Retired Army maj. gen. nominated to head TSA - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Retired Army maj. gen. nominated to head TSA

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday nominated a former army officer with extensive intelligence experience to take the long-vacant job as head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

If he wins approval from the Senate, retired Maj. Gen. Robert Harding will become the first TSA chief since Obama took office more than a year ago. Obama's previous choice for the job, Los Angeles police official Erroll Southers, withdrew from consideration in January.

Southers, a former FBI agent, has said he was the victim of a political "witch hunt" after telling lawmakers in October that the FBI reprimanded him in the late 1980s for asking a San Diego police employee to run a background check on his estranged wife's boyfriend.

Harding has served for more than three decades in a variety of intelligence posts, including the Army's deputy intelligence chief and director of operations for the Defense Intelligence Agency. He also founded Harding Security Associates, a security consulting firm that he sold in July.

"I am confident that Bob's talent and expertise will make him a tremendous asset in our ongoing efforts to bolster security and screening measures at our airports," Obama said in a statement.

After a 23-year-old Nigerian student allegedly tried to detonate a bomb aboard a Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day, Obama said information surfaced that could have prevented the incident "but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots."

Democrats reacted positively to Monday's announcement. Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Commerce Committee that must vet Harding, issued a statement vowing to move the nomination "as expeditiously as possible to get him on the job."

Republicans were more cautious. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said that he looked forward to meeting Harding.

DeMint had blocked Southers' nomination last year because he feared that the nominee would open the doors to unionizing TSA security screeners.

The assistant secretary for the Homeland Security Department oversees the TSA's airport security program, the Federal Air Marshal Service and efforts to protect railroads, ports and mass transit from terrorist attacks.