Pat-downs will continue at airports, TSA chief says

WASHINGTON — Despite the uproar over intrusive pat-downs of some airline travelers — even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday she would not want to undergo one — the policy will not
change heading into the holiday travel season, the head of the Transportation Security Administration said.

“Clearly, it’s invasive; it’s not comfortable,” John Pistole said of the pat-downs in an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union With Candy Crowley.”

But he said the agency was trying to strike the
right balance between privacy and security to protect the nation from
terrorist attacks, such as the failed one last Christmas by a man who
had explosives hidden in his underwear.

“No, we’re not changing the policies . . . because
of the risks that have been identified,” Pistole said. “We know through
intelligence that there are determined people, terrorists who are
trying to kill not only Americans but innocent people around the world.”

TSA this month began more aggressive pat-downs,
including checking sensitive areas such as the groin and breasts for
signs of weapons or explosives on some travelers. The searches have
sparked outrage, as has TSA’s alternative — greater use of full-body
scanners that the American Civil Liberties Union has said amounts to a “virtual strip search.”

An Internet-based campaign has called for airline
passengers to refuse the full-body scans on Wednesday, the busy travel
day before Thanksgiving, opting instead for pat-downs, which could cause huge delays at airports.

Asked Sunday if she would submit to one of the new pat-downs, Clinton said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” “Not if I could avoid it. No. I mean, who would?”

But Clinton said Obama administration officials were
trying to find the right way to respond to terrorists “getting more
creative about what they do to hide explosives in, you know, crazy
things like underwear.”

“I think that we have to be constantly asking
ourselves, ‘How do we calculate the risk?’ And, you know, sometimes, we
don’t calculate it correctly. We either overstate it or understate it,”
she said. “Now, if there is a way to limit the number of people who are
going to be put through surveillance, that’s something that I’m sure
can be considered. But everybody’s trying to do the right thing.”

President Barack Obama said Saturday that he asked his counterterrorism team each week if the measures they’re taking were “absolutely necessary.”

“With respect to the TSA, let me, first of all, make
a confession. I don’t go through security checks to get on planes these
days, so I haven’t personally experienced some of the procedures that
have been put in place by TSA,” Obama said.

Still, he said, “I understand people’s frustrations.
And what I’ve said to the TSA is that you have to constantly refine and
measure whether what we’re doing is the only way to assure the American
people’s safety. And you also have to think through are there ways of
doing it that are less intrusive.”

But Pistole said the new procedures were necessary
to stop terrorist attacks. He admitted the new pat-downs were “more
intrusive.”

“To some people, it is demeaning,” he said. But
Pistole said very few passengers go through the new pat-downs — only
those who set off the alarms going through airport screening machines.

“So you just have to make sure you take everything out of your pockets,” he said. “So if there’s no alarm, there’s no pat-down.”

Rep. John L. Mica, R- Fla., the incoming chairman of
the House transportation committee, said the TSA procedures needed to
be “refined.” He has called for airports to consider private screeners.

“We’ve got them headed in the wrong . . . direction
as far as who they’re screening and how they’re doing it,” Mica said of
the TSA.

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