Feds to meet deadline for hiring screeners at 424 airports

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than 47,000 federal recruits in the fight against terrorism will be in place this coming week, as newly trained security screeners begin working at 424 airports nationwide.

Steven Kelman, professor of public management at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said the eight-month rush to meet a congressional deadline was probably one of the biggest mobilizations of a civilian government agency in history.

Robert Johnson, spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, compares the massive effort to processing troops for World War II.

"This was an enormous task, and one that people said couldn't be achieved," Johnson said. "The deadline will be met."

Not everyone is impressed. Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., chairman of the House Appropriations transportation subcommittee, sees the TSA as a bloated agency with far more airport screeners than needed.

"It's wasteful," he said. "Anybody that travels knows that we have excessive screeners out there."