Homeland Security Show | Episode 30

Why the TSA Can’t Get Its Job Description Right / Kephart’s Testimony Before Senate Judiciary on the Gang of Eight’s Immigration Bill

The show opened with Kephart having just returned from a 7.5 hearing on Capitol Hill where she was a witness on the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and what it means to border security. She provided a behind the scenes look at the hearing, the amount of time to prepare and how some of the Gang of Eight who sit on Judiciary barely showed for the hearing. You can view her testimony on CSPAN here (begins at 12 minutes and includes numerous questions in the 1.5 hr. panel). .

The core of the show was spent with guest, Curt Cooper is the former Minnesota (and regional) Chief of Staff/ Operations for TSA for all transportation including 8 airports and over 1,000 employees where he was responsible for training security officers, determining performance metrics, evaluations, leadership development and more. He won an award in 2011 for his TSA leadership out of 2,000 nominees. We discussed:

• Why can’t TSA get its job description right?
• What should the TSA airport security officers’ job entail?
• Is it possible to make both the TSA and passenger’s lives easier and safer when going through checkpoints?
• What should the mission of the TSA security officers be, exactly?
• How does allowing knives on planes help fulfill the mission of the TSA security officer?
• Is letting knives on carry on making the security officers’ job easier, when now they have to look through carry on and distinguish between knives?

More recently Curt owns a biometrics firm that works alongside Israeli biometrics technology company, Heimdallr Solutions used for aviation security. He’s also a recent graduate of the Post Naval Graduate School in Homeland Security, where his thesis concentration was on improving the TSA security lines.

Homeland Security Show