Originally Posted by oneofthosepeopleyouloveto hate

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Originally Posted by WaPo

The Transportation Security Administration promotes its programs to ensure security by using undercover operatives to test its airport screeners. In one instance, however, the agency thwarted such a test by alerting screeners across the country that it was under way, even providing descriptions of the undercover agents.

The government routinely runs covert tests at airports to ensure that security measures are sufficient to stop a terrorist from bringing something dangerous onto an airplane. Alerting screeners to an undercover officer's timing and appearance would defeat the purpose.

But that's exactly what happened on April 28, 2006, according to an e-mail from a top TSA official who oversees security operations.

In an e-mail to more than a dozen recipients, including airport security staff, the TSA official warned that "several airport authorities and airport police departments have recently received informal notice" of security testing being carried out by the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Originally Posted by Washington Times

An investigation of airport security at Mississippi's Jackson-Evers International Airport shows screeners cheated during a covert test, prompting the Homeland Security Department's inspector general to expand his investigation to other airports.

The preliminary investigation by inspector Richard L. Skinner released yesterday said Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees were alerted before what was supposed to be a surprise inspection in February 2004 and were told to "be on our p's and q's, the Red Team is in the area."

Screeners were told the sex and race of the undercover passengers, and knew "the location of test items in the checked and carry-on baggage or the location of such items on the tester," Mr. Skinner's report said.

"We could not identify, with absolute certainty, where the advance information originated from, but this information was communicated to certain individuals at all levels of TSA personnel at the Jackson-Evers International Airport," the report said.