fact, early results suggest that up
to of passengers are being screened in ten minutes or less,
and that's great news for the traveling public. So today
is a milestone, but it is not an ending. New
and important deadlines boom ahead. Meeting those deadlines will not
(07:06):
guarantee that we are one secure from terrorism, but based
on the progress to date, we can look forward to
a far, far safer future. Mr Secretary, you have built
a terrific model here. I remember that first meeting in
the Oval Office. I remember the Mission Statement, a very
(07:30):
complex piece of legislation. A lot of people inside and
outside government. I just really didn't think you'd be able
to build this structure, train forty thousand folks and get
them all deployed within the year time frame because of
your leadership, surrounded yourself with some great people who have
identified earlier, and you've got the commitment from those four
(07:53):
thousand men and women who volunteered to help you secure
the airlines and our skies. You did it. So just
on a personal note, I think it's important to recognize
what an extraordinary job Secretary Normanetta has done. He was
passionate about meeting the deadlines, getting these individuals trained on time,
(08:16):
deployed on time, made a commitment to the President that
he could get it done. He could meet those deadlines.
So we celebrate the success of this organization and extraordinary
accomplishment a great public service. Is my great pleasure to
introduce to you our Secretary of Transportation, Normanetta. Norman Tom,
(08:36):
thank you, thank you very very much for that very
kind introduction. Governor Ridge. Last fall, President Bush turned to
an extraordinary leader to head up the Office of Homeland Security,
Governor Tom Ridge. As many of you know, I've known
(08:58):
Tom since two when we served in the House of Representatives,
and we did a lot of things together, and so
I know of his capabilities. And Tom has done an
outstanding job since his start just over a year ago,
and there will be much more that he will accomplish
(09:20):
in the days and the years ahead. Tom, I am
grateful for your friendship and your counsel and advice, and
the strong support that you have given to our important
security mission at the Department of Transportation. One year ago,
(09:42):
President Bush stood in this room and signed the Aviation
and Transportation Security Act, and with the stroke of that pen,
the Transportation Security Administration, otherwise known as t s A
was created m And at the time of the signing,
(10:03):
America was still suffering from a widespread fear of flying.
A half mile from here, burnt walls at the Pentagon
were a visible reminder of nine eleven, and at airports
throughout the country, long lines of nervous Americans watched as screeners,
(10:29):
ill prepared and ill equipped for the new wartime reality,
struggled to check passengers. National Guard troops patrolled our airports,
and the press and the public wondered if adequate security
could ever be restored. President Bush sent legislation to Congress
(10:55):
proposing the creation of the Transportation Security Administration. Congress soon
passed t s A legislation, and the President's signature set
in motion the largest peacetime mobilization in our nation's history.
(11:18):
Nico Melendez was hired by the t s A and
January of two thousand two, just forty five days after
the t s A was created, he was the agency's
first public affairs spokesperson. On the morning of nine eleven,
I was working for a small consulting firm in Arlington, Virginia,
and my main client was the director of Surface Warfare Pentagon.
I had a nine thirty meetings scheduled with my client
(11:41):
in the Pentagon, but because all of us in the
office we're watching the events in New York City on TV,
we got delayed, so ultimately the meeting was obviously canceled,
but we were all heading over to the Pentagon for
a meeting that day, and the people that we were
supposed to meet with actually are the ones that started
jumping out of window. Was in catching people trying to
(12:01):
evacuate the Pentagon. So it was very near and dear
to me and my family because fifteen minutes later I
could have probably been in that building. How did you
get attached to the t s A. Well, shortly after
nine eleven, I was approached by a colleague of mine
who worked at the Department of Transportation, and the t
s A had been created on November two thousand and one,
a short two months after the events of nine eleven,
(12:23):
and this colleague of mine asked me if i'd be
interested in the job at Department of Transportation. So I
submitted my my resume and my application and I got
I got a job offer working in the Office of
the Secretary. So I started on January three of two
two and a couple of weeks later, I was asked
to be the first public affairs representative for this new
agency t s A, which frankly, at that time I
(12:46):
had never really heard about, I didn't know much about,
and it was only about forty five days old when
I started working for them. So what was your understanding
this agency would do and what its function was? After
learning about the agency working at the Department, they were
going to be the new federal mechanism for security, providing
security at our nation's airports, to screen passengers and cargo,
(13:07):
and provide for the secure movement of both of those things.
Did you know out of the shoot, kind of the
scope and the responsibility this agency was going to take on.
I don't. I don't really think that anybody knew the
scope and the responsibility of this agency was going to
take on. You know, twenty years later, I looked back
and think, how did we how did we even do that?
(13:29):
You know, when we started the agency, I remember it
was it was a laugh to us that nobody really
had any sense of how many airports there were in
this country. Nobody had a sense of how many screeners
there were in this country because it was a completely
different structure back then than it is today. So the
(13:51):
scope of the of the mission, while it continued to
change almost on a daily basis, the guidelines that we
were given by Congress or something that I don't think
anybody anticipated, not even Congress themselves. What was security like
for air travel twenty one years ago as opposed to
what it is today? Yeah, you know, I remember going
through airports and it's it's almost funny when you think
(14:12):
about it now. I remember going through an airport checkpoint
and you walk up to the magnetometer or the metal detector,
and I take my keys out of my pocket, throw
them up in the air and catch them on the
other side, and you just stroll through. But it was
that quick, It was that insincere. But when we were
created in two thousand one, while the FA had oversight
(14:34):
responsibility for security in our nation's airports, there was no
guide book, There was no instruction manual on how security
was supposed to be performed. The airlines were responsible for
paying for these security firms, and as is most cases
in business, you always go for the lowest bidder. So
at an airport that has five or six terminals, you
(14:57):
could have five or six different security companies providing security
at each terminal, and the turnover rate of those screeners,
in some cases we found to be as high as
a hundred and fifty. People would leave the job as
quickly as they got there. So the training was lacking,
the concentration was lacking, and the predictability was lacking. So
(15:19):
when we got in, nobody knew. There was nowhere that
we could find any documentation of how many screeners there
were in our nation's airports because it was so many
different companies, there were so many different airports, so many
different airlines paying all these people we kind of had
to start from scratch and determine what's a good number
of screeners. Do you think the general public is good
(15:40):
at this now? Do you think we have it finally
or do you think there's still a lot that the
public needs to know. Well, you know, in the early
days of t s a are, our goal was to
be unpredictable. We didn't want the bad guys to be
able to gain the system, so we kept it unpredictable
from one airport to another. But now it's very predictable,
so we've kind of fallen into what was there before.
(16:02):
While the training is consistent from airport to airport, screener
to screener, the entire screening mechanism is rather predictable, So
we've kind of fallen back into where we were, but
with people who have made this a career rather than
the the attrition rates that we used to experience. So
the agencies created you're kind of figuring things out. There's
(16:24):
a big learning curve. It sounds like now you're trying
to hit your stride a bit. What were some of
those growing pains and big challenges overall for you as
not only spokesperson that is an employee of this new agency.
I think that the biggest growing pain, that the biggest
challenge that we had was the expeditious nature in which
we had to carry out this mission. And what I
(16:44):
mean by that is on September tenth, two thousand one,
for instance, less than five percent of all check bags
were screened for explosives. Well, Congress created this law, the
Aviation and Transportation Security Act, that required all bags to
be screened for explosives by December thirty one, two thousand two.
So they gave this brand new agency about fourteen months
(17:08):
to identify the types of technology, purchase the technology, get
industry to produce the technology, and build the machines, deployed them,
and find places to put them. Well, some of these
machines required a lot more energy than was available to
us through electric outlets at the security checkpoints. So in
(17:29):
some cases we had to restructure the entire electrical mechanism
that that provides power to these machines, and we had
to do it in fourteen months. And that was curculian
effort because at the time, there were only a couple
of companies that made the technology that we needed to
put into the airport, and a lot of people today
(17:50):
will remember back twenty years ago, when you walked into
an airport lobby, we had the big, huge baggage screening
machines sitting in the lobby that therefore displaced passengers out
into the street. So it was a real it was
a real trying time because airport managers were not happy
that we had these big machines and the terminals. Passengers
(18:11):
weren't happy, and Congress wasn't happy because we weren't doing
it fast enough. But we had to figure out a
way to do it, and at the same time, we
were trying to hire fifty thousand people to go in
airports frankly all over the world because the reach of
t s A goes from the Northern Marianas Islands all
the way down to Port Puerto Rico. So it was
it was a huge effort, and the biggest problem was
(18:33):
the time that we had to do it. There's been
a lot of criticism against this agency. You know, a
lot of people have said that maybe they feel safer,
maybe they don't, and they've equated t s A employees
to you know, just going through the motions. How have you,
as a spokesperson be able to defend your agency and
sort of counter that sort of negative stigma. I think
I always had to put the agency with the backdrop
(18:58):
of the mantra never forget. It seems that as the
American public, we have a very short attention span. Is
as we all say, we'll never forget, We'll never forget.
But when I worked for T. S A. It was
very clear to me that a lot of the traveling
public very quickly forgot. You know, they were calling for
a better airport security on but a year later, those
(19:19):
same passengers were upset with the lines they had to
stand in, with the invasive screening protocols, with the different
machines that we had in the airport. So the challenge
was informing people, reminding them, and keeping them aware of
the fact that the reason we're there was to prevent
another nine eleven. And I think that was the biggest
hurdle that we had, is is keeping the attention of
the American public on what we were doing and why
(19:40):
we were doing it. What do you think we're lessons
learned or something. If you could go back and you
wish the agency would do it differently, I think that
if we if we could have worked with Congress um
a little better in that first year to maybe extend
some of the timelines or change some of the requirements
that they put in the law. If we hyped hire
fifty people in a twelve month period and have them
(20:04):
trained and ready to go, mistakes are going to be made,
you know. I remember very early in two thousand, two
thousand three, we had to have fire like four screeners
at one airport because the baggage or the background checks
came back and we found something in their background. So
we took a black eye because we hired these people,
(20:26):
but we had to hire them fast. So the goal
was to get them on the line and then finish
the matriculation process, and then once a matriculation process completed,
then we would clean our clean our roles. But that
was a that was a black id our agency. We
hired a lot of people that had something in their background.
We didn't want them, the federal government didn't want them,
passengers didn't want them. But we needed people to fill
(20:47):
these spots, and we just hired people quickly, and we
spent a lot of money. We spent a lot of
money on technology, We spent a lot of money on restructuring, airports.
We spent a lot of money getting people to where
they needed to go because it was an unpresented time.
Had we had more time, could it have been done
more efficiently and more effectively, Probably, But we had a
(21:09):
fourteen month deadline to meet and we were being beat
up from the very beginning that we weren't doing it
fast enough. His air travel safer today than it was
years ago. I think security is more effective. I think
that we have people in place that know what they're
doing and know what they're looking for. And I think
that from the time that I was there, we knew
(21:32):
that the bad guys were probing our system, trying to
figure out a way to get in. We know they're
out there. We know that in caves in Afghanistan or
caves in Pakistan they have found information about the airline
industry and about T s A operations and what we're doing.
So I think that the having this organization in place,
(21:55):
it's good for the traveling public, is good for our government,
is good for commerce. But we always we're always going
to need to fine tune it to make sure that
they stay on the cutting edge and make sure they
keep their eyes on the ball. Finally, is our country
safer today than it was twenty one years ago? I
think ebbs and flows, I really do. I think that
(22:17):
going back to the mantra of never forget, we have
a short attention span, and with the border issues that
we have and not knowing who's coming through the border,
with people being disingenuous about their desire for their constitutional rights.
In one perspective, you have passengers saying why don't you
be more like Israel where they don't have a constitution
(22:40):
and they can screen all of their passengers the way
they want to to us, where we implement body scanners
and they say it's violation of their constitution, but then
they want us to profile. It's just disingenuous to say
what you want and then be opposed to the things
that we put in place because we're trying to make
the system more effective. So I think as a country
(23:01):
we are, we are more secure, but it adds and flows,
you know, from month to month, day to day. We
just need to do a better job of remembering why
we're doing what we're doing. Coming up in episode four,
there was an extreme focus on are we going to
be hit again? Will there be another nine eleven Securing
the Homeland nine eleven, two decades Later, is produced by
(23:24):
Steve Gregory and Jacob Gonzalez, and is a production of
the KFI News department for I heart Media Los Angeles
and the I heart Podcast Network. The views expressed are
strictly those of the guests and not necessarily the hosts
or employees of I heart Media.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.