TSA Awards Contract to Triumph Enterprises to Train Drivers to Spot Terrorist Activities
This story appears in the May 13 print edition of Transport Topics.
The Transportation Security Administration has awarded a contract to Triumph Enterprises Inc. to continue a program, initially started by American Trucking Associations, to train commercial drivers to spot possible terrorist activities on U.S. highways, according to a memo obtained by Transport Topics.
Triumph, based in Fairfax, Va., will take over the “First Observer” program from HMS Co., which ran it from 2009 to 2012 with assistance from the Teamsters union and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.
ATA kicked off the program under the name “Highway Watch” in 2004 and ran it through 2008.
The memo listed the value of the contract at $3.9 million, though it did not state the length of the deal.
Details of the pact have not been publicly revealed, and TSA and other officials declined comment last week on the First Observer contract.
Doug Morris, OOIDA’s director of security operations, said the program has been effective.
“OOIDA continues to support the program, regardless of who is the contractor,” Morris said. “We just want the contractor to be a good steward of the program. So far, we haven’t seen much of anything from the contractor and have heard nothing from them.”
Morris said he is concerned the program could become solely a Web-based training program and that there no longer will be a toll-free call center for drivers to report suspicious activities.
Calls to a number on the First Observer website were answered by a recording that said the party was not accepting calls. However, an alternate number to report incidents, disclosed at closed meeting of an industry committee, directs callers to EWA Information and Infrastructure Technologies Inc., a Herndon, Va.-based unit of Electronic Warfare Associates.
Morris said OOIDA has offered Triumph help with the program for free, but Triumph has not responded to OOIDA’s offer.
“We even offered to run the program for free, and TSA turned us down,” Morris added.
John Conley, past president of the National Tank Truck Carriers, said the program has been effective. But he also has concerns that the call center program won’t be a part of the new plan.
“It’s very much in transition,” Conley said. “The real value of First Observer was if you saw somebody had stolen a tanker full of gasoline, you would call that number, and I did. Within a very short period of time the FBI was involved. It worked.”
In the past, for example, Conley said truckers also have reported when they saw a tanker in a residential area, far from any gas stations where they would normally make a delivery.
“Another thing that was worrisome to our carriers was when they were being followed and their truck was being videoed,” Conley said.
During ATA’s years running the Highway Watch program, it trained more than 830,000 people to identify and report safety and security incidents to a centralized call center that were forwarded to law enforcement and intelligence officials.
