Jason Harrington, who joined the T.S.A. as a screener at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago in 2007, said he was stunned by the agency’s seemingly ever-changing priorities.

“One day it was, ‘We want to thoroughly check everybody, even if the line is backed up to the ticket counter,’” said Mr. Harrington, who left the agency in 2013 to attend graduate school and wrote an article in Politico the next year about his experience with the T.S.A. “But a short time later, it was, ‘We have to get these people through the lines.’”.....

Mr. Neffenger said the agency would be cutting back on using the managed inclusion programs, though he said he planned to push to get more passengers into the Pre-Check program.