WHEN THE Transportation Security Administration dispatched undercover investigators last spring to test the effectiveness of airport checkpoints, the results were deplorable. Agents posing as passengers were able to smuggle weapons and mock explosives through 67 out of 70 TSA checkpoints — a failure rate of 95 percent.

Following that debacle, the TSA's acting administrator was given the boot, and the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had "immediately directed TSA to implement a series of actions, several of which are now in place, to address the issues raised in the report."

That was in June. In July, a new TSA chief pledged to lawmakers that within 60 days "we will have trained the failure out of the front line" of airport screening personnel. So how do things stand four months later?