Originally Posted by
halls120
You left out one critical difference, Bart. Contractors can be easily terminated, unlike federal employees. Which is why TSA should have used the model currently in place at SFO - a group of contract employees working under the supervision of a TSA FSD. Much cheaper in the long run for the taxpayer, and with no loss of effectiveness.
Excellent point.
Even if that is indeed the case, so what? We've already established that the 9/11 hijackers did not succeed because of lax gate security. Other than providing guaranteed federal employment, we've got this "wonderful" improved above the wing security, when we should have been concentrating on under the wing security.
Because the next time won't be exactly the same as the last. We learn lessons from experiences, and so do they.
Personally, I like being able to converse with screeners in English. Most pre-9/11 screeners had issues with that, IME. Just sayin'....and that better education, training, etc. should, on paper, make a better workforce better able to deal with the next attack.
Whether that goal has been met, or not, is subject for most discussion. But I find it hard to agree that the pre-9/11 screeners were up to any kind of real job preparing for true terror attacks.
And no, the SFO screeners were NOT the same as the pre-9/11 screeners I dealt with. Much, much better.
To sum up: better screeners were needed, not because the others failed on 9/11 but because the game had changed. We needed better trained people at those positions. Whether we had to federalize is arguable, but I think it obvious that pre-9/11 screening was unsat.
My .02.