TSA Viper Training Exercise Held at CBBT
October 27, 2009 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under Incident Reports
On Tuesday morning, dozens of law enforcement agents greeted drivers at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. The traffic stop included a driver’s license check as well as explosive and drug sniffing dogs.
It is part of the Transportation Security Administration’s Viper Program and the agents aren’t your TSA airport screeners, according to Federal Security Director Jeffrey Horowitz.
“We do rail, we do busing, we do pipelines. We’re out there for all commercial modes of transportation,” he said.
Horowitz says the government saw a need to better protect its mass transit systems after the 2004 Madrid terrorist attack. Nearly two hundred people died in the coordinated bombing of several of Madrid’s commuter trains.
Since Viper’s inception in 2007, 3,500 operations have been conducted, half of those this year. Agents have nabbed drugs and illegal weapons. The larger goal is to deter terrorist activity.
