shorten wait times. tsa reduced the sensitivity on all walk through metal detectors across america. they are reducing the concentration of metal that it would take to set off that alarm so you can speed up lines. how do you know that s why they did it. because there s a memo out that supports it. brainard says the practice continues today and he worries bomb making ingredients could go undetected. it is an unhealthy obsession, placing time over safety. this internal memo states as of last month, those x-ray
setting. brainard said the practice continues today and worries bomb making components could go undetected. you could have a 30 minute wait time and they treat it like a national merge. it s unhealthy obsession. reporter: he said that also led to them disabling x-ray machines. this memo states as of last month the x-ray machines should be operated without the autodetection algorithm enabled. a box will come around, surround the item say look at this, that box is no longer on the screen. tsa made changes which hamper the ability of the operator. they ll say it s precheck. they put millions of passengers into precheck that aren t precheck. so you don t have a population
that are vetted. reporter: cnn put it to tsa s adm administra administrator. he said the agency is not prioritizing wait times over security. i won t discuss our security procedures because that s not appropriate for me to do. but rest assured we provide the level of security we think is appropriate based on the risk to the passenger. reporter: brainard said the issues he raised are problematic for an agency with a 95% failure rate in detecting items at the checkpoint. that s according to a government audit in 2015. when you sit back and watch these things happen, it is the most frustrating thing you can imagine. reporter: going public is his last resort. he filed an official whistle-blower complaint with the office of special counsel he send complaints to dhs, tsa and letters to congress. not just about the metal detecters but also the x-ray machines, a policy change allowing some passengers with
leadership. more than 40 million u.s. airline passengers are expected to go through airport security checkpoints this holiday. but this tsa security director says you may not be as safe as you think. what they re doing is injecting danger into the system. reporter: jay brainard is the top tsa official in his state and has been with the agency for 17 years. he says tsa is cutting corners on the screening process to shorten wait times. they reduced the sensitivity on all walk through metal detechtes across america. they reduced it to speed up lines. how do you know? there s a memo that supports it. reporter: the memo said, quote, changing all walk through metal detecters to the preset
years. said the tsa is cutting corners on the screening process to cut down on wait times. he said one of the things they re doing is reducing the concentration. they re reducing the concentration of finding metal. this order came out in 2013, quote, changing all walkthrough metal detector lanes to the tsa precheck setting to normalize the passenger experience. brainard says the practice continues today and he worried bomb-making components could go undetected. you d have a 30-minute wait time and they treat it like a national health crisis. he said they ve disabled