New Report Likens Working at TSA To “Lord of the Flies”

A new 120-page document from the United States House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee alleges misconduct, obstruction, and other forms of misbehavior at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The report covers three years of findings and calls senior leadership to task.

If going through security at an airport has ever felt like a dystopian novel to passengers, workers inside the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) feel the same way. In a 2016, Mark Livingston, a program manager with the TSA’s office of Risk Management, testified before Congress that working at the agency felt like “Lord of the Flies – either attack or be attacked.”

A newly released report by the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee, covering three years of findings at TSA, bears out Livingston’s critique. The document, which runs a whopping 120 pages, alleges a culture of misconduct, cover-ups, and retaliation against whistleblowers, and notes that this “toxic combination” contributed to the agency’s “astronomical attrition rates (as high as 20 percent [in some departments during the three year investigation]) and abysmal ranking in a government-wide job satisfaction survey (336 out of 339 agencies and components in 2017).”

Among the misconduct cited were instances of sexual harassment against female employees from a top-level administrator, attempts to cover up the behavior by asking subordinates to lie, retaliatory reassignment of whistleblowers, and purposeful withholding of information and documents from federal investigators.

The report also noted multiple instances where recommendations from TSA’s Office of Professional Responsibility regarding dismissal of misbehaving executives – such as an Deputy Assistant Administrator who tried to blame another TSA employee when she was convicted for driving while intoxicated – were ignored. These instances, investigators noted, reinforced “the appearance of a double standard with respect to discipline.”

Though the committee states that “TSA must improve its culture,” the report does not include any recommendations for proposed changes or next steps.

[Photo: AP]