They posed as travelers, packing fake bombs into suitcases and checking them at ticket counters in airports. Then the team of covert inspectors from the Department of Homeland Security tracked the response of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Since 2008, TSA has spent more than $2 billion to improve the screening of checked baggage ... through a little-known power that lets the agency ignore every rule and law controlling government spending. The loophole [is] known as other transaction" authority. In June, Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth found that TSA failed to catch threats at passenger checkpoints a staggering 96% of the time. In January 2014, TSA began paying the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) $1.5 million a year via other transaction authority for a series of publications ... that it circulates to lawmakers and government officials. The lobbyists in turn have spent $3 million since then influencing the bill that funds TSA. TSA's payments to APTA don't violate the federal Anti-Lobbying Act, which criminalizes the use of federal funds to lobby members of government, because the Justice Department has interpreted the law to apply only to grassroots campaigns.