The head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) denies that

agency officials intended to tip off airport security screeners that they were

being covertly tested last year.

An April 2006 e-mail sent by a TSA employee to airport security officials

across the country described an undercover Department of Transportation (DOT)

test of screening checkpoints. But TSA Administrator Kip Hawley said the message

was sent not as a tip-off, but out of concern that al-Qaida or other terrorists

might be posing as transportation officials.

The incident, now under investigation by the DOT Inspector General, was

the topic of a heated congressional hearing. At issue is whether airport

screeners have been told ahead of time that there would be covert testing at

their airports, defeating the purpose of the field tests.

Former DHS Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin said past investigations

found cheating by screeners at Jackson-Evers International Airport in

Mississippi and at San Francisco International Airport. Hawley said he is not

aware of any other incidents.

The email in question warned of security testing being carried out by the

DOT and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It relayed a detailed

description of a couple conducting the test.

Hawley said the official who sent the e-mail found the reference to the

DOT and FAA suspicious and decided to share it with federal security directors

at airports across the country. He said the e-mail was recalled 13 minutes after

it was sent out.

"I would like to make it very clear that the matter is under

investigation now, but there is nothing I have learned...that would indicate

that there was any intent on anybody's part associated with that e-mail to tip

off on covert testing.

"We do over 70,000 electronic tests every day on our workforce. We do

2,500 bomb component covert testing at every checkpoint. That means every

checkpoint, every shift, every day at every one of the 450 airports that we

have," said Hawley, adding that testers try to smuggle actual bomb components

past transportation security officers (TSO).

Hawley's defense of his agency's diligence came as the General

Accountability Office released an unclassified version of a report that shows

that undercover investigators successfully carried all the bomb components

needed to damage an airliner through airport security checkpoints several times

this year. The government agents were able to smuggle detonators, liquid

explosives and liquid incendiary components past TSOs.