Napolitano: Screening security not at risk

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the mistaken online posting of an airport screeners' manual did not put security "at risk."

"The security of the traveling public has never been put at risk," Napolitano told a panel of the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday. "We have already initiated personnel action against the individuals involved in this. We have already instituted an internal review to determine what else needs to be done to make sure this incident never recurs."

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed Tuesday a contract employee posted a redacted 93-page Transportation Security Administration operating manual on a government Web site that was accessible to contractors.

Visitors to the site in May were able to recover blacked out information in the manual on how TSA screening officers should handle diplomatic pouches, set metal detectors and explosive detectors, use an X-ray system and when to allow police, fire and emergency personnel to bypass screening, CNN reported.

The manual listed 12 countries whose passport-holders would face enhanced airport screening -- Algeria, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and Yemen.

Napolitano said her department's inspector general, Richard Skinner, was conducting an independent review of the incident, which some members of Congress characterized as shocking, embarrassing and a serious leak.

"It increases the risk that terrorists will find a way through the defenses," Stewart Baker, a former assistant DHS secretary, told The Washington Post.