John Ratcliffe Questions TSA Administrator about breaches at D/FW Airport

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Admiral, first of all, I'd like to thank you for your 34 years of dedicated service in the Coast Guard, and I certainly wish you the best of luck in your new role as the TSA administrator. You've got a very difficult job ahead of you. As a number of our recent hearings in this committee have highlighted, there are some immediate and frankly glaring problems that you'll need to address in this new role. We need to only rewind the clock a few days to underscore some of the troubling gaps that exist right now at TSA. I'm sure that you're obviously aware that three days ago on Sunday at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, a 26-year-old man was able to bypass TSA security without a boarding pass or any identification at all and get on a plane to Guatemala. According to the police report, it was only after the police were called and the individual left the plane that TSA security became aware of the incident. So I want to give you an opportunity to respond to what happened at DFW and give us any information that you can about your investigation into how a breach of that magnitude was possible. Well, I share your great outrage over that. As I said before, the checkpoint is a very critically important element of a security system and it does form the barrier between. So with that specific case that's under investigation right now, I'm happy to share the results of that with the committee once we see what the specifics were that caused that. But the bottom line is that you should not have, it should not be easy and it should be impossible for somebody to make their way past a checkpoint without being observed and certainly it should not be possible to get past a checkpoint to the point of getting on an aircraft without having known about it. So we'll find out what happened there. But it speaks, as I said earlier, to the more systemic question about how we're managing our checkpoints. I think it ties right into some of the concerns with respect to how we're supporting our frontline workforce, what the training is and what the standards are that we expect. And as I said, I think we'll find out what happened there and I'll make sure that we put into place the procedures to keep it from happening again. It may be a question of changing the way those barriers are constructed when there's nobody manning a station. It's quite often the case that you have, in slower periods, lines that aren't open. I want to know how those are secured during that time and what's the protocol for keeping those secured? DFW is an airport that I use frequently and obviously many of the constituents that I represent as well. It's obviously one of the busiest airports in the country. Can you at least tell us at this point, do you know, is this an issue that was specific to the DFW airport or are some of the concerns here something that could happen at other airports around the country? In other words, do you know if this is simply a configuration issue or is it a breach of protocol or procedures? Can you share any information at this point in time? As I said, because it just happened, I haven't seen the report of the investigation. The Office of Investigations is looking at that right now. I'll let you know what specifically was the issue here. My suspicion is that right now it's confined to that specific location in Dallas-Fort Worth. But I've ordered a full review across the system. I talked to our head of operations at the TSA headquarters and said, look, I want you to look across the whole system and tell me whether we've got issues like this elsewhere. And if we do, I want to plan for how we're going to address those. Admiral, obviously that unfortunate event at DFW highlights the challenges that you face. I certainly do wish you luck and I look forward to having you work with this committee to improve airport and airline safety in this country. Thanks for being with us today. I yield back.