A Lousy Week for the U.S. Government

Let’s just say the U.S. Government had a bad week. We’ve all had those, right?

It starts when you rip your pants on the car door handle. Then you space out and overdraw your checking account and get hit with fees. Then, to cap it off, you accidentally hit “reply all” on an email and mock an annoying co-worker who is copied in the cc: field.

Well, the federal government had one of those weeks last week. It was a doozy, a trifecta of sorts: TSA incompetence, an epic hack attack and a multi-billion dollar disability bombshell.

Here’s a quick recap.

Monday June 1 – Transportation “Insecurity” Administration

DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson 

Tests run at dozens of airports across the U.S. show that the Transportation Security Administration failed to detect weapons, bombs and others items not well suited for air travel 95% of the time. Yes, that’s correct – of the 70 tests run by investigators, the TSA whiffed on a whopping 67 of them.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Chief Jeh Johnson was furious. He reassigned TSA Administrator Melvin Carraway and issued a series of six directives to “enhance our security capabilities and techniques.” Among other things, his directives included more training, revising existing procedures and re-testing equipment.

Thursday June 4 – OMG, Hacking the OPM

The federal government let us know that back in December of last year, hackers broke into the computer system of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and made off with personal data from about 4 million current and former federal employees.  The U.S. says that China did this. China, not surprisingly, denied involvement. The dialogue in the press last week – akin to what you’d expect from two six-year- olds on a school play lot – sounded something like this:

US Gov: You hacked us.

China: No we didn’t.

U.S Gov: Yes, you did.

China: No we didn’t.

US Gov: Liar.

China: I know you are, but what am I?

US Gov: Shut up.

China: You shut up.

Sunday June 7 – A Billion Here, a Billion There…

The results of a 10-year study show that Social Security overpaid half of the people receiving disability benefits to the tune of $17 billion over the last decade. In addition to overpaying people, the study found that the agency was paying people who were dead or in prison.

Apparently the agency was able to recover about half of this money. That’s good news. The bad news, however, is that unless Congress does something different, the trust fund that supports the disability program will run out of cash in the final 3 months of 2016, leaving only enough payroll taxes to fund 81% of the current benefits. I acknowledge that some might not see this as “bad news” per se.

A Tangled Web

Now, clearly, these are three separate and distinct issues that coincidentally happened to come to light during the span of one week. And, as we’ve established, it was a bad week. It wouldn’t necessarily serve much of a purpose to scrutinize or over-hype these events.

Nonetheless, I do have a few comments.  And I’d like to steal a page from DHS Secretary Johnson and his six-part directive and provide six observations to consider.

1. An Allen Wrench – On Tuesday June 2, I traveled from Chicago to San Jose California. The prior day in Chicago was beautiful, so I opted to set up my patio furniture on my back deck.  This involved using an Allen wrench (aka hex key) to secure the 4 legs of my outdoor table. When I finished, I put the wrench in my back pocket. 

My Allen wrench - aka hex key

The next day, yes, I wore the same pants. Despite the “take everything out of your pockets” refrain from the blue-gloved TSA agent, I did not. I forgot about the light, thin Allen wrench. The screening agent caught it, though. During a pat down procedure that he skillfully executed on my right buttock, he found the offending wrench and politely scolded me for having it. Guilty as charged.

The lesson: Given the 5% success rate from the tests revealed the day before, apparently you’re likely to have more success with guns, explosives and other bad stuff if you’re boarding a plane than if you’re carrying a small wrench capable of perhaps tightening a loose tray table. Good to know.

2. Twelve and a Half Days – Since 2001, I calculated I’ve taken about 600 flight segments. If I estimate a 30-minute wait per visit in the TSA line, we’re talking 18,000 minutes, which is 300 hours or, roughly 12 ½ entire days of my life. When you’re waiting, of course, you’re telling yourself this is for safety. It’s a sacrifice, but you’re willing to make it because, well, you don’t want to die. Now given the TSA’s razor-thin success rate, it’s harder to feel like these have been days well spent. 

Clarification: Despite these 12 ½ days in TSA captivity, just one clarifying question though: Is it OK if I bring water through the scanner? I just don’t quite get that yet.

3. Homeland Bound – DHS Secretary Jeh (pronounced “Jay”) Johnson has had an impressive career as a lawyer, Assistant U.S. Attorney General in New York, General Counsel for the Department of the Air Force under President Bill Clinton and also for the Department of Defense under President Barack Obama. 

Are we, in fact, "secure"?

Interestingly, he was born on September 11, 1957. You might say given his current position and trajectory of his career, he was born to lead the Department of Homeland Security, a 200,000 person, nearly $100 billion government agency created after the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. It’s sort of poetic in a way. 

You could, however, also make the opposite argument. Granted, the TSA is just one of 7 agencies under the DHS, but given evidence that it appears to be shockingly inept Secretary Johnson and his team might actually be giving new life, as it were, to terrorists everywhere. These anti-US folks must be feeling reborn, in a way, to hear this report. Here they were cooking up elaborate schemes to do harm to the U.S. when all they really need to do is put whatever weapon they’ve created in their carry-on bag. Who knew?

4. Viable Reassignment Options – TSA Administrator Melvin Carraway has been reassigned in the wake of the scandalous report. The decision as to where to assign him is clearly out of my hands. I’d just offer two points: 

First, don’t consider the Social Security Administration. Given the multi-billion-dollar bloodletting, it appears they are full up on sub-standard administration techniques at the moment. Maybe reapply in 6-12 months.

Second, avoid the part of the DHS that is investigating the recent OPM hackings that allegedly came from China. It appears that the OPM did not even know about the hacking until April 2015, so clearly a review of their procedures is going to take someone with good investigative and observation skills.

Finding hackers is not easy. You are searching for nameless, faceless programmers on the other side of the world who are most likely hiding behind sophisticated networks, complex software and intelligent encryption techniques. I don’t think a guy whose department cannot successfully execute a simple pat down procedure to find a mock plastic explosive strapped between the shoulder blades of the man whose name they know and who is standing directly in front of them would actually qualify. 

5. Valuable Data – The hackers who broke into the OPM computers took social security numbers as well as data on job assignments data, performance ratings and training information. Tip to the hackers: The SSN info will likely net you the most cash on the market. If you stumbled onto any TSA personnel data, I’d disregard the performance rating and training information. Clearly it’s of little to value other than perhaps comic value. 

6. Pay for Performance – The TSA budget was about $7.4 billion in 2014. It employs 47,000 Transportation Security Officers and pays them roughly between $25,000 and $39,000 a year. Recently, test results appeared to expose the fact that the work these individuals do is ineffective, so you could say we’re essentially paying them for nothing. We pay them for security, but we’re still getting 95% insecurity. 

Disability payments certainly are a whole different ball of wax. These are individuals, who, for a wide range of reasons, are unable to work.  Many people argue that the definition of “disability” is both suspect and inconsistent. But aside from that claim, it appears easier at this point to defend the average annual payments of $14,000 to a person on federal disability than the much higher annual salaries to Transportation Security Officers.

Those are my observations for what was undoubtedly a troubling, forgettable week for the U.S. Government. And you’ll notice that in all of this I didn’t even mention former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican and current man of the hour.  

Here is a man – appearing in a federal court today in Chicago – who was once two heart beats from the Presidency and is now facing charges of violating banking rules and then lying to the FBI. Law enforcement sources and the sister of a former student of Hastert allege the money was to hide past sexual abuse by Hastert when he was a high school teacher and wrestling coach.

Oh, wait. Sorry. That was not last week. That news hit the prior week on May 28. My mistake.