Quest: 45,000 federal passenger screeners.

• Author: Book, Elizabeth G.
• Position: Security Beat

As the Transportation Security Administration prepares to become part of the new Department of Homeland Security, it is congratulating itself for successfully completing the largest peacetime mobilization in the nation's history.

Congress created TSA in the aftermath of 9/11 and ordered it to establish, train and deploy a federal security force in all of the nation's 429 commercial airports by Nov. 19, 2002. In March, TSA awarded a $103.4 million contract to NCS Pearson, a Minnesota-based education, testing and data-management firm, to help the agency meet that deadline. It was a "Herculean task," said Mac Curtis, president of NCS Pearson's Government Solutions subsidiary, of...