“TSA is a rogue agency being run with no meaninful oversight. Congressional committees think giving or withholding funds is enough to keep the TSA in line, but that is gross dereliction of duty.”
Unfortunately, my experience as a contractor for Department of Energy is that Congressional oversight very often does more harm than good. Politicians have powerful incentives to score the cheap debating points regardless of whether it gets to the bottom of a problem.
Why is morale so bad among the rank-and-file? Bad management is a distinct possibility. Being resented by millions of American flyers who dislike being treated like criminal suspects is another distinct possibility. There are no doubt many other possibilities.
One thing’s for sure: While it’s also my experience that the press rarely get the story right, blacklisting an obnoxious reporter is only going to make things worse. It will be harder than ever for anyone to figure out what’s going wrong at TSA.
Kind of a tangential observation, but one feature of good security is that it is unobtrusive. Secret Service somehow manages to give the President excellent security without keeping from doing his job. Draw your own conclusions about TSA.
