Workin' that tan and looking after our airport security . . .

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. . . taxpayer dollars.

Report Criticizes Airport Screener Hiring After 9/11 -WP

http://framehosting.dowjonesnews.com/sample/samplestory.asp?StoryID=2006010513390012&Take=1


NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- A new government report criticizes Transportation Security Administration officials for taking shortcuts in hiring airport passenger screeners after Sept. 11, 2001, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

The under-staffed agency originally awarded a $104 million contract in February 2002 to hire 30,000 screeners, but then demanded significant changes to the contract that would eventually push the price of the deal to more than $741 million. TSA officials then moved forward with no planning "or adequate cost control," the report said, and they ignored warnings from contractor NCS Pearson Inc. that project costs had far exceeded the budget approved by Congress, according to the Post.

>>>>The new report, the Post said, attributed large increases in the screener contract to the TSA's decision to place the assessment centers at hotels and resorts instead of using contractor facilities.

According to the Post, the report said an assessment center in Topeka, Kan., tested 73 candidates and hired just four screeners, at an average cost of $143,432 per screener. At a center in Barrow, Alaska, 35 candidates were assessed and just two were hired, at a cost of $128,368 apiece.

The newspaper cited the report saying that spending at the resorts under the contract included thousands of dollars in unsupported cash withdrawals by contractors and hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges for valet parking, telephone calls and beverages at undiscounted hotel rates. The chief executive of a start-up "event logistics" firm hired to help manage the assessment centers paid herself a $5.4 million salary for nine months' work. Sites for the assessment centers included lavish resorts in St. Croix, the Virgin Islands, and Duck Key, Fla.

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1. Here's Cheney and Halliburton in Duck Key Fla.

"When Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton Co., he signed documents spinning off the Texas energy giant's unprofitable insurance subsidiary, telling shareholders of both companies the deal would give Highlands Insurance Co. "the opportunity to achieve its maximum potential. "

Documents generated by Halliburton, an oil services and construction firm headquartered in Dallas, describing the deal to Highlands investors revealed mundane items that insurance executives would lose in the spinoff, such as use of the Halliburton aircraft and access to its hunting lodge near Houston and a fishing facility in Duck Key, Fla."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/08/19/MN198205.DTL