FLEOA to TSA: 'Don't shoot the messenger' in manual kerfuffle

It's been a rough few weeks for federal law enforcement officers.

First was the White House party crashers resulting (so far) in three Secret Service employees on administrative leave. Now comes word of five Transportation Security Administration employees sidelined connection with a leak of sensitive airport passenger screening guidelines.

"We just went through the situation with the Secret Service," said Jon Adler, National President of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, "and I applaud Mark Sullivan (who) came right out and accepted full responsibility, apologized, and immediately began a comprehensive review of what transpired. The same thing didn't happen here. What we have instead is we have a spokesperson come out and make comments about the information being outdated, which is not true. And then sort of trying to draw a sense of confidence by talking about multiple layers of security, when in fact what we are getting is multiple layers of excuses."

The union is asking Congress to hold a closed-door hearing into the matter. Adler told FederalNewsRadio the TSAs' decision to put five employees on leave doesn't inspire confidence, "and it doesn't give us the sense that there is any sort of professional, thorough, prompt response to a very serious mistake. And that's what I think they need to address by way of a closed door, discrete, hearing."

Adler said the call for the hearing, even a closed one, is a call to shine light on management's processes.

What I would like to know is how it came to be that one person, or in this case five persons are being held responsible for something that seems like it could be a systemic issue as well as a specific mistake in terms of not redacting very sensitive information.

The problem, said Adler, is "much greater than five individuals and I think that maintaining the confidence of the workforce is very important."