Ten years after it began operations, the Transportation Security Administration has devolved into "bureaucratic morass and mismanagement," according to a scathing new congressional report.

"Since its inception, TSA has lost its focus on transportation security. Instead it has grown into an enormous, inflexible and distracted bureaucracy, more concerned with human resource management and consolidating power," charged the report by two House committees.

The report was promptly rejected by TSA officials, who called the nation's aviation system "safer, stronger and more secure" than it was a decade ago. (See the report called "A Decade Later: A Call for TSA Reform" in the attachment below.)

The congressional analysis -- conducted by the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform -- alleged numerous shortcomings at TSA. Among them:

• Staffing: "TSA is a top-heavy bureaucracy with 3,986 headquartered personnel and 9,656 administrative staff in the field." With more than 65,000 employees, TSA is now larger than the departments of Labor, Energy, Education, Housing and Urban Development and State combined.
• Turnover: "More employees have left TSA than are currently employed at the agency." TSA has had five administrators in less than a decade, with occasionally long vacancies between appointments.
• Mission: "TSA has failed to develop an effective, comprehensive plan to evolve from a one-size-fits-all operation -- treating all passengers as if they pose the same risk -- into a highly intelligent, risk-based operation that has the capacity to determine a traveler's level of risk and adjust the level of screening in response."
• Security: "More than 25,000 security breaches have occurred at U.S. airports in the last decade," despite a 400 percent increase in manpower." The report said 17 "known terrorists" have traveled on 24 different occasions through security at eight airports where TSA operated a Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) behavior detection program.
• Partnership: "TSA has continuously thwarted the adoption of the Screening Partnership Program and has a history of intimidating airport operators that express an interest in participating in the SPP." TSA Administrator Joe Pistole halted expansion of the program that utilizes private screening contractors, despite a covert TSA test in 2007 that showed significantly higher screening detection capabilities at San Francisco International, an SPP aiport, than at Los Angeles International, where screening is provided by TSA.

The congressional report zeroed in on TSA's handling, or mishandling, of explosive-detection measures.

Fewer than half of the nation's 35 busiest airports have explosive-detection systems, the report stated. Meantime, TSA spent more than $39 million on Explosive Trace Detection Portals ("puffers"). After deploying 101 of 207 puffers, "the agency belatedly discovered they were unable to detect explosives," the report said.

Personnel issues present another ticking time bomb, the congressional study charged.

"Despite TSA's claims that it operates as an intelligent risk-based organization, TSA advertised for employment at the Washington Reagan National Airport on pizza boxes and on advertisements above pumps at discount gas stations in the D.C. area," the study noted derisively.

The cost of hiring and training new employees was pegged at $17,500 per hire, for a total of $2.4 billion since 2002. That's in addition to the $57 billion the agency spent ostensibly securing America's transportation network.

"After countless expensive detours, it is time for TSA to refocus its mission based on risk, and develop common-sense security protocols," said Rep. John Mica, R-Orlando, chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.