DHS Kept TSA in Dark on Top‑Secret Red‑Team Failures, IG Says

CBS News reports that a classified Department of Homeland Security inspector general audit found serious vulnerabilities in TSA airport checkpoint screening during red‑team tests, including concerns that a 2025 policy letting passengers keep their shoes on may outstrip current threat‑detection technology. Despite federal rules requiring a response within 90 days, Inspector General Joseph Cuffari told TSA leaders in a March 4 memo that neither DHS nor TSA has provided any 'management decision' or even basic acknowledgement of the findings nearly five months after the report’s release, leaving all recommendations formally 'open and unresolved.' The breakdown traces to an extraordinary move by former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who ordered a key finding elevated to Top Secret and restricted to just 13 people across government, with any further access requiring her written permission — a list that notably excluded TSA leadership itself and sharply limited what even Congress could be told. That handling undercuts Noem’s prior sworn testimony that all the report’s recommendations had already been implemented, a claim the IG says is unsupported by any evidence. The episode lands as TSA officers have gone unpaid for 40 days during the DHS funding fight, and it raises deeper questions about whether political image‑management and classification games are being used to bury known weaknesses in core U.S. aviation security rather than fix them.