A policy championed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to speed up Transportation Security Administration lines at airports in fact had a key security flaw — but when it was reported to her, the Department classified it and kept it buried for months, reported the Wall Street Journal on Friday.
The policy is one of the few undertaken by Noem's DHS that has enjoyed considerable bipartisan support: ending requirements for people to remove their shoes at airport security lines, a policy enacted after a thwarted shoe bomb plot over two decades ago that the traveling public has long considered a nuisance.
However, "a classified November report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, the agency’s top watchdog, found that some of the TSA full-body scanners that most airline passengers pass through can’t scan shoes, according to people familiar with the report’s contents," said the Journal. "The report determined Noem’s policy move had inadvertently created a new security vulnerability in the system. Some White House officials have been made aware of the report."
After the report was given to Noem, "officials there gave it a higher level of classification and blocked it from being publicly released," according to the report.
Noem's office denies this account of events and says that action was taken to fix the vulnerabilities after the report. However, said the Journal, this is not the only time Noem has been accused of brushing off security concerns in the name of her image: "In another instance, her office published photos of a secret government facility, publicizing a site meant to house the president in emergencies, officials said."
This comes after Noem was accused of playing politics by suspending TSA PreCheck to try to turn the public against Democrats for allowing DHS funding to lapse amid an argument over reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The White House itself reportedly intervened to overrule Noem and continue operating TSA PreCheck.