Classified Report Finds Kristi Noem Created Security Vulnerabilities at Airports
Wall Street Journal
Feb-27-2026
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for months failed to appropriately respond to the findings of an internal watchdog that one of her biggest changes to airport security—allowing passengers to pass through screening checkpoints with their shoes on—is creating “significant” security risks, according to a letter from the inspector general reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and officials familiar with the matter.
In July, she announced the change with great fanfare, granting the shoes-on policy to passengers even if they weren’t enrolled in the Transportation Security Administration’s precheck program. The announcement to eliminate what millions of travelers view as a nuisance was one of Noem’s most politically popular moves to date.
But a classified November report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, the agency’s top watchdog, found that some of the TSA full-body scanners that most airline passengers pass through can’t scan shoes, according to people familiar with the report’s contents. The report determined Noem’s policy move had inadvertently created a new security vulnerability in the system. Some White House officials have been made aware of the report.
When the secretary’s office was briefed on the report, officials there gave it a higher level of classification and blocked it from being publicly released, people familiar with the matter said. A spokeswoman for the department disputed the inspector general’s claims and said Noem had appropriately responded to the findings.
Many homeland-security officials said Noem’s handling of the inspector general report fits a pattern in which she has ignored or played down national-security concerns. In another instance, her office published photos of a secret government facility, publicizing a site meant to house the president in emergencies, officials said. Officials across the department have complained that Noem places priority on her public image and political standing in a way that jeopardizes her sprawling department’s core mission.
In recent weeks, DHS has come under scrutiny, following two shootings of U.S. citizens by immigration agents. The Journal detailed earlier this month how Noem has attempted to burnish her personal stardom, staging a headline-grabbing immigration crackdown while retaliating against rivals and dissenters.
After the Journal’s story, senior DHS officials threatened to stop paying for the security detail for White House border czar Tom Homan, a rival, and Noem has had polygraph tests administered to DHS staff, according to people familiar with the matter.
A DHS spokeswoman said the recommendations made in the inspector general’s report had already been implemented and the department was confident in its security approach. The decision to end the shoes-off policy, the spokeswoman added, was made after 1,000 tests and risk assessments, including those conducted under the Biden administration.
As of Feb. 17, the inspector general told congressional committees in a letter that neither DHS nor TSA had responded to requests to address the issue, including a reminder Dec. 10 that the agency was required by law to develop a plan to fix the problems by Jan. 30—the end of a three-month window after the report was issued. In the letter, which was reviewed by the Journal, the inspector general said his office made Noem first aware of the problem on Aug. 26.
“I am writing to make you—the chairs and ranking members of the committees with primary jurisdiction over the Transportation Security Agency (TSA)—aware of an unresolved oversight matter with significant safety and security implications for the traveling public,” the Feb. 17 letter said. “My office has advanced this issue as far as we are able, yet the findings and recommendations have not been addressed despite our best efforts.”
The inspector general said in the letter that the office had issued “four recommendations for corrective action,” and TSA hadn’t engaged with the office to resolve the concerns. The department spokeswoman said DHS had responded to the inspector general’s concerns.
The report was shared with some lawmakers, and it needs the secretary’s permission to be shared with more of them, according to people familiar with the matter. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D., Ill.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee that in part oversees TSA, is demanding more information.
The DHS spokeswoman said a broad bipartisan group of lawmakers and staff have access to the report and were briefed by TSA officials in November.
Meanwhile, Noem’s shoes-on policy remains in effect. The old shoes-off rule was instituted nearly 20 years ago, after Richard Reid, who became known as the “shoe bomber,” attempted to detonate an explosive hidden in his shoe on a flight from Paris to Miami.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Trump continues to have full confidence in Noem. “Our homeland is undoubtedly safer today than it was when the president took office last year,” she said.
The inspector general’s office said in a statement it had conducted covert tests on the airport screeners and couldn’t comment on the substance of its findings because they were classified.
In another national security-related incident early in Noem’s time at DHS, the secretary asked staff to plan a trip to Mount Weather, the federal government’s secret bunker that is managed by Federal Emergency Management Agency and falls under her purview. The existence of the bomb shelter, a Cold War facility dug into a mountainside in Virginia in the 1960s, isn’t classified, but government officials usually don’t publicize it. There are restrictions around revealing information related to it, including photos.
The facility is where the president is supposed to be relocated in case of catastrophic events, with the bunker serving as the headquarters for the government’s continuity operations. Congressional leaders were reportedly taken there on Sept. 11, 2001.
In April, Noem landed at the facility in a helicopter and received a tour, with her staff taking photos throughout, including aerial shots of her journey. The photos then were posted on social-media channels and publicized in a DHS press release. It would have been a fireable offense for a federal employee to take such photos and post them without rarely-given authorization, according to government statutes and officials.
Dan O’Connor, chief security officer at FEMA, said in a statement provided by DHS that the images were reviewed in advance by officials responsible for security at the site. “There was no breach of security,” he said.
Democrats are now withholding DHS funding in exchange for new guardrails on how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are allowed to operate. Many, including some Republicans, have also called for Trump to fire Noem or for her impeachment. He has stood by Noem so far, though many advisers are pressing him to remove her from her position.
Despite recent scrutiny, Noem and her top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, have doubled down on their management style, retaliating against several officials they accused of divulging information about them.
Following the Journal’s detailed reporting on the chaos at their department, Noem and Lewandowski threatened to stop footing the bill for Homan’s personal security detail, provided to him by DHS’s investigative arm, Homeland Security Investigations, according to people familiar with the matter. Since taking office, Noem has been in a battle with Homan for power and influence inside the administration.
Homan, who has said he has received death threats, has a detail that costs the department $500,000 a month. The White House was forced to step in to keep Homan’s detail in place, the people said.
Homan didn’t respond to several requests for comment. The DHS spokeswoman denied they took action against Homan.
Noem has kept track of both their appearances to make sure she was on TV more than Homan, the Journal previously reported.
Noem, who has routinely given polygraph tests to employees—an unusual practice for a cabinet secretary—ordered a round of polygraphs in response to recent news reports, according to people familiar with the matter. Employees at the Coast Guard, ICE and Customs and Border Protection have been polygraphed, those people said.
The secretary has been using a little-known office inside the TSA to administer the tests. Last year, the office had trouble keeping up with the requests for tests, which take place in a small interrogation room in Virginia with a one-way mirror.
The department spent $22.3 million on contracts related to polygraphing in 2025—three times more than the previous year, according to public disclosures. Part of the spike can also be attributed to the surge in hiring ICE agents, who typically need to pass a polygraph exam to confirm employment.
Besides giving polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust, Noem and Lewandowski also routinely berate and fire employees—which they have continued to do despite concerns from White House officials that the abrupt dismissals damage the department’s ability to respond to crises.
After a meeting with the Puerto Rico GOP Gov. Jenniffer González last week, Noem fired a top department official in Puerto Rico responsible for the island’s recovery in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, according to current and former officials.
González, like governors across the country, questioned Noem on why Puerto Rico had been slow to receive grants from FEMA that had already been designated for the island. The governor said she thought Noem’s strict approval process for spending over $100,000 was causing delays. Elected officials and lobbyists across several states said grants to state governments and payments to contractors had been stalled because of the rule.
Roughly $1.5 billion in public assistance and mitigation grants for Puerto Rico have been held up in Noem’s approval process, according to people familiar with the funding requests.
Noem looked to place the blame for the pace on other government officials, and ultimately Andrés García Martinó, the alternate federal recovery coordinator, was dismissed, officials said. Martinó couldn’t be reached for comment.
Chris Hartnett, a regional director for FEMA, said in a statement provided by DHS that Noem wasn’t aware of his employment or his termination. Harnett said Martinó “misrepresented information that was essential to operation and recovery efforts in the region, which resulted in projects being slowed down.”
A spokeswoman for the governor didn’t respond for comment.
Agency officials said they saw the firing as completely unwarranted.
Feb-27-2026
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for months failed to appropriately respond to the findings of an internal watchdog that one of her biggest changes to airport security—allowing passengers to pass through screening checkpoints with their shoes on—is creating “significant” security risks, according to a letter from the inspector general reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and officials familiar with the matter.
In July, she announced the change with great fanfare, granting the shoes-on policy to passengers even if they weren’t enrolled in the Transportation Security Administration’s precheck program. The announcement to eliminate what millions of travelers view as a nuisance was one of Noem’s most politically popular moves to date.
But a classified November report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, the agency’s top watchdog, found that some of the TSA full-body scanners that most airline passengers pass through can’t scan shoes, according to people familiar with the report’s contents. The report determined Noem’s policy move had inadvertently created a new security vulnerability in the system. Some White House officials have been made aware of the report.
When the secretary’s office was briefed on the report, officials there gave it a higher level of classification and blocked it from being publicly released, people familiar with the matter said. A spokeswoman for the department disputed the inspector general’s claims and said Noem had appropriately responded to the findings.
Many homeland-security officials said Noem’s handling of the inspector general report fits a pattern in which she has ignored or played down national-security concerns. In another instance, her office published photos of a secret government facility, publicizing a site meant to house the president in emergencies, officials said. Officials across the department have complained that Noem places priority on her public image and political standing in a way that jeopardizes her sprawling department’s core mission.
In recent weeks, DHS has come under scrutiny, following two shootings of U.S. citizens by immigration agents. The Journal detailed earlier this month how Noem has attempted to burnish her personal stardom, staging a headline-grabbing immigration crackdown while retaliating against rivals and dissenters.
After the Journal’s story, senior DHS officials threatened to stop paying for the security detail for White House border czar Tom Homan, a rival, and Noem has had polygraph tests administered to DHS staff, according to people familiar with the matter.
A DHS spokeswoman said the recommendations made in the inspector general’s report had already been implemented and the department was confident in its security approach. The decision to end the shoes-off policy, the spokeswoman added, was made after 1,000 tests and risk assessments, including those conducted under the Biden administration.
As of Feb. 17, the inspector general told congressional committees in a letter that neither DHS nor TSA had responded to requests to address the issue, including a reminder Dec. 10 that the agency was required by law to develop a plan to fix the problems by Jan. 30—the end of a three-month window after the report was issued. In the letter, which was reviewed by the Journal, the inspector general said his office made Noem first aware of the problem on Aug. 26.
“I am writing to make you—the chairs and ranking members of the committees with primary jurisdiction over the Transportation Security Agency (TSA)—aware of an unresolved oversight matter with significant safety and security implications for the traveling public,” the Feb. 17 letter said. “My office has advanced this issue as far as we are able, yet the findings and recommendations have not been addressed despite our best efforts.”
The inspector general said in the letter that the office had issued “four recommendations for corrective action,” and TSA hadn’t engaged with the office to resolve the concerns. The department spokeswoman said DHS had responded to the inspector general’s concerns.
The report was shared with some lawmakers, and it needs the secretary’s permission to be shared with more of them, according to people familiar with the matter. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D., Ill.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee that in part oversees TSA, is demanding more information.
The DHS spokeswoman said a broad bipartisan group of lawmakers and staff have access to the report and were briefed by TSA officials in November.
Meanwhile, Noem’s shoes-on policy remains in effect. The old shoes-off rule was instituted nearly 20 years ago, after Richard Reid, who became known as the “shoe bomber,” attempted to detonate an explosive hidden in his shoe on a flight from Paris to Miami.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Trump continues to have full confidence in Noem. “Our homeland is undoubtedly safer today than it was when the president took office last year,” she said.
The inspector general’s office said in a statement it had conducted covert tests on the airport screeners and couldn’t comment on the substance of its findings because they were classified.
In another national security-related incident early in Noem’s time at DHS, the secretary asked staff to plan a trip to Mount Weather, the federal government’s secret bunker that is managed by Federal Emergency Management Agency and falls under her purview. The existence of the bomb shelter, a Cold War facility dug into a mountainside in Virginia in the 1960s, isn’t classified, but government officials usually don’t publicize it. There are restrictions around revealing information related to it, including photos.
The facility is where the president is supposed to be relocated in case of catastrophic events, with the bunker serving as the headquarters for the government’s continuity operations. Congressional leaders were reportedly taken there on Sept. 11, 2001.
In April, Noem landed at the facility in a helicopter and received a tour, with her staff taking photos throughout, including aerial shots of her journey. The photos then were posted on social-media channels and publicized in a DHS press release. It would have been a fireable offense for a federal employee to take such photos and post them without rarely-given authorization, according to government statutes and officials.
Dan O’Connor, chief security officer at FEMA, said in a statement provided by DHS that the images were reviewed in advance by officials responsible for security at the site. “There was no breach of security,” he said.
Democrats are now withholding DHS funding in exchange for new guardrails on how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are allowed to operate. Many, including some Republicans, have also called for Trump to fire Noem or for her impeachment. He has stood by Noem so far, though many advisers are pressing him to remove her from her position.
Despite recent scrutiny, Noem and her top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, have doubled down on their management style, retaliating against several officials they accused of divulging information about them.
Following the Journal’s detailed reporting on the chaos at their department, Noem and Lewandowski threatened to stop footing the bill for Homan’s personal security detail, provided to him by DHS’s investigative arm, Homeland Security Investigations, according to people familiar with the matter. Since taking office, Noem has been in a battle with Homan for power and influence inside the administration.
Homan, who has said he has received death threats, has a detail that costs the department $500,000 a month. The White House was forced to step in to keep Homan’s detail in place, the people said.
Homan didn’t respond to several requests for comment. The DHS spokeswoman denied they took action against Homan.
Noem has kept track of both their appearances to make sure she was on TV more than Homan, the Journal previously reported.
Noem, who has routinely given polygraph tests to employees—an unusual practice for a cabinet secretary—ordered a round of polygraphs in response to recent news reports, according to people familiar with the matter. Employees at the Coast Guard, ICE and Customs and Border Protection have been polygraphed, those people said.
The secretary has been using a little-known office inside the TSA to administer the tests. Last year, the office had trouble keeping up with the requests for tests, which take place in a small interrogation room in Virginia with a one-way mirror.
The department spent $22.3 million on contracts related to polygraphing in 2025—three times more than the previous year, according to public disclosures. Part of the spike can also be attributed to the surge in hiring ICE agents, who typically need to pass a polygraph exam to confirm employment.
Besides giving polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust, Noem and Lewandowski also routinely berate and fire employees—which they have continued to do despite concerns from White House officials that the abrupt dismissals damage the department’s ability to respond to crises.
After a meeting with the Puerto Rico GOP Gov. Jenniffer González last week, Noem fired a top department official in Puerto Rico responsible for the island’s recovery in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, according to current and former officials.
González, like governors across the country, questioned Noem on why Puerto Rico had been slow to receive grants from FEMA that had already been designated for the island. The governor said she thought Noem’s strict approval process for spending over $100,000 was causing delays. Elected officials and lobbyists across several states said grants to state governments and payments to contractors had been stalled because of the rule.
Roughly $1.5 billion in public assistance and mitigation grants for Puerto Rico have been held up in Noem’s approval process, according to people familiar with the funding requests.
Noem looked to place the blame for the pace on other government officials, and ultimately Andrés García Martinó, the alternate federal recovery coordinator, was dismissed, officials said. Martinó couldn’t be reached for comment.
Chris Hartnett, a regional director for FEMA, said in a statement provided by DHS that Noem wasn’t aware of his employment or his termination. Harnett said Martinó “misrepresented information that was essential to operation and recovery efforts in the region, which resulted in projects being slowed down.”
A spokeswoman for the governor didn’t respond for comment.
Agency officials said they saw the firing as completely unwarranted.
