The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has admitted that a passenger carried a firearm past a TSA checkpoint and onto a Delta flight traveling from Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport to Tokyo Narita International Airport on January 3.
TSA’s statement read, “TSA has determined standard procedures were not followed and a passenger did in fact pass through a standard screening TSA checkpoint with a firearm at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on the morning of January 3.” Delta gave a statement to CNN attesting that “upon the customer’s disclosure, the airline reported the incident to the TSA.”
During the federal government’s partial shutdown, TSA agents have not received paychecks, according to CNN. TSA stated, “The perception that this might have occurred as a result of the partial government shutdown would be false. The national unscheduled absence rate of TSA staff on Thursday, January 3, 2019, was 4.8% compared to 6.3% last year, Thursday, January 4, 2018. So in fact, the national call out rate was higher a year ago than this year on that date.”
In June 2015, the acting administrator for the TSA, Melvin Carraway, was reassigned after the Department of Homeland Security filed a report delineating how “red teams” working for the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General managed to secret banned items past screeners a whopping 67 times out of the 70 attempts that were made. – READ MORE