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Ridge grilled on airport security
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge faced the U.S. House Homeland Security Select Committee for the first time Tuesday to talk about how his department is making the country safer. Questions focused on communication between government agencies, but mostly airport-related security. One congressman asked when the same screening required of passengers and pilots would be extended to airport employees and to cargo placed on passenger planes. And why, another congressman asked, did the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) hire criminals to conduct security screening at airports in Los Angeles and New York? Two dozen security screeners at airports in Los Angeles International Airport and another 50 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York were found to have criminal records, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times reported last week. U.S. Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Kentucky, said the fact raises "very serious questions" about the TSA's hiring practices. "Can you help us out with this?" Rogers asked. "How come these people were hired and why aren't they fired?" Ridge said pressure to meet congressionally mandated requirements for federal screeners at the nation's airports forced the department to hire private firms that conducted background checks of more than 55,000 people. Private firms, which Ridge did not name, checked the names of applicants, but not their fingerprints. "I'm not trying to condone the sloppiness or inaccuracy of the work that was done," Ridge said. "We saw that ourselves." Ideally, Ridge said, the screeners would have undergone fingerprinting, credit checks and the "variety of checks normally done with government employment." Ridge said "appropriate remedial action will be taken" by his department, which has withheld money from one of the contractors doing checks. Ridge said screeners are being rechecked to see if they have criminal backgrounds, and depending on the type of crime, they will be fired. Ridge also was asked why the TSA recently announced it was cutting 6,000 screeners when it still is not able to screen the commercial cargo placed on passenger planes. Department officials have said for a while that cargo-screening is a priority. Some 22 percent of all cargo in the United States is carried on passenger planes and there is no system in place to guarantee that all of it is screened, U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Massachusetts, said. Ridge said his department is aware of that "deficiency" and that it is a very high priority. "We focused on baggage, we focused on passengers and now were focusing on cargo," he said. When pushed, he said he would report back to the committee with a timeframe for setting up a cargo-screening system.
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