It’s as if Abbott & Costello are in charge of airport security in the United States. Otherwise how could one explain the many transgressions of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the monstrous agency created by Congress to secure the nation’s transportation system—mainly aviation—after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It’s generously funded to the tune of billions annually and has 65,000 employees yet can’t get the job done.

Just a few months ago a federal audit trashed the TSA, essentially saying that the DHS agency is so inept, the country remains inexcusably vulnerably to a repeat of 9/11. That’s partly because it doesn’t adequately screen luggage and passengers but mainly because it fails to properly vet foreign flight students. Remember that the Islamic terrorists who intentionally crashed planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon trained as pilots in U.S. aviation schools and the TSA is supposed to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Other mishaps include approving background checks for illegal immigrants to work in sensitive areas of major U.S. airports, guns and bombs regularly getting past officers during random tests and failing to meet federal standards by not screening cargo.  When a loaded gun slipped through “security” at Los Angeles International Airport last fall, the TSA appeared particularly stupid, saying it was another agency’s “issue” because its “mandate is to screen baggage for explosives” not loaded guns.

Considering this history, it may not seem all that surprising that the agency hired a defrocked priest with a shady history as a security officer at a major U.S. airport. The man, Thomas Harkins, was removed from the ministry by the Diocese of Camden over allegations that he had molested a pair of grade-school girls, according to the news report.  He was never criminally prosecuted but the diocese doled out nearly $200,000 to settle civil lawsuits.

At Philadelphia International Airport Harkins, who earns $75,600 a year, oversees screening operations for checked baggage but he once patted down airline passengers as they went through the facility’s security checkpoint. The TSA admits in the story that it never completed his background check. Here’s why; he was hired at a time when the agency was initially “staffing up” to protect airports from terrorists and background checks were often not completed.

That’s essentially what the latest of many federal audits reveals about the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the massive, 65,000-employee Homeland Security agency created by Congress after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The seemingly elusive mission is to secure transportation by adequately screening luggage, passengers and properly vetting foreign flight students.

After all, Islamic terrorists, trained as pilots at U.S. aviation schools, intentionally crashed planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. When Congress created the TSA a year later, one of its key duties was to scrutinize all foreign flight students before they can take lessons or get a pilot’s license in the U.S. This is essential because the al Qaeda terrorists who piloted the jetliners in 2001 trained in schools in Florida, Arizona and Minnesota.

As the 11^th anniversary of the attacks approaches, the TSA’s Alien Flight Student Program (AFSP) still fails to screen foreign nationals who enroll in U.S. flight schools, according to a report published this week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress. In fact, the agency isn’t even keeping its database of background checks up to date and investigators found that records were missing for 25,000 foreign nationals who trained as pilots here.

It gets better. The TSA’s special program doesn’t even bother to determine if the candidates are in the country illegally. This has been reported before. In fact, well over a year ago a flight school in Stow Massachusetts, a rural community about 25 miles west of Boston, made headlines because it was operated by an illegal immigrant who somehow got a U.S. pilot’s license and more than 30 illegal aliens, cleared by the TSA, were enrolled and training to fly planes.   

Pilots are actually licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), but the agency relies on the TSA for criminal and immigration background checks. The TSA is also responsible for clearing airport workers who enter secure areas. In previous years the agency actually approved background checks for illegal immigrants to work in sensitive areas of busy airports in various parts of the country.

Considering this, the GAO puts it way too diplomatically by saying “weaknesses exist in the vetting process” for “identifying flight students who may be in the country illegally.” Investigators recommend that the TSA “identify how often and why foreign nationals are not vetted under AFSP and develop a plan for assessing the results of efforts to identify AFSP-approved foreign flight students who entered the country illegally.”

Don’t hold your breath. It’s been more than a decade and the TSA can’t get its act together, despite being generously funded by Congress. The agency’s many transgressions have been well documented over the years and include regularly missing guns and bombs during random tests at major U.S. airports and failing to meet federal standards by not screening cargo and passengers on hundreds of thousands of planes that fly over the U.S. annually.

Last fall a scathing report issued by a House Transportation Committee called for an overhaul of the TSA, saying that the inept and bloated agency has failed miserably to fulfill its mission. The TSA has “grown into an enormous, inflexible and distracted bureaucracy” that has lost its focus on transportation security, according to the committee’s report. It further states that the TSA “lacks administrative competency” and “suffers from bureaucratic morass and mismanagement.”

In another zinger earlier this year, the former head of the TSA called the agency a national embarrassment that’s hopelessly bureaucratic and disconnected from the people it is meant to protect. In a newspaper article promoting his new book about the agency’s inner workings, former TSA had Kip Hawley assures that “airport security in America is broken” yet it has transformed air travel into an “unending nightmare for U.S. passengers and visitors from overseas.”

This is hardly earth-shattering news about the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) since its many lapses have been exposed through the years in a variety of government probes and media reports. What singles out this particular report, released this week by a House Transportation Committee, is that it goes a step further by calling for an overhaul of the 65,000-employee agency.

Titled “A Decade Later: A Call for TSA Reform,” the report outlines the Homeland Security agency’s endless transgressions since its creation and concludes that it has “grown into an enormous, inflexible and distracted bureaucracy” that has lost its focus on transportation security. The TSA “lacks administrative competency” and “suffers from bureaucratic morass and mismanagement,” the report further states.

TSA’s operations are outdated, more than 25,000 security breaches have occurred at U.S. airports since congress created it and the agency has failed to develop and deploy effective technology despite wasting $39 million to procure special machines that could not consistently detect explosives. The TSA also blew $212 million on a failed passenger observation program that allowed terrorists to board planes on nearly two dozen occasions. This information was attributed to a separate government report published earlier this year.

It’s not like the TSA lacks manpower. Its workforce has swelled by 400%—from 16,000 to 65,000—since it was created and it’s larger than many other agencies, including the departments of State, Labor, Energy, Education and Housing and Urban Development. The TSA has also received nearly $60 billion to secure the nation’s transportation network.

The committee’s recommendations for reform include setting performance standards for passenger and baggage screening operations based on risk analysis and common sense, prioritizing screening resources based on risk rather than a one-size-fits-all system, dramatically reducing administrative personnel and offering the public more transparency involving performance. Sounds rather simple, especially the “common sense” part.  

The bottom line is that the TSA must “refocus its mission based on risk and develop common sense security protocols,” says the Florida congressman (John Mica) who helped write the legislation that created the agency a decade ago. Mica also chairs the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure that produced the scathing report. In a separate statement he said the TSA “has mushroomed into a human resources bureaucracy of over 65,000 that has lost its transportation security focus.”   

This may lead Americans to wonder who is responsible for securing the nation’s transportation system. After all, Congress created the monstrous TSA, with 50,000 employees, to protect mainly aviation after the 2001 terrorist attacks. In the name of security, travelers go through a circus-like routine that includes invasive pat-downs, body scanners, removing shoes and giving up liquids to board a plane.

Packing a loaded weapon into a checked bag is another story. It happened over the weekend at Los Angeles International Airport while TSA agents napped through the process. The loaded .38-caliber handgun was subsequently discovered by airport ramp employees when it fell out of a duffel bag as they were about to load it, according to California’s largest newspaper.

Here is where it gets really good. TSA officials claim they are not required to screen for loaded weapons in checked luggage and an agency spokesman played if off as an “issue” for someone else to deal with. Here is the direct quote from the TSA official published in the paper’s follow-up story on the incident: “It may be an issue for some agency or the airline, but it’s not a TSA issue. Our mandate is to screen baggage for explosives.”

Inevitably, this has ignited fury among local police and lawmakers since it’s illegal to transport a loaded or unloaded gun in an airplane without properly declaring it. Rules and regulations for the transportation of firearms and the penalties for violating them are even posted on the TSA’s website. “These regulations are strictly enforced,” the TSA asserts on its website. “Violations can result in criminal prosecution and civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation.”

But who is strictly enforcing the regulations? A congresswoman, who represents Los Angeles and sits on the House Committee on Homeland Security and the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, is demanding answers. In a letter to Administrator John S. Pistole, Congresswoman Janice Hahn asks “if TSA is not enforcing its own regulations about loaded firearms in luggage, who is?” Hahn also mentions how “troubling” it is that ten years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, an undeclared, unsecured and loaded firearm escaped detection in baggage screening.

These sorts of lapses are par for the course for the TSA, which has virtually unlimited resources and unconditional support from Congress and the White House. The agency has made headlines over the years for guns and bombs regularly getting past screeners during random tests at major airports, failing to meet federal standards by not screening cargo and passengers on hundreds of thousands of planes that fly over the U.S. annually and approving background checks for a dozen illegal immigrants working in sensitive areas of a busy U.S. airport.

A few months ago a federal report blasted a $212 million TSA screening program, known as Passenger by Observation Techniques (SPOT), that promised to detect terrorists at U.S. airports. Instead the TSA’s highly specialized Behavior Detection Officers failed to stop terrorists from boarding planes on at least 23 occasions, according to congressional investigators who conducted the probe.