Hope and Fail

TSA nominee admits to ‘distorting’ his record before Congress

The president’s nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration admitted to lying during his confirmation hearings — the day after the committee he lied to voted to confirm him.

From the Washington Post:

President Barack Obama’s pick to lead the Transportation Security Administration has provided Congress inconsistent reports about – and regrets for – running background checks on his then-estranged wife’s boyfriend two decades ago.

Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent whose nomination has been delayed by Republicans for unrelated concerns, wrote to senators in November to correct what he called a distortion of his record.

“I am distressed by the inconsistencies between my recollection and the contemporaneous documents, but I assure you that the mistake was inadvertent, and that I have at all times taken full responsibility for what I know to have been a grave error in judgment,” he wrote in a letter to Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine.

“This incident was over 20 years ago, I was distraught and concerned about my young son, and never in my career since has there been any recurrence of this sort of conduct.”

In an October affidavit for the Senate committee, he initially said he asked a San Diego police employee to run a background check on his then-estranged wife’s boyfriend and was censured by his FBI superiors 20 years ago for what he said was an isolated instance.

But a day after the committee approved his nomination and sent it to the full Senate, he wrote to the senators and told them that he was incorrect; he said he twice ran background checks himself.

The affidavit wasn’t the only time he lied. During the committee’s hearing, Sen. Collins grilled Southers about the incident, and he gave the same “inconsistent” information (You can watch the hearing here. Collins’ questions start about 40 minutes in).

And if that’s not enough, Southers didn’t admit to the “inconsistent” testimony until after the committee voted to send his confirmation to the full Senate.

From Power Line blog:

if Southers corrected his testimony on his own initiative before anyone had reason to suspect it was incorrect, then the Senate should accept his claim that he did not intend to mislead it. However, if Southers corrected the record — especially the point about whether it was he who ran the improper search — only under duress, then there is good reason to question his credibility. It’s easy to see how Southers, 20 years after the fact, might inadvertently merge two incidents of improper database checks into one. But it’s less plausible to assume he would not remember that he did the checks himself.

The chronology set out in today’s Washington Post answers the question. On November 19, Senator Collins voted in committee in favor of Southers’ nomination. However, she did so “conditionally” and asked him to account in writing for the inconsistencies between his testimony and FBI documents she had reviewed. On November 20, Southers sent the letter to Senators Collins and Lieberman correcting the record. By that point, he had no choice.

It doesn’t seem Southers’ past incident would be something he could easily forget, but even if that were the case, why did he wait 10 days to correct the record? Now it just seems that he had to come clean.

Also of note, President Obama waited nearly nine months to appoint someone to head the TSA — he had to find someone who would satisfy public employee unions.