TSA chief John Pistole retiring at year's end

© Khunaspix Dreamstime.

The longest-serving head of the US Transportation Security Administration, John Pistiole, a former FBI deputy director is stepping down after more than four years in one of the most important security jobs in transport. His surprise resignation comes after he was offered the directorship of Anderson University, a private Christian university in central Indiana. He was the TSA’s main advocate of risk-based security, for which the freight industry has to be thankful, but also caused a bit of a gaffe when he proposed allowing “small knives and certain other banned items onto aircraft, saying their risk had been mitigated by locked cockpit doors. The change would have brought the United States into alignment with other countries”, which caused an uproar in domestic political circles.