What TSA screeners said

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"I would get rid of the good old boys. That's the only thing that is wrong. You have a wealth of good people who are being pushed away."
— Deborah Stattmiller, former screening supervisor at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

"Why did we go from the original private company to government? Because previous management was bad. Most of the managers we have are from the old company. We are just changing names."
— a screener at Los Angeles International Airport.

"With people killing themselves with overtime, what kind of shape are they in? ... It's particularly important here because we're looking for bombs."
— Michael Jasilewicz, former screener for Boston's Logan International Airport

"It's kind of like I am in a place where I don't know the rules. The people who manage me know the rules and I keep running in circles."
— A screener from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport

"We're not speaking out because we're doing a half-ass job here, but we're speaking out because we want to make sure DIA is safe."
— A screening supervisor at Denver International Airport, explaining why he and others have complained about problems at the airport

"And I was only there for six months."
— David Erickson, former screening manager at Albany (N.Y.) International Airport, referring to the size of his personnel file: 278 pages

"That is basically the way the TSA worked, worry about the small insignificant things and ignore the rest."
— A Los Angeles screener, describing one trainer's fixation on a male employee's earring.

"They would change the rules every day about what was prohibited or what wasn't prohibited."
— Dwight Hill, a former screener at Albany (N.Y.) International Airport, on conflicting directions for screening items such as shoes and disposable razors

"You might have someone say, 'That looks like a gun.' You might have another that says it looks like a banana."
— Rick Chaffold, former screening supervisor at Houston's William P. Hobby Airport, on insufficient training for reading X-ray images

"I did the prudent thing and ran off."
— A screener at Los Angeles International Airport and former law-enforcement officer, describing his reaction when a supervisor broke the rules and pulled a .45-caliber handgun from a piece of luggage, waving it like a baton

"We didn't report major breaches ... we're either doing security or pretending. And to me, we're pretending."
— A former screening supervisor at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport