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TSA's Risk-based Approach to Security

George Naccara is betting that the lift of his risk-based reforms will overcome the drag of politics and bureaucracy. And the test bed for these innovations is Boston's Logan Airport

But Naccara's dilemma is that for years now his own agency, TSA, has very successfully marketed the need for and effectiveness of the banned-items list. Maybe the flying public have an object fixation, but TSA did the fixing. Travelers have come to accept "no sharp objects" as a fact of flying. Naccara, then, must replace one marketing message with another one potent enough to redefine the public's perceptions of safety. That's no small thing. People might not care to be safer if they don't feel safer. And even if risk analysis says reducing the banned-items list is not risky, passengers won't feel safer knowing sharp objects are allowed back on planes after hearing how important it was to ban those items in the first place. And many of those passengers vote.

Which explains Rep. Markey, over in Terminal B, calling TSA's plan "a gift to terrorists this holiday season." Markey has enlisted the support of congressmen from both sides of the aisle, as well as the Association of Flight Attendants and family members of 9/11 victims. Even Craig Coy, CEO of the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), who sees Naccara almost every week, was, at first, publicly critical of his plan.

Downstairs in Terminal A, a local TV political reporter and his cameraman stop Naccara. Care to comment on Markey's position? Later, Naccara promises. The reporter and cameraman retreat, and Naccara presses on. Finally, through one more door, he has caught up with the bags inside of a 3.5-acre room that smells of jet fuel. In fact, it's the country's first in-line integrated baggage-screening system.

"Here it is," Naccara says, as if he wishes the reporter were still here, because this room is, in fact, how he cares to comment.

When Naccara arrived as Logan's security director in June 2002, the airport's security was terrible; and it appeared, from the details that roiled up in 9/11's wake, that Logan security had been terrible for a decade. Massport, the governing authority, was savaged, accused of cronyism in hiring security personnel. Federal Aviation Administration reports surfaced that said agents had easily slipped guns, inert hand grenades and simulated bombs past checkpoints. All told, there were 234 such violations at Logan in a decade, the fifth-highest total among major airports. FAA agents also managed to get onto Logan's airfield 26 times. Once, a teenager scaled a perimeter fence, crossed two miles of restricted area and stowed away on an international flight.