WASHINGTON — Dozens of Transportation Security Administration employees in recent years have been reassigned, demoted, investigated or fired for reporting lapses or misconduct by senior managers, charges that were later upheld by whistle-blower protection agencies, records show. ADVERTISING WASHINGTON —
WASHINGTON — Dozens of Transportation Security Administration employees in recent years have been reassigned, demoted, investigated or fired for reporting lapses or misconduct by senior managers, charges that were later upheld by whistle-blower protection agencies, records show.
Even as the TSA, under renewed scrutiny after the terrorist attacks in Belgium, works to assure the public that airports in the United States are safe, a review of federal records and interviews with current and former employees show the agency is troubled by internal problems.
According to the Office of Special Counsel, 87 complaints were received last year from workers at the TSA claiming retaliation, discrimination other prohibited hiring practices, an increase from 64 in 2014. The cases were mostly about misconduct involving senior managers and were not about airport screeners’ letting weapons through checkpoints. The Internal Revenue Service, a larger agency with nearly 90,000 employees, had just 26 complaints.
The Office of Special Counsel also said that it obtained corrective actions for seven TSA employees in 2015 who claimed retaliation by the agency.
In the House, the Oversight Committee and Homeland Security Committee are investigating the TSA for claims of retaliation as well as for improperly awarding bonuses to senior managers. Several agency employees have flown into Washington over the last two weeks to give testimony. The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General is also investigating.
And just over two weeks ago, the Office of Special Counsel agreed to take the cases of Sharlene Mata and Heather Callahan Chuck, two of the highest-ranking women at the agency, saying there was evidence to support a full investigation of their claims of retaliation.
Chuck was the first woman at the TSA to lead all field operations across the nation’s 440 airports, before she was reassigned to Hawaii as its regional director and diplomatic liaison to foreign governments in the Asian Pacific region. Mata was a federal security director for eight years in Hawaii.
Both say they were demoted and received reassignments in 2014, after they made formal discrimination complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and raised concern about security lapses at Hawaii’s airports.
Chuck left the agency last year. Mata was reassigned to Seattle, where she now is an assistant federal security director.
“The focus at TSA has been about protecting senior managers,” Chuck said. “When you take people away from the mission, you are impacting security.”
Former and current TSA employees said in interviews that they experienced a culture of fear and intimidation, where senior managers seemed more interested in targeting those who disclosed the agency’s shortcomings rather than fixing problems.
“There is a culture at headquarters that we do what we want, no one holds us accountable to the rules” said Edward J. Goodwin, the former security director at Jacksonville International Airport in Florida, who won an EEOC lawsuit against the agency last year. Goodwin said he was investigated by the agency for misconduct after he refused to be involuntarily assigned to Des Moines. He retired instead.
The TSA, declining a request for an interview, issued a statement denying that workers had faced retaliation for reporting security lapses.
“TSA will not tolerate retaliation against employees who bring possible wrongdoing to light,” the statement said. “As public servants, our employees are held to the highest standard of professional and ethical conduct.” The statement also said the agency encouraged workers to report retaliation and misconduct to whistle-blower agencies.
Since its creation after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the TSA, which employs 55,000 people at 440 domestic airports and at embassies and consulates in more than 20 countries, has been rocked by leadership changes, high turnover and low morale.
Mindful of the criticisms of the agency, Peter V. Neffenger, a former Coast Guard admiral who was appointed administrator last year, moved quickly to start a program to train all workers to better detect weapons and called for more aggressive policing by airports’ oversight of security badges.
Last month, the TSA announced a change in its policy of involuntarily reassigning senior staff members to other airports, a practice that many workers say has been used to punish workers who speak out by sending them to undesirable locations.
John S. Pistole, former administrator of the TSA who created the Office of Professional Responsibility to establish uniform discipline and punishment across the agency, said claims by agency whistle-blowers were disconcerting, if true.
“There should never be any retaliation against workers for reporting a security violation,” he said. “This was not the standard I had for supervisors.”
Even those workers who were reinstated after their complaints were found to have merit have had to spend thousands of dollars fighting the TSA in court or in complaints before whistle-blower agencies, resulting in a chilling effect.
“These workers look around and see what’s happening with those who report security violations and remain silent because they have kids to feed and a mortgage to pay,” said Robert J. MacLean, who last year won a case against the agency for wrongful firing that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
