Passenger Gets Shotgun Through Airport X-Ray

Thursday, October 04, 2001
 
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.  — A passenger was arrested when an airport security guard searched his bag and found a disassembled shotgun -- but only after it had gone through X-ray screening unnoticed.
Bradley Cooper, 20, told investigators the gun and duffel bag belonged to his roommate and he had forgotten the gun was inside.
Investigators said an X-ray machine operator didn't recognize the shapes of the shotgun and ammunition on Cooper's first trip through security Tuesday at Colorado Springs Airport.
Cooper left the terminal for a cigarette, taking the bag with him. When he returned, a hand-search turned up the gun.
Federal prosecutors did not immediately file charges.
"We are not sure there is a relevant crime for him," said Dick Weatherbee, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver. "It is a federal crime to take a weapon on an aircraft, but he never got on a plane."
Police said Cooper's roommate confirmed the shotgun was his. The roommate, who has four prior felony convictions, was arrested for investigation of possession of a firearm by a felon.








Shoe bomb suspect pleads innocent

BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN) -- The man accused of trying to ignite explosives hidden in his sneakers while on board a trans-Atlantic flight last month pleaded not guilty to federal terrorism-related charges Friday. January 18, 2002.

The nine counts against Richard Reid, a 28-year-old British citizen of Jamaican heritage, include attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction; attempted murder, and attempted destruction of an aircraft. If convicted, he could face up to five life sentences.

Reid appeared calm during the brief proceeding in U.S. District Court. He was wearing an orange jail uniform, sporting long hair and a beard.

Authorities say that on December 22, Reid tried to ignite the explosives while on board American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami. Flight attendants and passengers stopped him and wrestled him to the floor, and the plane landed safely in Boston under fighter escort.

The aircraft carried 197 passengers and crew members.

The nine-count indictment charges that Reid received terrorist training in the Afghanistan camps of al Qaeda, a network controlled by Osama bin Laden.

Reid may face additional charges, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday.

The gangly 6-foot-4 Reid is a convert to Islam who once attended the same South London mosque as Zacarias Moussaoui, the only alleged conspirator in the September 11 terror attacks who has been arrested and charged in that case.

The charges against Reid include:

-- two counts of interfering with a flight crew.

-- attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

-- attempted homicide.

-- placing explosive devices on an aircraft.

-- attempted murder.

-- attempted destruction of an aircraft.

-- using a destructive device during and in relation to a crime of violence.

-- attempted wrecking of a mass transportation vehicle, a new anti-terrorist offense recently enacted by Congress. Reid's lawyer challenged that charge in court Friday and allowed the court to enter a plea on his behalf.

Reid's public defender questioned whether Congress intended a plane to fall under that category and whether lawmakers wanted an attempted destruction -- as opposed to the actual destruction -- to be penalized. But U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan said the evidence against Reid "certainly supports the charge."

"We certainly had the opportunity to review it. The Department of Justice has the opportunity to review it, and we believe that the charge is consistent with the evidence that was presented to the grand jury," he said.

Reid, whose divorced parents both live in Britain, is being held on a suicide watch in a detention facility near Boston.

Ashcroft has declined to say whether he thinks Reid had an accomplice, but European investigators have told CNN they believe the actual maker of the shoe bombs remains at large.

-- CNN Correspondent Jason Carroll contributed to this report
























Kathleen Koch: Americans boosters of airport security

8/29/02 Airport Security Story CNN

(CNN) --Travelers have confidence in air safety measures put into place since the September 11 terror attacks last year, according to an American Automobile Association survey released Thursday. But they want even more security and are willing to pay for it. CNN Correspondent Kathleen Koch was at Washington's National Airport with more on the survey results.

KOCH: Well, first we have some breaking news. It was just last week that CNN reported that the Federal Aviation Administration was considering restricting flights over New York and D.C. on 9/11. Well today we've got the specific details. They're considering banning international flights, flights of small private aircraft and then also some chartered planes over New York, over Washington, D.C. and over Somerset County, Pennsylvania on primarily September 11. And in New York the restrictions will go into the 12th and 13th. But this would ban these flights [from flying] below 18,000 feet and [within] a 30-mile radius ... around these cities.

And as you pointed out, all this comes ... as Americans are saying that they are increasingly confident in the new security measures that have already been put in place since 9/11. In a survey of 1,022 adults that was done for the American Automobile Association, they found that 75 percent of those who were quizzed were extremely confident, very confident or somewhat confident that flying is now safe. Now that compares to just 33 percent who felt that way just a month after 9/11.

The survey also talked to people about that very hotly debated topic of guns in the cockpit. And surprisingly, they found that some 51 percent of Americans said that giving pilots in the cockpit guns would make them feel safer; only 14 percent said that it would make them feel less confident; and 32 percent said well, it really would have no impact on them.

Those surveyed, though, overwhelmingly rejected any delay in installing those new, very large explosive detection screening machines in the nation's airports. It was just last week that airports wrote to the U.S. Senate and said there is no way they can meet this deadline. But a full 81 percent of the passengers said, no, install those machines as scheduled by the end of the year, even if it means delays.

And also another surprising point: People said they are willing to pay more for all this new security with 87 percent saying they'd be willing to pay somewhat more, 50 percent saying they would be willing to pay $10 or more per round trip ticket. So quite a commitment there to security.
 
 

 
Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/TRAVEL/NEWS/08/29/koch.aaa.otsc/index.html









Airlines face post 9/11 racial profiling, discrimination suits

From Phil Hirschkorn and Michael Okwu
CNN
June 4, 2002

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Five passengers who were removed from or prevented from boarding flights last year after the September 11 terror attacks filed suit Tuesday against four major U.S. airlines, accusing them of racial profiling and discrimination.

The separate suits were filed against Continental, American, United and Northwest airlines in federal courts, respectively, in Newark, Baltimore, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

All of the plaintiffs are of Middle Eastern or Asian descent who had passed through enhanced airport security checks.

As early as September 21, 2001, Transportation Secretary Norman Minetta sent a memorandum to all airlines cautioning them not to discriminate against passengers based on race, religion, national or ethnic origin.

The DOT has since received 31 complaints about such discrimination from people of Middle Eastern, South Asian, Arab or Muslim heritage. The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination group has recorded double that amount of complaints. Two of the five plaintiffs are of Arab descent.

The five plaintiffs, three of whom are seeking compensatory damages, are being represented by either the American Civil Liberties Union or Relman & Associates, a firm specializing in civil rights cases.

Among the plaintiffs is Michael Dasrath, a 32-year-old analyst for Morgan Stanley, who was ejected from a Continental flight from Newark to Tampa last New Year's eve. Dasrath, a U.S. citizen of Indian heritage, told CNN that his incident began with the complaint of a single, white female passenger who had been observing him and two other men in their first class seats.

"She basically said these brown-skinned men are behaving suspiciously," Dasrath said. "The pilot didn't say anything. He just kind of nodded at her and he walked up to the front, looked at me, looked at the two in front of me -- didn't say nothing. Next thing I know one of the gate agents is calling our names," he said.

Edgardo Cureg, 34, a permanent legal resident of Filipino descent, who was removed from the same Continental flight after using his cell phone inside the plane before takeoff, filed a second suit against the airline.

"I will never again feel free to travel in the future," Cureg said at a Manhattan news conference. "My basic right to travel free from discrimination has been violated."

Continental spokesman Rahsaan Johnson said he could not comment on the specific cases but said, "Continental does have a strong policy against discrimination in any form."

The suit against Northwest was filed by Arshad Chowdhury, 25, a U.S. citizen born to Bangladeshi parents, who was removed from a San Francisco to Pittsburgh flight last October 23. Chowdhury was returning to business school at Carnegie Mellon University.

Northwest spokeswoman Mary Beth Schubert said Chowdhury's removal was not based on his ethnic background.

"Mr. Chowdhury was denied boarding because the Northwest pilot received conflicting information about whether or not authorities had cleared him to fly. In the face of this conflicting information, the pilot exercised his discretion to deny boarding," Schubert said.

The airline put Chowdhury on a direct flight that arrived before his originally scheduled flight, Schubert said.

Hassan Sader, 36, a U.S. citizen who lives in Virginia, sued American Airlines for removing him from a Baltimore to Chicago flight last October 31.

"American supports our captains when those decisions are made," said spokesman Todd Burke, who declined to discuss the facts of the claim or the airline's security procedures. But Burke said federal air regulations allow a captain to deny boarding of any passenger who may compromise the safety of the flight.

Aseem Bayaa, 40, a U.S. citizen from California, sued United Airlines for removing him from a Los Angeles to New York flight last December 23.

Airline spokesman Joe Hopkins said, "On our aircraft, the captain is in charge and has to weigh a lot of factors in the overall safety of everybody on the airplane. We would not remove someone based on race, religion, or national origin. It's based on behavior."

Hopkins said the airline would not discuss security matters publicly. "If we are going to be sued, we respond in court through our attorneys," he said.

ACLU staff attorney Reggie Shuford told CNN that the airlines "speak in the abstract about the need for safety and security related to September 11, but nothing that they've done in any of these cases advance the need or interest in safety and security."

Shuford, the lead plaintiffs' lawyer on the coordinated lawsuits, said he hopes the litigation will lead to better training of pilots and flight crew about when there is legitimately a security risk.

"When a passenger -- a fellow passenger -- is given veto power over somebody else's ability to fly based on nothing other than hysteria and discrimmination, then we all need to take pause and determine whether allowing this to continue is really doing anything to advance security or safety," Shuford said.
 
 

 
Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/LAW/06/04/airlines.discrimination/index.html








Airlines cut flights as war looms

LONDON, England (CNN) --Several global airlines began cutting flights on Tuesday ahead of an impending U.S.-led war on Iraq.  March 18, 2003.

British Airways, Europe's biggest airline, said it was canceling flights from Tel Aviv, Israel, from Wednesday until further notice. The last flight from Kuwait, where 250,000 U.S. and British troops are based ready for the push to Baghdad, is expected to land in London Wednesday at 0620 GMT.

BA's Karen Franklin told CNN that the move was in response to the British Foreign Office advice to the general public to avoid travel in the area.

"Our passenger numbers released last month showed passenger numbers on routes to the U.S. and Asia had fallen because of the state of the global economy and possibility of war, but numbers to the Middle East had risen slightly", she said.

"We'll be holding daily review meetings and react to events but we have a number of contingencies."

As for the possible financial impact the airline has already instituted measures to save ?450 million in costs and have "?2 billion in cash reserves that we can be used in the event of war, " she added.

European, Asian and U.S. airline stocks have risen sharply over the last 24 hours as crude oil prices slumped -- lowering the cost of fuel. Brent crude for May delivery fell $2.03 to $27.45 a barrel in midday trading on Tuesday.

British Airways soared 11.2 percent in midday London trading, Europe's second-largest airline Air France climbed 3.1 percent, German rival Deutsche Lufthansa gained 5.6 percent. Korean Air's stock gained 9 percent and Qantas rose 4 percent. Singapore Airlines Ltd, Asia's most profitable airline, rose 3.13 percent.

But sources at one of Europe's largest airlines told CNN that costs could rise and services be disrupted if Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is against the war, closes his airspace. And if there is a terror attack in Britain, prompting authorities to close British airspace, virtually no flights would be possible.

The troubled airline industry is praying for a short war as the sector has witnessed a decline in passenger numbers and is struggling to recover from the September 11 terror attacks in the U.S. During and after the first Gulf War passenger number slumped by a fifth.

This time passenger numbers may decline but disruption to services could be limited as few international flights cross Iraq and airlines use alternative routes developed since the Gulf War in 1991.

Other developments:

• Korean Air, the country's biggest airline, plans to halt flights on 29 routes to Europe and the U.S.

• Qantas, Australia's flagship carrier, said it would cut the equivalent of 1,000 jobs by forcing staff to take leave as it trims expenses ahead of the possible conflict.

• Thai Airways International plans to suspend flights to Kuwait and Bahrain from March 20.

• Air France, Lufthansa and Swiss Air said they had no immediate plans to cancel flights.

• Dutch carrier KLM said it had changed its Kuwait schedule from a night flight to a day flight. "We are very well prepared with a specialized team looking into all scenarios, but we cannot see what kind of impact the war will have until it starts," a spokesperson said.

 
 

 
Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/BUSINESS/asia/03/18/airlines/index.html




Airport Security Firm Accused of Bribery
JEFFREY GOLD
Associated Press

NEWARK, N.J. - A security company with contracts to protect New York-area airports, bridges and tunnels has been charged with paying bribes to get work and hiring dozens of employees with criminal records.

Haynes Security Inc. and its president, John D'Agostino, were charged with theft, bribery and conspiracy in an indictment announced Tuesday.

Among the allegations: Haynes paid more than $1,000 in August 2001 for repairs at the home of a Continental Airlines manager in return for consideration for a contract at the Newark airport. No charges were brought against any Continental employees.

The security company was also accused of failing to submit employee fingerprints to police as required by law.

Since 1999, Haynes has held $12 million in annual contracts to provide security at Newark, Kennedy and LaGuardia airports in New York, as well as the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and the George Washington Bridge.

Those contracts are now under review.

"We need to ensure the highest level of safety, security and service," said Pasquale DiFulco, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees the facilities.

Haynes no longer handles airport passenger screening, which is now overseen by the federal Transportation Security Administration. But the company's unarmed guards still provide security in other parts of the airports, including patrolling parking lots and checking the identification of vehicles entering runways.

Haynes lawyer Seth T. Taube said the company has cooperated fully in the investigation.

"This is nonsense. The state is desperate for political corruption cases, and this is their way of squeezing Haynes Security to make up stories about politicians," Taube said.

Investigators said Haynes hired 27 convicted criminals - who are barred from holding security posts - to work at the airport and for the state's largest utility, Public Service Electric & Gas. After learning of the investigation, the company sent thousands of fingerprints to state police for review, authorities said.

Also indicted was Benjamin R. Riggi, a former PSE&G manager was accused of accepting a $7,500 bribe in 2002 to approve Haynes' contract with the utility. Riggi has an unpublished number and could not immediately be reached for comment.

Haynes provided security at the utility's Newark headquarters, and for workers at street-repair sites.

ON THE NET

http://www.haynessecurity.com





Government to Begin Arming Cargo Pilots
LESLIE MILLER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The government said Tuesday that it will begin recruiting cargo pilots to carry guns in the cockpit for the first time, extending to them a right enjoyed by passenger pilots for almost a year.

Congress created the program to deputize pilots as federal law enforcement officers in late 2002, but excluded cargo pilots at the last minute. A year later, cargo pilots successfully lobbied Congress to allow them to join passenger pilots, who fly the same planes that they do.

The Transportation Security Administration says it is now ready to accept applications online.

Sloan Davis, who flies a Boeing 767 for a major cargo airline, said he'll be one of the first to sign up. "This is a welcome move," he said. "It closes a huge gap in national security."

Davis said he was concerned that cargo security was largely left up to private companies.

The government only requires a small percentage of freight to be checked before being shipped in cargo planes. Air marshals don't fly aboard cargo planes, and freight-handling areas at airports are not as secure as passenger terminals.

Sen. Jim Bunning, the Kentucky Republican who sponsored the bill to arm cargo pilots, said he's "extremely pleased" by the news. Bunning's bill passed in November.

Classes for pilots who volunteer and pass the psychological testing will begin in the spring, said Mark Hatfield, TSA spokesman.

A little more than a thousand passenger pilots have been trained and deputized, Hatfield said. The TSA recently doubled the number of 50-person classes it holds every week, to 100 pilots, and will have thousands more graduated by the end of the year, he said.

For some, that's not soon enough.

Capt. John Safley, president of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Association, a pilots group, said the agency needs to remove obstacles to the program.

Pilots, for example, say the psychological testing is excessive, they don't like carrying their guns in lockboxes when they're not in the cockpit, and they're concerned that the TSA can share confidential information about them with their employers.

"There's still work to be done to make this a truly effective program," Safley said. "We're still not at the level we need to get to."

ON THE NET

Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.gov
Associated Press
TSA Screeners Plead Guilty to Theft
03.31.2006, 12:47 AM

Two security screeners at the Honolulu International Airport pleaded guilty Thursday to stealing tens of thousands of dollars worth of yen from the luggage of Japanese tourists.

Christopher J. Cadorna, 25, and Benny S. Arcano, 27, admitted being among a group of Transportation Security Administration screeners who stole at least $20,000 from international travelers, prosecutors said.

The yen was exchanged for dollars and divvied up by the screeners, prosecutors said.

Both men have agreed to cooperate with the government's investigation into thefts by other screeners. Each faces a maximum 10 years in prison when they are sentenced July 17.

"This has given us a black eye, but it is not indicative of what we have," said TSA Honolulu director Sidney Hayakawa in defending his 600 screeners.

The TSA plans to install cameras to monitor the screeners, he said.

Separately, TSA officer Michael Gomes, 32, was charged Wednesday with stealing $16,000 from a bag he screened at Molokai Airport. He admitted the theft and surrendered $13,500 to police, officials said.




Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed





























 
TSA Under Fire for Rising Theft by Baggage Screeners
Government Screeners at 30 Airports Arrested for Stealing

     ABC News' Bob Jamieson filed this report for World News Tonight.
 

NEW YORK, Nov. 19, 2004 — Sales executive Rhonda Lege thought her luggage was in safe hands when she flew. That was until gifts for her children were stolen from her bag by security screeners from the Transportation Security Administration.

"It never crossed my mind that the people there to protect me might harm me," she said. "It's kind of a double-edged sword. I really don't know who to trust as I fly."

The nation's airports can now begin hiring private security contractors to screen baggage, rather than relying on the TSA. As many as two dozen airports are expected to make the change.

Created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the TSA has been facing increasing criticism over a rise in thefts from checked luggage.

More than 60 TSA screeners have been arrested for theft at 30 different airports, both large and small. Some have been caught going through bags in full view of airport security cameras — one is even seen on tape pocketing a gold bracelet.

Officials have only recovered a fraction of what has been stolen and somehow smuggled out of supposedly secure airports.

All that Atlantan Clay Walker had left after his flight was an empty carrying case that once held a $1,300 flat screen video monitor.

"For the last 18 years, I've probably traveled twice a month for work," said Walker, who works for a small production company, "and I've never had anything stolen. Ever."

The TSA has settled 15,000 passenger claims filed over theft by screeners and has paid out $1.5 million in damages.

"The system has a high degree of integrity," said Transportation Security Administration spokesman Mark Hatfield. "These numbers, when you look at the overall scope of how many airports we're in, how many bags are being screened each day, it's substantially very small."

Screeners With Criminal Records

But executives in the airline industry and local police officials say the problem is not small at all. ABC News has learned that at New York's three major airports — John F. Kennedy International, Newark Liberty International and LaGuardia — 400 of the first 2,000 screeners hired had criminal records. In some cases, it seemed that the TSA hired screeners without first completing background checks. In others, screeners were apparently subjected to basic background checks, without detailed follow-up investigations.

In one high-profile case last year, two pieces of custom-made jewelry checked by rap star Lil' Kim went missing. They were returned after an airline worker at JFK airport found the missing valuables wrapped inside a rag in a locker room for airline employees.

The airline industry worries that the first line of defense against terrorism at the nation's airports may be dangerously flawed.

"It's a huge security threat," said aviation industry consultant Michael Boyd. "If we've got the kind of people who would steal things out of bags, we're not sure if we have people on the job who will put things into bags. And obviously we don't have enough scrutiny of the bags once they're checked. It's huge."

The TSA says it has improved background checks for screeners, but regaining the confidence of passengers may be a harder job.

ABC News' Bob Jamieson filed this report for World News Tonight.




























NEW TSA OUTRAGE: FINES UP TO $10,000

– 06-04-05 –

     The Transportation Security Agency (TSA) – the government department put in charge of airline security after 9/11 – has quietly begun imposing fines on unwary passengers who attempt to board planes with prohibited items.

     Mojdeh Rohani of Boston discovered the new fines when she received a bill in the mail from the TSA for $150 for carrying a silver-plated cake service in her carry-on bag.

     She was lucky. The TSA can now impose administrative fines of up to $10,000 for violating its rules.

     Kathryn Harrington of Laurel, Maryland was also fined for carrying a "concealed weapon." The weapon was an 8 ? inch long leather bookmark.

     In fact it's difficult to know in advance just what is and is not legal to carry on a plane these days. Other passengers have been prevented from boarding planes and in some cases arrested for carrying paperback books with ?violent pictures? on the cover . . . T-shirts with political comments . . . and milk for their babies. Even worse, rules can vary from airport to airport or even from screener to screener at the same airport. (For the TSA's latest list of prohibited items click here.

     Since thousands of passengers have items confiscated from them every day at airports, the new TSA fines should help to pay the salaries of TSA's "professional screeners" – which are triple the amount paid to private screeners in the days before the TSA.

     In addition, to the TSA legal confiscations and fines, dozens of TSA agents have been charged with stealing cash from passengers wallets, and laptop computers, cameras, jewelry and other expensive property from their baggage. Over 7,000 complaints are currently pending against the TSA. Many complainants will wait years before they receive a response.

     And to contest a TSA administrative fine, you will be required to travel repeatedly to the airport whether the fine was imposed – which means several trips across the country or across the world at your own expense. Then the several hearing will be presided over by a TSA administrative judge who works for the same agency that just imposed an arbitrary fine upon you.

     And if you are thinking of suing TSA thieves in a state or federal court, think again. As government employees TSA agents have sovereign immunity from lawsuit no matter how arbitrary their decisions and how much they steal.

     To add insult to injury, recent studies show that even more guns and knives are getting through security stations than before 9/11 – making the TSA an abject and very expensive failure.

     With mounting evidence that TSA does nothing to increase our security – but a lot to make the skies less friendly – it should be abolished immediately and the responsibility of security returned to airlines and airports.



























TSA – Bullies at the Airport

by Rep. Ron Paul, MD    December 1, 2004
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD

If you traveled by air last week for the Thanksgiving holiday, you undoubtedly witnessed Transportation Security Administration agents conducting aggressive searches of some passengers. A new TSA policy begun in September calls for invasive and humiliating searches of random passengers; in some instances crude pat-downs have taken place in full public view. Some female travelers quite understandably have burst into tears upon being groped, and one can only imagine the lawsuits if TSA were a private company. But TSA is not private, TSA is a federal agency – and therefore totally unaccountable to the American people.

TSA was created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Although the National Guard, DOD, FBI, CIA, NSA, and FAA utterly failed to protect American citizens on that tragic day, federal legislators immediately proposed creating yet another government agency. But the commercial flying community did not want airport security federalized, and my office was inundated with messages from airline pilots opposing the creation of TSA. One pilot stated, “I don't want the same people who bring me the IRS and ATF to be in charge of airport security.” But Congress didn't listen to the men and women who spend their working lives flying, so it created another agency that costs billions of dollars, employs thousands of unionized federal workers, and produces poor results.

Problems within TSA are legion. In the rush to hire a new workforce, 28,000 screeners were put to work without background checks. Some of them were convicted felons. Many were very young, uneducated, with little job experience. At Kennedy and LaGuardia airports in New York, police arrested dozens of TSA employees who were simply stealing valuables from the luggage they were assigned to inspect. Of course TSA has banned locks on checked luggage, leaving passengers with checked bags totally at the mercy of screeners working behind closed doors. None of this is surprising for a government agency of any size, but we must understand the reality of TSA: its employees have no special training, wisdom, intelligence, or experience whatsoever that qualifies them to have any authority over you. They certainly have no better idea than you do how to prevent terrorism. TSA is about new bureaucratic turf and lucrative union makework, not terrorism.

TSA has created an atmosphere of fear and meek subservience in our airports that smacks of Soviet bureaucratic bullying. TSA policies are subject to change at any moment, they differ from airport to airport, and they need not be in writing. One former member of Congress demanded to see the written regulation authorizing a search of her person. TSA flatly told her, "We don't have to show it to anyone." Think you have a right to know the laws and regulations you are expected to obey? Too bad. Get in line and stay quiet, or we'll make life very hard for you. This is the attitude of TSA personnel.

Passengers, of course, have caught on quickly. They have learned to stay quiet and not ask any questions, no matter how ludicrous or undignified the command. It's bad enough to see ordinary Americans bossed around in their stocking feet by newly-minted TSA agents, but it's downright disgraceful to see older Americans and children treated so imperiously. But any objection, however rational and reasonable, risks immediate scrutiny. At best, complainers will be taken aside and might miss their flight. If they don't submit quickly and attempt to assert any rights, they will end up detained, put on a TSA list that guarantees them hostile treatment at every airport, and possibly arrested or fined for their "attitude."

Airlines should be using every last ounce of their lobbying and public relations power to stop TSA from harassing, delaying, humiliating, and otherwise mistreating their paying passengers. They should be protecting their employees, passengers, and aircraft using private security and guns in the cockpit. After all, who has more incentive to create safe skies than the airlines themselves? Many security-intensive industries, including nuclear power plants, oil refineries, and armored money transports, employ private security forces with excellent results. Yet the airlines prefer to relinquish all responsibility for security to the government, so they cannot be held accountable if another disaster occurs. But airlines are finding out the hard way that millions of Americans simply won't put up with TSA's abuse. Wealthy Americans are using private planes via increasingly popular fractional ownership plans, while ordinary Americans are choosing to drive to their destinations and vacation closer to home. Even business travelers are finding ways to consolidate trips and teleconference. Who can blame anyone for avoiding airports altogether?

While millions of Americans undoubtedly welcome any TSA indignity under the guise of "preventing terrorism," millions more are not willing to give blind obedience to arbitrary authority. TSA creates only a false sense of security, at great cost not only financially but also in terms of our dignity. How we as Americans react to authoritarian agencies like TSA is an indicator of how much we still value freedom over our persons and effects.

December 1, 2004

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

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Screeners Who Steal
NEW YORK, Aug. 23, 2004
(CBS) One screener had four Social Security numbers and a conviction for shoplifting, and as seen on a surveillance videotape exclusively obtained by CBS News, he used his position to steal jewelry and more from airline passengers' bags. WCBS's Cheryl Fiandaca reports for The Early Show.

Transportation Security Administration screener Clarence Henry is supposed to be looking for bombs in checked luggage. Instead, he's looking for jewelry and cash. A surveillance video appears to show Henry carefully picking through the jewelry case in a bag - looking for expensive pieces and pocketing them when he finds them.

And Henry isn't the only federal employee accused of stealing from passengers. Last week, police arrested three more screeners for stealing and, through search warrants, uncovered a treasure trove of stolen property including video recorders, cameras, laptops and large amounts of cash and jewelry.

Queens D.A. Richard Brown says, “What is especially troubling about this case is that individuals charged with the responsibility of ensuring the safety and security of our nation's airlines would be pilfering from the traveling public rather than carrying out their responsibilities.”

And these recent arrests are not the first time screeners have been accused of stealing from passengers. Bob Rodriguez, who is legally blind, says he became a victim at a security checkpoint last February.

Rodriguez says, “I didn't realize until I got to the other end of that when I looked at my wallet, my wallet was OK, but I had $200 missing.”

Rodriguez filed a report but because he's blind, he wasn't able to identify the screener he says stole his money.

Over the past several months, CBS News obtained dozens of police reports involving screeners stealing from passengers, including some very high-profile passengers. Sources say the victims include Susan Lucci, Joan Rivers and Chevy Chase, who had his $10,000 Cartier watch stolen from his bag.

More than two years after the TSA was created, it still has not completed background checks on many of the screeners already working at airports. Sources say if it had, it may have noticed Henry had four Social Security numbers and a criminal conviction for shoplifting.

The TSA said the background checks only disqualify felons, not those convicted of minor crimes, even if those minor crimes involve stealing. In a statement the agency said it "has a zero tolerance for theft and aggressively investigates all allegations of misconduct and when infractions are discovered the offenders are removed from service."

In the meantime, 51-year-old Henry and the three other screeners have been removed from service, not by the TSA, but by the police.

Sources say the investigation into TSA screeners is continuing. Police are also looking into the possibility that some of the screeners were working together as an organized group of thieves.


©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.




























NCS Pearson TSA Hiring Contract Investigations Should Include TSA's "Bait & Switch" Matched Salary Scam (Guest editorial) Posted by: Admin 
Editorial ColumnsCongress and the G.A.O., needs also investigate the joint collusion in taxpayer fraud, where both TSA and its hiring contractor, NCS Pearson, used "bait and switch" hiring scams in 2002.

TSA for its part, on April 26, 2002, created a fake HRM SV-0019 salary determinations policy for re-hiring airport security experienced screeners it managed, trained, and paid. Six months after hiring thousands once TSA-contracted screeners, TSA headquarters rescinded the policy.

In helping facilitate TSA's salary rate deception, NCS Pearson, followed special hiring policy instructions by offering matched higher base salary rates to TSA-contracted screeners that didn't quit during the federal take-over.

This tactic was widely used in national airports like, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, Phoenix, Anchorage and others, merely to help both entities meet Congresses 2002 hiring deadlines. From the beginning, those running TSA and NCS Pearson, cared only about themselves, lining their pockets and furthering their own career advancement.

Those deceived by TSA's "bait and switch" action, had no idea of the scam until their paychecks came to them with less than promised and signed for salary rates.

When thousands complained that NCS Pearson refused to provide them a copy of their signed contract they are legally entitled to, TSA created a fake hotline and help center pretending to provide them contract copies.

Not surprisingly, based on the questionable history of both...most never gained copies of their job contract showing they were owed higher salaries. Neither did TSA take action to insure new ones were then drawn up, instead taking full advantage of what transpired.

For example: Boston's Logan International Airport under George Naccara, twenty five or so prior interim TSA-contracted screeners gained higher salary rates than seventy five others. This, despite the fact these screeners hired from the same four companies, Huntleigh, ITS, Globe Aviation and WorldWide Security, were all equally federally certified in 2002.

As word of the "bait and switch" scam spread, TSA first blamed its hiring contractor, NCS Pearson, for what occurred. When that failed, TSA's HR and PR office's created a "spin action" blaming Congress instead. Now, TSA's ever evolving lie was that Congress made the agency too broke to correct the majority's improper salary rates.

Later, TSA HR Directors, like Boston's Kevin Drum, told the Ombudsman that his screeners had falsified their proof of salary pay stubs. Strangely, TSA has never fired anyone in Boston for the federal crime Drum alleged.

TSA headquarters repeated its claim of no budget had, to inquiring Senator's John McCain, Ted Stevens, Edward M. Kennedy, John Kerry and Congressman Edward M. Markey, etc. Even Boston's then acting-Assistant Federal Security Director, David Ishihara, whom personally oversaw screener hiring at Logan International Airport, had his own written plea rebuffed.

In an effort to provide itself internal and public cover, TSA withheld a small portion of NCS Pearson's bloated $700 million dollar contract. But, in December 2003, TSA headquarters quietly handed that withheld portion back to its contractor. NCS Pearson, was singing all the way to the bank.

In court actions that followed, TSA lawyers repeatedly cite TSA's unique managing oversight powers, as what empowered it to violate the hiring contracts it ordered these same hoodwinked screeners to sign.

As of November 2004, the amount owed in underpaid salary rates for LAX, Seatac, Logan, Sky Harbor and Ted Stevens airports, was more a million dollars.

To date, despite clear evidence pointing at wide-spread salary rate fraud, TSA refuses to do right by those selectively underpaid.

Screeners too, paid dearly for the fraudulent practices of both NCS Pearson and TSA.

Stealing from hardworking Americans protecting our nation to fund lavish contractor lifestyles and ritzy TSA work environments for higher ups, doesn't create a "Model Workplace". Needless to say, those illegally underpaid and purposefully misled, are naturally outraged.

As taxpayers ourselves, whom also fund this agency, we should be.

AJ Castilla, DHS / TSA
Logan International Airport
Boston, Massachusetts

 



































  TSA Under Pressure To Stop Baggage Theft
For Agency, a New Airport Security Problem

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 29, 2003; Page A01

When John Latta flew to Reagan National Airport from Miami last month, he discovered that a $1,000 pair of binoculars was missing from his checked luggage.

"What can I do?" he asked an airline agent who took a report. Her answer, Latta said, was: "Nothing. Zero."

Latta's complaint is one of more than 6,700 that travelers have lodged in the six months since the federal government began advising passengers to leave their checked luggage unlocked for inspection. Most of the complaints concerned damaged or stolen items, but the figure also includes some claims of lost luggage, according to the Transportation Security Administration, which compiles the numbers.

The airlines do not provide data on stolen and damaged items in their reporting of complaints, most of which concern lost baggage. So comparisons with previous years are difficult.

The spotlight on luggage thefts intensified after two baggage screeners were arrested in Miami this week. The TSA employees were charged with stealing things from checked baggage. A federal security screener in New York was arrested in March on charges of stealing thousands of dollars in cash from passengers while inspecting their belongings at an airport checkpoint. The rap star Lil' Kim reported June 20 that $250,000 worth of jewelry was stolen from her Louis Vuitton bag at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Her lawyer said the jewelry was found Friday in a locker room for airline employees at JFK, the Associated Press reported.

"There is just no guarantee that your luggage is secure anymore," said Paul S. Hudson, executive director of the nonprofit Aviation Consumer Action Project.

The TSA said the complaints it received in the past six months came from only a tiny fraction of the passengers who traveled during that time. "It's highly unlikely that your bag will suffer any damage or any loss from the TSA side of the ledger, as it makes its way through the system," TSA spokesman Robert Johnson said. "We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to malfeasance of anyone working for TSA. It's important for people to have confidence in the system as we build a robust system for responding to claims and we'll be better at responding to these claims."

Travelers and members of Congress have expressed concern about people working in airport security who have criminal records. Hiring thousands of federal security workers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was intended to inspire the confidence of travelers. But this month the TSA admitted that it has yet to complete background checks on 22,000 of its screeners. The agency has fired 85 felons who had been hired.

The TSA declined on privacy grounds to say whether background checks had been made on the two Miami screeners arrested this week. The agency said budget problems have delayed installation of video cameras in airports to keep an eye on security workers.

"This security system is not finished," Johnson said. "A lot of work still needs to be done."

At some airports, passengers are present when security personnel scan their luggage as it passes through screening machines. At other airports, airline personnel send the bags on a conveyor belt for inspection beyond the sight of passengers. At smaller airports, bags are often opened and swiped with a cotton swab treated to detect explosives.

Many of the nation's largest airports, including Dulles International and Baltimore-Washington International, plan to move luggage-screening machines from airport lobbies to baggage-handling areas, out of view of passengers.

The TSA's recommendation that passengers not lock their luggage came at the beginning of the year, when the agency was required by Congress to screen all luggage for explosives.

The TSA said it would use plastic zip ties to reseal inspected luggage and would put notices inside bags, with toll-free TSA telephone numbers, so passengers would know when a screening had occurred.

But passengers say implementation of those measures is spotty. Doug Stagnaro was traveling from National Airport last month with $2,000 in scuba equipment inside his luggage. He said he made a point of asking the airline agent to reseal his bag with zip ties after screening. But, Stagnaro said, the agent didn't seem to know what he was talking about and referred him to a TSA agent, who found the ties after rummaging around for a few minutes.

"You're at the liberty of the TSA," Stagnaro said.

Even before the federal government took over, airports were a thieves' playground. An FBI sting in 1994 at National Airport resulted in the arrest of eight baggage handlers who were caught on videotape stealing cameras and other valuables from luggage while it was being sorted onto planes. Similar theft rings have been found at airports in Los Angeles, New York and Miami.

"It was always very, very difficult" to catch thieves at airports, said Douglas R. Laird, an aviation security consultant and former official at Northwest Airlines. When a bag disappears behind the plastic curtain at the ticket counter, it enters a maze of conveyor belts and passes through many hands, Laird said.

"Many times theft occurs in the belly of the airplane with the baggage handler inside the plane, and it's impossible to see what they're doing," Laird said. "The same is true with TSA."

Until the TSA began screening luggage, the airlines bore sole responsibility for baggage. The airlines reported 1.8 million incidents of "mishandled" bags last year, or 3.8 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers. Those numbers mostly involved lost or delayed luggage.

The TSA said that of 6,700 complaints it received through June 22 -- most about stolen items or damaged luggage -- it has settled 485 and paid passengers a total of $38,785.83. Travelers withdrew 47 claims, and 145 claims were denied on the grounds that no negligence was found.

Most of the complaints remain unresolved while the agency and the airlines negotiate who is liable for compensating passengers. The two sides are also working out how to determine false claims.

"It's a different world for us," said James C. May, chief executive of the Air Transport Association, the airline trade group. "We're trying to figure out how to appropriate out this liability. I'm not sure we've gotten to that point yet, other than to agree we've got to find a way on a case-by-case basis whether it's an airline problem or a TSA problem."

May said he thought the airlines eventually will take the lead in collecting passenger complaints about stolen and damaged items. But the TSA, which has been collecting complaints through its toll-free number and Web site, said it is working on a proposal for determining liability based on the time a bag spends under TSA control compared with the time it is with an airline.

Airlines will pay a passenger as much as $2,500 per claim. The TSA, which pays beyond that limit, may benefit from a bill before Congress under which the agency's liability would also be capped at $2,500 per claim. The bill has been passed by a House committee.

"We're trying to get our arms around it right now," said Johnson, the TSA spokesman. "I suspect over the next several weeks, pending the outcome of that [negotiation], we hope we'll see an accelerated ability to start resolving the claims."

In the meantime, travelers are advised not to pack valuables when they fly, particularly in their checked luggage.

"The most critical thing is to ensure that terrorist hijackers and bombs don't get on airplanes. It's more important that we're going through this screening process and may have a few problems with it than not to go through it at all," said David S. Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, which represents mostly business travelers.

But Stempler said TSA officials could have started tackling this issue sooner, because they knew it was coming. "It's a problem that can be managed, but the biggest difficulty is TSA failing to stand up and create a program or a system to deal with this."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company



































The TSA: Security, or petty thieves?

Fellow weblogger John Hoke had an interesting experience with the TSA yesterday while flying from LaGuardia to Dulles…

July 14, 2004

One screener asked to manually inspect one of my bags, knowing that I had nothing in it that was prohibited based on the TSA's own site I allowed the search. This inspector found a lighter that I was given by my step daughter for our first Father's Day together. It was a cigar lighter that did not run on Liquid Fuel, but gas. (Unabsorbed Liquid fueled lighters are prohibited based on the above PDF). He looked at it and exclaimed, "Wow I have always wanted one like this". Then proceeded to tell me that he had to confiscate my lighter.

I calmly explained that it was not on the list of items that are prohibited on his own Department's website. He replied he was allowed to use his judgement (what little of that there apparently is) and he was confiscating it. I requested to speak with his supervisor as he was not wearing any TSA identification, no name badge, not badge at all.

The supervisor came over and the screener was confiscating it, end of story. Tried to be helpful in that unhelpful supervisory way.

…I will be writing (and posting here) a letter to the TSA, even though I was told by the supervisor "Go ahead and complain, there is nothing you can do to us."

Seems to me that this is pretty simple — petty thievery, compounded with harassment and the overbearing attitude that any amount of power will instill upon the small-minded. More and more, the TSA seems to be less concerned with actually providing any amount of security, merely using the power they've been granted to harass, humiliate, and steal from anyone coming through the gates of the airports. Sad.

And on a semi-related note, who comes up with these lists of what can and can't be admitted on the airplanes? My mom came through Seattle on her way Florida from Anchorage a couple of months ago, and I was flabbergasted to see that she was allowed to bring her knitting needles on the airplane. Sure, "knitting needles" sounds innocuous enough — but these were two six-inch long metal spikes connected by an approximately eighteen inch metal wire. Two stabbing implements and a very effective garrote, in other words, should someone choose to use them as such. Yet these are allowed? Just bizarre.

Just watch what you take on the planes these days, folks — and hope you arrive at your destination with everything you left with.

iTunes: "Genauso Wie Ich (Future Pop)" by Beborn Beton from the album Tales From Another World (1994, 5:55).

Posted by Michael Hanscom on July 14, 2004 @ 09:41 AM | text |
Tags: airport security

 


























Couple say Logan security screener took $7,000 ring

Suit seeks to have jewelry replaced

By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff  |  January 3, 2006

A Somerset schoolteacher has filed a federal lawsuit accusing a screener of stealing his diamond wedding ring last summer while he was passing through a security checkpoint at Logan International Airport.

John Wright said he put his ring, a 1.53-carat diamond set in gold, into a plastic bin with his Rolex watch and wallet. He said he then placed the bin on the conveyer belt as he and his wife, Janet, passed through the checkpoint to catch a flight to San Juan on July 14.

After walking through the metal detector, Wright said, he went to retrieve his belongings from the bin, but the ring, valued at $7,000, had vanished.

''I hadn't even gone 15 feet on my vacation and I was robbed," Wright said. He immediately began shouting that his ring was missing, he said, prompting the three Transportation Security Administration screeners who were at the checkpoint to search around the conveyer belt, without success.

Ann Davis, a spokeswoman for the federal TSA, said she couldn't comment on the specifics of Wright's case because of the lawsuit, but that the agency does not tolerate workplace theft and aggressively investigates all complaints.

Wright, 51, who lives in Tiverton, R.I., and teaches health at Somerset Middle School, said he suspected that one of the TSA screeners took the ring because there were no passengers in front of him as he went through the checkpoint and his wife was directly behind him.

A TSA supervisor summoned to the scene said he couldn't search or question the employees, according to the Wrights, because there was no evidence that they had taken the ring.

Janet Wright said they were told that only one end of the conveyer belt was monitored by a security camera, and a review of the videotape from that camera only showed her husband picking up the plastic bin and yelling, ''My ring! My ring!"

''I was shocked when I found that out," said Janet Wright. That discovery only bolstered the couple's belief that the ring had been stolen by a TSA employee, she said, because the screeners would have known the theft could not be caught on camera.

After TSA denied a claim seeking $7,000 to replace the ring, Wright filed suit in US District Court in Boston last month against the federal government alleging that TSA negligently allowed the ring to be stolen and failed to provide a secure checkpoint. The suit seeks reimbursement for the ring and attorney's fees.

Davis declined to address the Wrights' assertion that only one side of the checkpoint, located in Terminal B, was monitored by a security camera. ''Ultimately, we don't want to confirm where cameras are or aren't for security reasons," she said.

But, she added, ''there are a substantial amount of cameras throughout the terminal and at the checkpoint to cover the area and certainly to deter any criminal activity."

Between February 2002 -- when TSA assumed responsibility for screening passengers and baggage -- and last October, 165 TSA screeners have been arrested for theft at airports throughout the country, according to Davis. None of those arrests occurred at Logan.

On five occasions, twice in 2005 and three times in 2004, passengers have accused TSA screeners at Logan of stealing property, Davis said. Passengers reported property stolen from checked baggage and at checkpoints, but in all cases the employees were cleared of any wrongdoing and allowed to remain on the job, she said.

She also said that none of the screeners accused of theft in the past had been on duty at the checkpoint on the day Wright's ring was lost.

Davis said the number of TSA screeners caught stealing is small, considering that the agency has 43,000 screeners at airports nationwide and about 740 in Boston.

Still, there have been a number of highly publicized cases around the country. In some instances, screeners have been accused of stealing cash from purses or wallets at checkpoints. But most cases involve checked baggage.

Four former TSA screeners pleaded guilty last year to stealing laptops, cameras, and other items from checked baggage at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Complaints from passengers, including celebrities Chevy Chase, Joan Rivers, and Susan Lucci, that items were taken from their luggage triggered an investigation that led to the arrest in 2004 of four TSA screeners from LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

The Wrights voiced dismay at how their complaint was handled, saying the TSA supervisor who was summoned to the checkpoint did not call State Police and gave them an 800 number to call to report a lost or stolen item.

But Davis said it is not standard operating procedure at Logan for TSA to call State Police every time a theft is reported by a passenger. Passengers may choose to file a complaint with the police, however.

''We will, of course, interview the screeners if they've been accused of stealing," said Davis, but she said employees aren't searched if there's insufficient evidence to warrant it.

The Wrights, who have been married for 27 years, said TSA denied their claim without a thorough investigation, leaving them with no choice but to sue.

''We felt we were in a secure area," said Janet Wright. ''We followed instructions, they told us to remove items. . . . We got to the other side and one of our valuables is missing," she said. 

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company




























Subject: [IP]

<>How the TSA encourages airport theft
  • From: dave@farber.net
  • To: ip@v2.listbox.com
  • Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 07:51 -0400 
...... Forwarded Message .......
From: John Adams <jadams01@sprynet.com>
To: dave@farber.net
Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 19:08:25 -0400
Subj: For IP? How the TSA encourages airport theft

Not their headline, I should note, but my own somewhat cynical take on  
the subject. Here's the money quote, from a few paragraphs down in the  
story:

	''It sounds like TSA has confused ends and means. They are  
compromising security for the sake of secrecy,'' Aftergood said.

http://www.ajc.com/monday/content/epaper/editions/monday/ 
news_041b592785bc71c000c8.html

Airport security tricky in court
Criminal case dropped to guard secrecy
Rebecca Carr - Cox Washington Bureau
Monday, May 24, 2004

Washington --- Last fall, Miami prosecutors thought they had a solid  
case against a federal baggage screener who was caught on videotape  
stealing CDs from passengers' luggage.

Just one small problem: The defense would be allowed to question a key  
prosecution witness from the Transportation Security Administration  
about Miami International Airport's security and training of baggage  
screeners.

Fearing the testimony could put what the government calls Sensitive  
Security Information in the hands of terrorists, prosecutors dropped  
the charges.

U.S. District Court Judge Adalberto Jordan set the defendant free. He  
is now in Miami studying radiology.

The case reveals a growing tension between the public's right to know  
about a crime at one of the nation's busiest airports and the federal  
government's desire to protect sensitive security information from  
disclosure.

The federal government argues that even seemingly innocuous information  
about the nation's transportation systems could aid terrorists and  
other criminals in their plots. Critics disagree, saying that to cloak  
such information in secrecy undermines the public's ability to protect  
itself.

The Miami case is ''a rather shocking story,'' said Steven Aftergood,  
director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on  
Government Secrecy.

''It sounds like TSA has confused ends and means. They are compromising  
security for the sake of secrecy,'' Aftergood said.

The critics have it all wrong, said Lauren Stover, the eastern field  
director for TSA public affairs based in Miami.

''Our agency does not like to hide under the SSI umbrella,'' Stover  
said.

The Miami case and other examples of the TSA refusing to release  
sensitive security information have raised concerns among open  
government advocates who say there is no oversight on what TSA can  
stamp ''SSI.''

''It is an invitation to unlimited secrecy,'' Aftergood said. ''These  
decisions need to be reviewed by some sort of oversight mechanism.''

Open government advocates say there are understandable reasons to keep  
certain sensitive documents and pieces of information from the public.  
But the public should at least know how much information has been  
removed from the public domain under the SSI label.

Jane Kirtley, director of the Silha Center for media ethics and law at  
the University of Minnesota, said the whole notion of removing reams of  
information from the public for an unlimited time frame is ''very  
troubling.''

''The idea that we can basically close off this amorphous category of  
information without any checks and balances is very troubling,''  
Kirtley said.

Lawmakers complain

Some Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill are concerned about the lack  
of oversight to ensure that TSA is not abusing its authority.

''While it is important that truly sensitive security information not  
be disclosed to the public, the Bush administration all too often  
inappropriately uses secrecy as a weapon to prevent the American public  
from learning of its activities,'' said Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), a  
member of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, which  
oversees the policies of TSA.

The agency wanted to prosecute the Miami baggage screener to the  
highest degree possible, Stover said.

''We are a transparent agency operating that way every day under the  
belief that the public has a right to know," Stover said. "We have to  
learn to balance that against information that might be used against  
us.''

The agency was concerned that an open court proceeding would reveal  
critical information because of videotape footage showing the defendant  
stealing and expert TSA testimony about screening procedures.  
Terrorists could watch the videotape and hear from TSA officials how  
they screen bags. The agency does not want to do ''the homework'' for  
the terrorists, she said.

''Our mission is to safeguard the security of our nation and traveling  
public, and we could not jeopardize innocent lives for the actions of a  
few individuals,'' Stover said.

Amy Von Walter, a spokeswoman for the TSA based in Washington,  
estimated that about a quarter of the agency's actions are marked  
''SSI,'' but she could not quantify that figure because the agency  
deals with ''billions of documents.''

Von Walter said the agency does not hesitate to take appropriate action  
when baggage screeners violate the law. For example, four baggage  
screeners in Detroit were indicted last month on theft charges.

The TSA was given the power to keep secret sensitive information about  
the nation's transportation networks soon after Congress created the  
agency on Nov. 16, 2001.

But the concept of keeping secret sensitive security information has  
been around since 1974. That's when Congress passed legislation giving  
the Federal Aviation Administration permission to protect a narrow band  
of information about its research and development from public  
disclosure.

Expanded security

Under TSA's management, the definition of SSI has greatly expanded to  
include nearly a dozen different regulations, including information  
about security programs, vulnerability assessments and technical  
specifications of certain screening equipment, according to a recent  
report by the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of  
Congress.

Basically, anything that poses a ''detrimental '' threat to air travel  
qualifies as sensitive security information, according to the  
regulations defining SSI.

Unlike national security documents that are reviewed before receiving  
classification status of ''top secret,'' information placed in the  
category of SSI is ''born'' secret, meaning there is no criterion to  
meet or review to ensure that it should be removed from the public's  
view.

The federal government created the Information Security Oversight  
Office to monitor the number of classified documents it creates each  
year. No such monitoring agency exists for SSI materials. The materials  
are simply removed from the public domain without any type of oversight  
as there is with the classification system.

Another important distinction is there is a time limit given to  
classified materials. While some of these time limits are extended for  
decades, there is no time limit with SSI materials.

On Tuesday, the TSA expanded the authority to the U.S. Coast Guard. The  
Coast Guard will be allowed to use the SSI label to keep secret port  
and facility security assessment plans required by legislation passed  
by Congress last year.

 > ON THE WEB: The CRS report can be found on the Federation of American  
Scientists Project On Government Secrecy site: www.fas.org
NYTimes.com

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Bag It
By JAMES BOVARD

Published: August 18, 2004

Last week four screeners for the Transportation Security Administration
were arrested at Kennedy and La Guardia airports for stealing money,
jewelry and other valuables from checked bags. The agents were caught in
a sting operation after a torrent of complaints about luggage thefts.
These arrests likely represent only a fraction of the abuses nationwide.

In April, four agents in Detroit were arrested for stealing laptop
computers, cameras and other items from checked luggage. In June, four
agents were arrested at the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., airport on charges of
stealing cameras, laptop computers, perfume, CD players and money. Also
in June, one screener was arrested in Philadelphia for stealing $335
from a passenger passing through his checkpoint, and 13 screeners were
arrested in New Orleans on charges of stealing valuables from checked
luggage. Many have been suspended with full pay while awaiting the
outcome of the cases. According to the transportation agency, more than
28,000 claims of loss or damage have been filed.

While there have been some successful prosecutions, in at least one case
the T.S.A. let a screener off the hook. Last year, video cameras
recorded a Miami screener stealing CD's from checked luggage. But
criminal charges were dropped after the screener's lawyer made it clear
that he planned to ask a government official about T.S.A. operations at
the trial.

The possibilities for mischief are considerable. Congress requires the
transportation agency to check all airline baggage with bomb-detection
machinery or with hand-held bomb detectors. More than $5 billion has
been spent by the government and airports to purchase and install the
new equipment. Unfortunately, the machines are unreliable. In 2002,
Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta told Congress that the
machines have a false-positive rate of 35 percent - and if a bag tests
positive, it must be searched by hand. To do this, agents routinely
examine baggage in closed areas, far from prying eyes.

To complicate matters, the agency initially recommended that all
passengers not lock their baggage to facilitate searches. The agency has
since recommended that people buy T.S.A.-approved locks, but these have
often been cut by screeners despite the agency's seal of approval.

The T.S.A. denies that a nationwide theft problem exists, and stresses
that the vast majority of its 45,000 employees have not been accused of
wrongdoing. It has nevertheless worked hard to limit its liability for
baggage thefts and damage. According to the Air Transport Association,
which represents the major United States airlines, the T.S.A. seeks to
limit its total liability to $3 million a year - regardless of how much
damage travelers incur.

In some ways, the thefts are not surprising. The transportation agency
has done an abysmal job of managing its workforce. In June 2003, the
agency admitted that it had failed to screen its own screeners and fired
more than 1,200 employees after they failed criminal background checks
or other internal investigations.

Some Americans may believe that luggage thefts are a small price to pay
for making air travel safe. But the safety is a mirage. Tests by the
Government Accountability Office and other federal agencies have found
that the airport safety net continues to be full of holes. Clark Kent
Ervin, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security,
told Congress in April that T.S.A. screeners performed poorly in
response to covert tests. More recently, the 9/11 commission report
warned that "major vulnerabilities still exist'' in aviation security.

Airport security must be overhauled. Instead of relying on thousands of
federal agents following often pointless routines (like treating
grandmothers as potential hijackers), aviation security can be improved
by relying on innovative procedures, including the use of private
screeners trained to higher standards than T.S.A. agents, focusing on
passengers who pose the greatest apparent risk and ceasing to shield
airports and airlines from liability law suits if they fail to protect
their customers.

President Bush said in 2002 that the law that created the T.S.A.
"greatly enhanced the protections for America's passengers.'' But it
takes more than long lines and delays at airport checkpoints to defeat
terrorist threats. Is it wise to trust the T.S.A. to make air travel
safe when it has a hard time protecting Americans from its own agents?

James Bovard is the author, most recently, of "The Bush Betrayal."

JFK Screeners Arrested For Wallet Theft

An Eyewitness News Exclusive

WABC By Lauren DeFranco

(New York - WABC, December 14, 2005) - Eyewitness News exclusive: Two airport screeners at Kennedy Airport -- both of them women -- have been arrested and charged with stealing the wallet of a man who was going through security screening.

They then allegedly went on a spending spree with the man's money.

Eyewitness News Long Island Reporter Lauren DeFranco has the story.

"It's heartwrenching ... my social security cards, my id cards."

For William Canberry, a simple trip to Key West turned into a monumental hassle.

When his baggage arrived late, Canberry realized the contents of his wallet had been stolen.

William: "They rifled through it. ... They didn't just find it accidentally."

The retired New York City Firefighter immeadiately cut his vacation short, worried and devastated by the loss.

William: "My identification from the fire department, my retirement badge -- things I'll never see again."

The investigation into the theft at JFK turned up shocking surveillance photos.

Sources say TSA Screeners Ronniki Ack and Yvette Reynolds were still in uniform and caught red handed using the stolen ATM card at various banks.

The two allegedly went on a shopping spree. Sources say one even bought an iPod from a Circuit City.

William: "When the Homeland Security thing came through, they flooded the airports with these people with very little background checks and very low pay. The bottom line is you get what you pay for in this world."

In fact, Eyewitness News obtained an internal hand written memo. The agency admits that stealing is very prominent by certain screeners, though the TSA officially denies stealing as a chronic problem.

Both TSA screeners are charged with grand larceny, criminal possesion of stolen property, and official misconduct because they are government employees.

The Port Authority is executing search warrants as this is an ongoing investigation.

(Copyright 2005 WABC-TV)


























Big Brother is Watching...And Stealing From You
  May 2 2005

 So here's another way the government's secrecy preoccupation is hurting you: At the latest count, taxpayers have shelled out more than $730,000 to pay claims from angry airline passengers who found valuables missing after their luggage went through secret screening by the Transportation Security Administration. The TSA initially sought to blame the problem on sticky-fingered airline employees, who load the luggage onto planes after it goes through the special TSA screening rooms. But the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general concluded that the dimly lit screening rooms _ and the secrecy surrounding what goes on there _ provide a perfect cover for government employees to lift camcorders, cameras, jewelry and other items they find in the luggage they comb through. In the last two years, 37 federal screeners have been arrested on theft charges at airports around the country. Locking up luggage is no longer permissible under post-9/11 airport rules, and the TSA forecasts continuing problems. "Detection and prosecution of thefts cases in remote areas of the airport, where access is restricted and observation by others is limited, will continue to be difficult," investigators said. Administrators shouldn't be surprised at the rash of thefts. The inspector general concluded that the agency in 2002 put 42,000 luggage screeners on the federal payroll without fully checking their backgrounds. One TSA employee later charged with theft was found to possess four Social Security numbers and a conviction for shoplifting. Another was nabbed while peddling items stolen from luggage in the airport parking lot. Nor should the agency have been surprised by the blizzard of claims. The TSA received more than 13,000 claims for lost valuables since taking over luggage-screening duties in 2002, and was still trying to resolve 5,800 claims as of last September. The agency has changed its hiring policies and now requires "a favorably adjudicated criminal history check" before putting someone on the federal payroll and has established mandatory ethics courses. But TSA officials are adamantly opposed to opening up the procedures in the screening rooms to outsiders. They so want the "sensitive but unclassified" procedures to remain undercover that prosecutors dropped one theft case involving a former TSA screener at Miami International Airport rather than permit defense attorneys to question TSA officials on the agency's security and training activities. Motorcycle highway deaths increased 7.3 percent last year, compared to 2003. And Jim Champagne, chairman of the Governors Highway Safety Association and a lieutenant colonel in the Louisiana State Police force, blames the relaxation of mandatory helmet laws. Only 20 states and the District of Columbia now require motorcycle riders to wear helmets. But Champagne says motorcyclists are lobbying some of those states to change those laws, contending that helmet safety should be a matter of personal freedom. After persuading Louisiana to become the first state to reinstate helmet laws, Champagne now is on a national crusade to get other states to restore their laws requiring the safety equipment. He doesn't buy the personal-freedom argument, noting that 91 percent of injured motorcyclists admitted to the Medical Center of Louisiana in New Orleans didn't have any health insurance, and everybody is picking up the costs.
Airport screeners accused of stealing from luggage

June 23, 2004

KENNER, La. (AP) -- Louisiana officials say some airport screeners were doing more than just screening. Nine employees of the Transportation Security Administration have been arrested for allegedly stealing items from the luggage they were screening at the New Orleans airport.

Sheriff's officials say they started investigating when a TSA worker reported in May that she had seen some of the thefts and had seen baggage screeners dividing up the stolen items in a workers' parking lot.

A TSA spokeswoman says the screeners have been suspended pending the outcome of the criminal cases.

Congress created the agency less than two months after 9/11.

Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.



























Feds Throw Big-Bucks Banquet


WASHINGTON, Oct. 14, 2004
The TSA, celebrating its second year of existence, gave out a "lifetime achievement award" at the event.  (CBS/AP)





Quote

"A substantial inequity exists in TSA's performance recognition program between executive and non-executive employees."
The report
(CBS/AP) Three balloon arches: $1,486.

Seven cakes: $1,850.

One party planner: $85,552.

That's what a government anti-terrorism agency spent last year for an awards ceremony at a lavish Washington hotel, according to an internal report obtained by The Associated Press. The total cost came close to a half-million dollars.

Awards were presented to 543 Transportation Security Administration employees and 30 organizations, including a "lifetime achievement award" for one worker with the 2-year-old agency. Almost $200,000 was spent on travel and lodging for attendees.

The investigation by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin, also found the TSA gave its senior executives bonuses averaging $16,000, higher than at any other federal government agency, and failed to provide adequate justification in more than a third of the 88 cases examined.

The report said lower-level employees were shortchanged, with a far lower percentage receiving bonuses.

"A substantial inequity exists in TSA's performance recognition program between executive and non-executive employees," the report said.

TSA spokeswoman Amy von Walter said the agency believes the bonuses and party were justified "given the hours and productivity of the work force during this critical period."

This year, said von Walter, the TSA will conduct awards ceremonies at individual airports, as well as a much smaller and less expensive event at its headquarters in November.

Congressional skeptics have criticized the TSA's hiring and spending practices during its short existence. Republicans say the agency has grown far larger than they envisioned when it was created following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on Washington and New York City.

Ervin also is investigating why the agency's private recruiters worked out of lush resort hotels with golf courses, pools and spas.

Ervin reported in April that airport security screeners perform poorly, whether they're government or privately employed workers, that airport security is lax and that the TSA is overly bureaucratic.

Last year, Ervin said the questions on tests for airport screeners were often so simple the correct answers was obvious.

"When you read the test, you'd think it was written by Jay Leno's scriptwriters rather than by a testing agency," he said.

Ervin's predecessor as inspector general, Kenneth Mead, last year criticized the agency for wasteful spending leading to a $3.3. billion deficit.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said while he had not seen the full report it indicated "a colossal waste of money."

"There's something terribly wrong with that agency," Dorgan said. "Of all the agencies, that's the one that's supposed to be working full-time against terrorist attacks."

The awards banquet, which cost $461,745, was held at the Grand Hyatt, which bills itself as "one of the most magnificent" hotels in the nation's capital. According to the report, the agency chose that site because it was the only hotel available on Nov. 19, 2003, the agency's second anniversary. It also was one of the few places that could accommodate about 600 honorees and as many guests.

While the inspector general noted the agency sought competitive bids for the party planner and chose the company with the lowest estimate, it found the "costs of the ceremony and reception were higher than necessary."

The event planning company, MarCom Group Inc. of Fairfax, Va., was paid $85,552 for its work and given an additional $81,767 for plaques, $5,196 for official photographs, $1,486 for three balloon arches and $1,509 for signs.

The reception included finger food, coffee and cake that averaged $33 per person.

In a written response, the TSA said the costs "were neither extraordinary nor incurred without careful consideration of the amount, the reasonableness of the cost, and value the activities would have to the employees."

The inspector general also expressed concern that the TSA was more generous than most other federal agencies in awarding bonuses to executives. Federal agencies on average gave cash awards to 49 percent of their executives in 2002, while 76 percent of TSA executives received them in 2003.

The inspector general reviewed 88 employees' files and found that 38 percent "had no individual recommendation and justification for the performance award."

"The legitimacy of such large awards is called into question by the lack of an appropriate selection process and the reliance on boilerplate justifications that could be applicable to anyone," the report said.

The report also noted that fewer than 3 percent of nonexecutive employees received bonuses in 2003.

In its response, the TSA said executives who got a bonus didn't get a pay increase and weren't eligible for a presidential awards program that can amount to as much as 35 percent of their base pay. The agency agreed, however, that more could be done to equalize treatment of top executives and lower-level employees.

©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.




























TSA: A 100% Failure Record. And They're Proud of It, Too!
The Boyd Group ^ | 20 Mar 06 | staff

Posted on 03/20/2006 6:39:48 AM PST by saganite

It's tough to get off the topic of aviation security.

Unfortunately, the TSA is on a roll. First, Chertoff's threat - give him more money to waste, or there'll be trouble. Then we had repeated and dangerous security incidents at airports around the nation. Now, yet another fun scandal.

By now, we've all heard of the GAO study that found the TSA failed a perfect 21 out of 21 times to stop what amateur terrorists would do to get explosives onto airplanes.

Unfortunately, that's not the scandal. What this study really illuminated is just how arrogant and morally-corrupted the TSA leadership really is, and how terribly vulnerable we are to a terrorist attack due to devoutly-stupid leadership. See, according to the TSA brass, completely missing bomb-making components is a great indication of how safe air travelers really are. (Hey, it's worked in the past - when they're caught red-handed, the TSA just jives it with gibberish.)

The deal in the GAO study was to get bomb-making components through the screening point, and then assemble them on the other side. During the course of the study, GAO investigators were able to achieve this without a single problem. Great news for all our al Qaeda buddies, sort of a Trusted Terrorist program.

But needless to say, professional and well-trained terrorists wouldn't likely take this path - they have too many other easy portals to the AOA - air cargo, fuel farms, catering facilities, cleaning crews, construction work, just to name a few. As we noted last week, for a trained terrorist, getting onto a secure AOA is like going to the 7-11 for a Slurpee.

So what this GAO report means is that the TSA is so ineffective that it can't even stop amateur bombs from getting through. This isn't the first time they've failed. (Remember Nathaniel Heatwole?) The proof is clear: in protecting the nation's airports, the TSA is about as effective as using a roll of Charmin as body armor.

The Results Were Bad. The Response Flippant & Dishonest. Again demonstrating that truth is a foreign concept at the TSA, their Glorious Leader, Skip Hawley, has hailed the GAO findings as proof of his great stewardship of the nation's airport security. Get a load of his 3/18 memo to the TSA rank and file:

"... The GAO report, while still classified, supports TSA's conclusion that we must focus on finding and stopping those who would bring bomb parts onto an aircraft... I am proud of the work that our TSOs do every day. Americans can be confident that TSA is working closely with the entire security community to stop terrorists and protect the traveling public..."

Baghdad Bob, apparently, has landed a job ghost-writing for the TSA.

After billions of dollars lavished on the TSA, Hawley's team failed 21 out of 21 times to find explosive components, and instead of taking action, this bozo tells the nation that he's proud of the quality of the screening. Americans can be confident, all right. Confident that the TSA is run by total nincompoops who think they're above the truth and that the flying public is a pack of gullible idiots.

Let's recap: the TSA failed in stopping some GAO investigators who have no terrorist training, yet Hawley has the dishonest chutzpa to claim that the TSA is protecting the nation against terrorists. Note that he made no call for any reform. He made no apology to the American people. Nothing but a totally disingenuous memo telling the world that failure to stop explosives validates the TSA as a great success.

Even North Korea would have a hard time meeting this standard of fantasy PR.

Fact: TSA Management - Gutless and Unqualified. Let's get to the bottom line: Hawley needs to find another career, and W should be working on it right now. Hawley's very presence at the TSA must be giving a lot of comfort to all the folks in Terrorist Town. In other words, Hawley's type of leadership is a threat to national security.

Worse than that, an earlier written response from the TSA Department of Propaganda stated that the test the GAO conducted and the conclusions that terrorists would even try to get such components through screening were outlandish, and not credible.

More proof that the TSA has lost it completely. A few years ago, no doubt, these same people would have deemed the potential of suicide terrorists flying airliners into buildings as "somewhat outlandish," too.

What's worse, is that some folks in the media have noted that the TSA has refused to send a real, live person to comment and to answer questions on this GAO report. Instead, the TSA has only issued carefully-worded prepared press releases. The reason is clear: They're hiding.

Conclusion: It's time to stop the nice-nice. This ain't no disagreement at the local PTA. There are nasty people out there who want to blow up airplanes and airports. As a defense, we've established a TSA bureaucracy that can't even stop a GAO investigator from getting through.

Tell It Like It Is: The Emperor Has No Security. So, let's dump the protocol and state the obvious truth. The ineptitude of Hawley and the TSA are dangerous to national security. To tolerate this, to defend this, to accept this type of leadership, puts lives at risk.

Worse, Hawley and his top team are gutless, which isn't a desirable trait when we're trying to counter people who want us dead. Fact: Hawley and his patronage henchmen don't have the courage, the professionalism, nor the integrity to stand up and admit what is an outrageous failure.

Let's be blunt, because lives are at stake - in a word, they are morally and ethically a pack of cowards. Cowards who run and hide from the media when things get tough. Cowards who are in charge of airport and transportation security. Cowards who're telling the world that their security failures are really indications of success. Cowards that should be fired, right now.

The Silence Is Deafening. And Dangerous. Of course, firing Hawley isn't in the cards. Heck, in some circles, it's no doubt felt as being unfair and irresponsible to even suggest that as TSA chief Hawley is what he is - unqualified and a coward who hides behind the skirts of his paid PR hacks when failures like this GAO study are discovered. But that's the truth.

Unfortunately, in Washington, and in some Alphabet groups, telling the truth about what needs to be done is too often considered to be tacky. The Administration, as well as lots of folks in congress, not to mention the people at the top of groups like the AAAE (which, by the way, insists on giving clowns like this awards for "excellence"), would rather talk in non-focused circles, carefully trying to avoid assigning responsibility instead of simply stating the truth - that people at the top of the TSA are dangerously inept. Political connections are important, don't ya know.

Then there's the total quiet coming from the gaggles of politically-motivated soapbox-seekers we usually hear from. Strange, isn't it? Here we have the TSA completely failing across the nation to detect what almost certainly any amateur terrorist would attempt to do. It's a basic security concept, yet the TSA failed it again and again. It shows beyond doubt that another 9/11-level terrorist attack would be as easy - maybe easier - than it was on the morning of 9/11.

So where's the outrage from those alleged "representatives" of 9/11 families? Where's the outrage from those Washington labor groups who are so incensed over letting pocket knives on airplanes? Where's the outrage from the Washington Alphabet groups who supposedly represent the interests of aviation?

There isn't any, because most of these entities are in it not for the purposes of better security, but for political ends.

Not one of them, not one, has come out calling for what's really needed - a total tear-down of the TSA bureaucracy that's now beyond any question a threat to national aviation security.

The New Security Oversight: Heads In The Sand. Even Congressman Mica, who requested the GAO study, has sat on his hands, preferring to comment that the findings are "disturbing."

Memo to Mica: How "disturbed" are you going to be when a real terrorist, instead of some GS-14 investigator, gets through and kills a terminal full of passengers? Mica, you know that the TSA is a threat, and not doing anything about it makes you just as culpable as Hawley.

Even the head of that National Scandal, the 9/11 Commission, Gov. Tom Kean, did his rendition of Captain Louie Renault, expressing shock! over something he's known for years:

"I'm appalled. I'm dismayed and, yes, to a degree, it -- it does surprise me because I thought the Department of Homeland Security was making some progress on this. And, evidently, they're not..."

What's appalling is the blatant stupidity the 9/11 Commission represented. Mr. Kean, you, sir, are either incompetent or dishonest, or perhaps you've been off in a far-away land contemplating your navel for the past four years. In light of all the failures of the TSA, including this latest one, there isn't any way a person with the access to the data Kean has could ever honestly make a statement like that. Another political coward.

TSA: Clueless In San Diego. And In The Rest of The Nation, Too. The real situation was summed up last week after a TSA-induced security breach at San Diego. (This in addition to more TSA failures at DCA and at Tulsa, by the way.) A TSA official commented regarding the SAN failure:

"I don't know what else they can do, searching bags, using dogs -- I don't know what else can be done..."

That, friends, sums up exactly why the TSA is a failure. Unfortunately, we can assume the terrorists do know what else they can get done.




























February 2004

"Dominate. Intimidate. Control."
The sorry record of the Transportation Security Administration
James Bovard

When 9/11 exposed the holes in American airport and airline security, the Bush administration and Congress responded with the usual Washington panacea: a new federal agency. Congress quickly deluged the new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) with billions of dollars to hire an army of over 50,000 federal agents to screen airport passengers and baggage.

But before the agency was even a year old, it was clear that it had "become a monster," to quote the chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee, John Mica (R-Fla.). Arrogant, abusive, incompetent, and expensive, the TSA is, in the words of the House Appropriations Committee, "seemingly unable to make crisp decisions...unable to work cooperatively with the nation痴 airports; and unable to take advantage of the multitude of security-improving and labor-saving technologies available."

The attacks of September 11, 2001, changed many things, but they did not make the federal government more competent or effective, and they did not make it more willing to respect the dignity or liberty of its citizens. For proof, one need only examine the TSA痴 sorry record.

Jumpy Screeners

In June 2002 news leaked out that TSA airport screeners missed 24 percent of the weapons and imitation bombs planted in the government痴 undercover security tests. At some major airports, screeners failed to detect potentially dangerous objects in half the tests. The results were worse than they first appeared, because the testers were ordered not to "artfully conceal" the deadly contraband and instead pack their luggage "consistent with how a typical passenger in air transportation might pack a bag." Although the tests seemed designed to see if screeners could catch terrorists with single-digit IQs, they still failed to find the weapons much of the time.

That does not mean TSA screeners don稚 find anything. Notable triumphs have included seizing a tiny pair of wire cutters from a Special Forces veteran who had been shot in the jaw in Afghanistan and needed the cutters to snip his jaw open if he started to choke; evacuating terminals in Los Angeles upon discovering that travelers were carrying such dangerous devices as a belt buckle or a tub of jam; and shutting down several concourses in St. Louis after a federal security screener spotted what appeared to be a "cutting tool" in a carry-on bag. After detecting the suspicious object, the St. Louis screener followed proper procedure: He fetched his supervisor to take a look at the frozen image on the video screen at the checkpoint. A few minutes later, the supervisor concluded that the bag was indeed suspicious and needed to be manually searched. But the passenger had long since retrieved it and headed to his or her flight. Hundreds of passengers were evacuated and up to 60 flights were delayed; despite many searches, the suspicious item was never found.

On January 15, 2003, the Tampa airport was evacuated after screeners discovered an abandoned briefcase that appeared to be packed with bombs. The ticketing level of the terminal was cleared, the roads outside were closed,
and the bomb squad arrived. An hour later, it was determined that the briefcase was a TSA dummy designed to test airport security. "We use these bags repeatedly, so the fact that the bag was in that area was not surprising," TSA Security Director Dario Compain told the St. Petersburg Times. "That it was unattended, that there was no one with it who knew its true nature and could stop the escalation of our action before it reached the evacuation stage, is what痴 troubling."

The TSA detains more than just packages. More than 1,000 people have been arrested at airport checkpoints since the feds took over security in February 2002. A regulation passed that month made it a federal crime to interfere with airport screening personnel. A single word can be sufficient to trigger an arrest.

Betsylew Miale-Gix, a 43-year-old personal injury lawyer and former world boomerang record holder, was stopped at a security checkpoint at Hartford痴 Bradley International Airport on June 30, 2002, and informed that she could not carry her boomerangs onto the plane. The boomerangs weighed less than three ounces each and were fragile -- the type of item that is routinely crushed if sent as checked luggage. Miale-Gix had flown many times after 9/11 and had never encountered any objections to her boomerangs. They wouldn稚 be much use as weapons, after all; as one of her fellow boomerang enthusiasts commented, throwing a competitive boomerang at someone is "like throwing a first-class letter."

The state trooper who banned the boomerangs from the flight refused to listen to Miale-Gix痴 explanation, and she swore at him as she was departing the screening area. She was quickly arrested, handcuffed, charged with breach of the peace, and compelled to pay $500 for bail. TSA spokeswoman Deirdre O担ullivan told The New York Times that although boomerangs are not on the official list of prohibited carry-on items, "the screeners have the discretion to decide whether or not that item could be used as a weapon."

Travelers who assert their legal rights can find themselves bounced. Della Maricich was banned from a Portland-to-Seattle flight on May 1, 2002, after she asked an airport screener to keep her purse where she could see it while he searched it. (Many airport screeners have been accused of theft since the new search procedures were introduced.) The screener refused, and Maricich demanded to speak to his supervisor. A National Guardsman arrived on the scene a few minutes later and, Maricich later told The Wall Street Journal, "He told me that because I had disrupted the line by calling for a supervisor, I would not be allowed to fly out of PDX that day. He told me that I was a troublemaker and I was the only one who had ever complained."

On August 2, 2002, a screener at Hartford痴 Bradley International Airport poked through the wallet of Fred Hubbell, an 80-year-old World War II combat veteran who had already undergone two full searches in that airport that morning. "What do you expect to find in there, a rifle?" the exasperated Hubbell asked. He was then arrested for "causing a public disturbance" and fined $78. Dana Cosgrove, the TSA airport security chief, later justified the arrest on the grounds that "all that the people around him in the waiting room heard was the word rifle."

The TSA flaunts its power to bar people from flights. A group of 20 high school students and Catholic priests and nuns, members of Peace Action Milwaukee, were detained at Milwaukee痴 airport on April 19, 2002, after some of their names turned up on a "No Fly Watch List" issued by the federal government. According to one member of the group, a sheriff痴 deputy told her, "You池e probably being stopped because you are a peace group and you池e protesting against your country." Many of the travelers missed their flights and had to fly the following day. Yet Sgt. Chuck Coughlin of the Milwaukee sheriff痴 department insisted, "Although it was time-consuming, and although they were flight-delayed, the system actually worked."

The TSA痴 no-fly lists are often poor sources of information. Many travelers are repeatedly stopped erroneously and taken aside for intensive questioning, regardless of how many times they have previously proved that they are not a threat to national security. As David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told the Financial Times, "Nobody wants to accept responsibility for the maintenance of the [no-fly] list, and nobody wants to claim the authority to remove a name." Now the TSA, at Congress痴 behest, is creating the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II), which will assign a "threat level" to every person who flies within the United States. The TSA has provided almost no information on how the system will operate, although the government has indicated that it could sweep up a vast amount of personal information on each traveler -- including credit history, financial and transaction records, Internet usage, and legal records (including speeding and parking tickets).

In January 2003 the TSA revealed a new regulation allowing it to suspend pilot licenses based on unproven suspicions that the pilot might pose a security risk. Those who lose their livelihoods as a result of such edicts will not necessarily be permitted to see the evidence against them. The TSA did not seek comments from the public before announcing its new rule, which fails even to define "security risk." Phil Boyer, president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, protested that the TSA was being "the cop, prosecutor, judge, jury and appeals court....Clearly, this is a violation of basic constitutional rights." But agency spokesman Brian Turmail dismissed the concerns: "The bottom line is: If you池e not a terrorist, you don稚 need to worry about this."

Crazy Cops

The TSA has proven inept in the air as well as on the ground. It was determined to expand the number of air marshals quickly from a few hundred to more than 6,000. When most of the applicants failed the marksmanship test, the agency solved that problem by dropping the marksmanship test for new applicants. (The ability to shoot accurately in a plane cabin is widely considered a crucial part of a marshal痴 job.) Some would-be marshals were hired even after they repeatedly shot flight attendants in mock hijack response exercises.

USA Today痴 Blake Morrison noted a report that "one marshal was suspended after he left his gun in a lavatory aboard a United Airlines flight from Washington to Las Vegas in December. A passenger discovered the weapon." Another air marshal left his pistol on a Northwest flight from Detroit to Indianapolis; a cleaning crew discovered the weapon. Morrison noted: "At least 250 federal air marshals have left the top-secret program, and documents obtained by USA Today suggest officials are struggling to handle what two managers call a flood of resignations."

The Transportation Department responded to the USA Today exposé by sending Secretary Norman Mineta to an air marshal training facility, where he witnessed a training exercise in which marshals shot a would-be hijacker. Afterward Mineta commented, "I not only saw a remarkable demonstration of skill and marksmanship, but a degree of professionalism we are instilling throughout our aviation security system."

Eight days later, on August 31, 2002, Delta Flight 442 was proceeding from Atlanta to Philadelphia with 183 people on board when a disheveled passenger began rummaging in the overhead bin. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the trouble began when the man "made inappropriate comments to a female passenger a few rows behind him." Two plainclothes air marshals jumped up and tackled the guy, shoving him first to the back of the plane and then dragging him to the first class area.

Then the trip got interesting. One of the marshals returned to the front of the coach section, drew his Glock semiautomatic pistol, and started screaming and pointing his gun at passengers. Philadelphia Judge James Lineberger, a passenger on the flight, later told the Associated Press, "I assumed at that moment that there was going to be some sort of gun battle....There were individuals looking to see what they were pointing at, and [the air marshals] were yelling, 賎et down, get out -- get your head out of the aisle.・瘢雹quot; In a formal complaint to the TSA, Lineberger declared that "there was no apparent reason for holding all the passengers of the plane at gunpoint, and no explanation was given."

Lineberger was sitting diagonally across from the initial target of the marshals, yet did not notice any problem on the flight until the marshals went ballistic. Susan Johnson, a social worker from Mobile, Alabama, was also unaware of any disturbance until the air marshals seized the man. "It never made sense," she told the Inquirer. "This guy was not any physical threat that we could see. Maybe he said some things to them that made them concerned. He just appeared to us unstable, emotionally." According to Becky Johnson, a reporter who wrote a column about the episode for her Waynesville, North Carolina, newspaper, "They never, ever said who they were, that they were air marshals or whoever."

After the flight landed, the marshals nailed another terrorist suspect: a physician and retired U.S. Army major named Robert Rajcoomar. He was handcuffed and taken into custody because, as TSA spokesman David Steigman later explained it, he "had been observing too closely."


Rajcoomar had been sitting in first class quietly reading and drinking a beer until the marshals dumped the allegedly unruly passenger from coach class into the adjacent seat. Rajcoomar told the Inquirer: "One [marshal] sat on
the guy....he was groaning, and the more he groaned, the more they twisted the handcuffs." Rajcoomar asked the stewardess for permission to move to another seat in first class; she told him to take one of the seats the marshals
had vacated.

When the plane landed, Rajcoomar recalled, "One of these marshals came down to me and said, 践ead down, hands over your head!・瘢雹They pushed my head down, told me to bend down." Rajcoomar said one of the marshals told him, "We didn稚 like the way you looked" and "We didn稚 like the way you looked at us." He was locked up in a filthy cell for three hours before being released without charges. His wife was left to roam the Philadelphia airport, not knowing what had happened to her husband.

And the person who initially set off the marshals? He was questioned after the plane landed, but a U.S. attorney decided not to file charges.

The air marshal who brandished his weapon had twice applied to be a cop in Philadelphia but failed the police department痴 psychological tests. He had also been rejected in an attempt to become a prison guard. When he threatened scores of coach passengers, he had received only two weeks of training.

What escalates this episode beyond a mere bizarre anecdote is the fact that the TSA hailed these marshals as models. Several days after the incident, Thomas Quinn,
the national director of the air marshal program, asserted, "The federal air marshals did a very good job. They did exactly as they池e trained to do." And TSA spokesman Robert Johnson, speaking to the Associated Press, blamed the passengers for being held at gunpoint: "If people would have stayed in their seats and heeded those warnings, that would not have happened. It痴 our opinion that it was done by the book."

Not Just Birth Pangs

Dallas芳ort Worth International Airport is home to 1,800 TSA screeners. At 1:50 p.m. on January 9, 2003, one of them swabbed the outside of a passenger痴 laptop bag to check for explosives. The screener returned the bag to the pas-senger, who proceeded to his plane. Three minutes later, the screener noticed that the explosive trace detection machine indicated a positive alert for Semtex, a plastic explosive, from the laptop. The screeners then spent three more minutes checking the machine to confirm the accuracy of the positive alert before they informed a TSA supervisor of the problem. The supervisor and screeners then left the checkpoint to walk around and see if they could find the man suspected of having plastic explosives in his laptop. (The explosive detection test is notorious for false positives.)

The group searched four airport departure gates and, after they could not find the man, returned to the checkpoint to retest the machine. More than half an hour after the positive alert for plastic explosives occurred, the TSA notified an airport policeman standing 15 feet from the checkpoint of the problem. Orders were quickly given to empty the terminal. Almost an hour after the laptop owner passed through the checkpoint, his description was circulated through the airport.

Three terminals at the nation痴 third-largest airport were closed for almost two hours. Thousands of people were evacuated from the airport and at least 200 flights delayed. Hundreds of passengers already on planes waiting for takeoff were obliged to deplane. Forty other airports were affected.

Because the Dallas芳ort Worth airport was not blown up that afternoon, the TSA declared victory. Agency spokesman Ed Martelle told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "We caught him, but we lost him. But what he couldn稚 do was harm anyone. The system worked." The TSA refused to name either the manufacturer of the machine that gave the alert or the screener; as spokesman Brian Doyle explained, "There are privacy issues involved here." After prying into tens of millions of Americans・瘢雹bags, the agency suddenly developed respect for privacy -- for itself and its corporate suppliers.

Although the TSA promised to issue a full report on the incident, it reneged, announcing a few weeks later that national security concerns prevented it from releasing any more details of the debacle. The TSA also declared that "details about future breaches also would be kept secret because of national security," The Dallas Morning News reported. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram added: "Too much information was made public about the breach, local TSA officials have been told. Further disclosures by airport officials or anyone else privy to the final report could result in fines and/or jail time."

While some people may retain hope that the preceding fiascoes are merely birth pangs, contrary evidence continues to cascade in:

・瘢雹On February 6, 2003, according to Airport Security Report, San Francisco International Airport was disrupted after a Taiwanese woman with two carry-on bags "sprinted through an unmanned security checkpoint at 10:46 a.m. It wasn稚 until 1 p.m. that TSA officials evacuated the terminal." TSA agents looked for the woman, concluded she was "lost in the crowd," and then spent time reviewing the videotape of the security checkpoint before ordering an evacuation and rescreening.

・瘢雹On March 8, 2003, a terminal at the Hartford, Connecticut, airport was evacuated after a screener was caught taking a late afternoon nap by an X-ray machine.

・瘢雹On March 11, 2003, according to Airport Security Report, TSA officials shut down the Birmingham, Alabama, international airport after "four people were discovered lurking on the airport tarmac. They fled on foot when officers questioned them about their badges identifying them as airport security workers." Dozens of flights were delayed and hundreds of people were evacuated before it was learned that the four suspicious individuals were TSA officials testing airport security.

・瘢雹On March 21, 2003, Cleveland Hopkins International Airport was placed under a 40-minute lockdown, prohibiting all passenger entries or exits and all plane departures. TSA agents hit the alarm when they spotted a little toy gun on a child痴 belt buckle in a carry-on bag.
The TSA confiscated the child痴 belt buckle. Spokesman
Rick DeChant announced, "Had Mom or Dad helped this kid pack, this [airport lockdown] could have been avoided."

・瘢雹On April 3, 2003, a passenger at Baltimore-Washington International airport refused to be rescreened after the metal detector signaled an alarm from her first pass. Instead, she walked on to her flight. Although two concourses were closed for an hour, the woman was never apprehended.

・瘢雹In May 2003 Americans learned that the TSA had fired scores of screeners who had been on the job for several months in Los Angeles and New York after finding that they had criminal records. The Los Angeles Times reported that the agency "lost background questionnaires, failed to run some employee fingerprints through a national crime database and was unable to complete background checks." The Times noted that congressmen began investigating the TSA痴 "background check process after reports that a screener at Kennedy airport was arrested earlier this year for allegedly stealing $6,000 from a passenger." At Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., the agency failed to complete background checks on more than a third of the 600 screeners. One employee complained: "It defeats the purpose of what you are here for. It痴 a 200-plus [person] security breach." Nationwide, more than 20,000 TSA screeners were on the job even though the government had not completed background checks on them.

One reason for the federal takeover of airport security, you may recall, is that private companies had hired screeners of dubious character and poor trustworthiness.

On March 10, 2003, a TSA press release proudly announced, "The Transportation Security Administration has intercepted more than 4.8 million prohibited items at passenger security checkpoints in its first year, contributing to the security of the traveling public and the nation痴 429 commercial airports." Agency chief James Loy bragged that "those statistics are strong testimony to the professionalism and attention to detail of our highly trained security screeners." A few weeks later, he upped the ante, informing the House Appropriations Committee: "We have identified, intercepted, and therefore kept off aircraft more than 4.8 million dangerous items."

And so all the fingernail clippers and cigar cutters seized since 9/11 transmogrified into proof that the federal government is protecting people better than ever. The press release did not mention that the checkpoint seizures included frying pans, dumbbell sets, horseshoes, toy robots, and an unknown but huge number of small pointy objects.

Security as Theater

Here痴 a more sobering measure of the agency痴 effectiveness: The New York Daily News celebrated the first anniversary of 9/11 by sending two reporters around the country, taking 14 flights on six airlines, and passing through 11 major airports during Labor Day weekend 2002. The reporters carried box cutters, razors, knives, and pepper spray in their luggage. They took their contraband through the checkpoints at all four of the airports used by the hijackers on 9/11. "Not a single airport security checkpoint spotted or confiscated any of the dangerous items, all of which have been banned from airports and planes by federal authorities," the paper revealed. The reporters were selected for hand searches several times, but even then nothing was found. There were more security personnel and searches than a year before, "but it amounted to nothing more than a big show."

The TSA blamed the failures on its prehistory, commenting that the Daily News・瘢雹findings "underscore the failures of an aviation security system inherited by the federal government last fall." A spokesman for Department of Transportation Secretary Mineta, Leonard Alcivar, greeted the findings with a spurt of positive thinking: "The reality is Americans have never had a higher level of security in the history of aviation."

There was less room for positive thinking a year later, when college student Nathaniel Heatwole pulled a similar stunt, planting box cutters and fake bombs on six different planes to probe the gaps in security. In September 2003 he sent the TSA an e-mail message explaining what he had done, in the hope of sparking improvements in the system. Instead he was brought up on charges and now faces up to 10 years in jail.

There is no series of tricks or reforms that will guarantee safe air travel. But a first step toward better security is to recognize the facades the feds have created. The TSA should no longer be permitted to burden travelers or taxpayers. The armies of federal agents occupying American airports should be disbanded. In the meantime, airports and airlines must not be shielded from liability if their negligence results in carnage. The specter of devastating liability lawsuits could produce more innovations and sounder security policies than the incentives produced by Washington political circuses.

Federal intelligence agencies should do a better job of notifying airports and airlines of specific current threats. Resources should be focused on determining actual threats, rather than treating every grandmother and toddler as a potential hijacker. And it would be helpful to amend U.S. foreign policy to reduce the number of foreigners willing to kill themselves to slaughter Americans.

In the wake of 9/11, the federal mentality toward air travelers is best summarized by the motto posted at the headquarters of the TSA air marshal training center: "Dominate. Intimidate. Control." But it takes more than browbeating average Americans to make air travel safe.


James Bovard is the author of Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), from which this article is adapted.

TSA Steals Cigars

Oooo am I mad!  Maybe someone from the TSA saw my rant two weeks ago on inconsistant security standards and decided to get even.

During my regular Monday commute from Seattle to San Jose via Alaska Airlines flight 344, someone stole a portable cigar case from my checked bag.  The case, a gift from my wife, was carrying 2 Cohiba Robusto's and 2 Hemmingway Short Stories - about $100 worth of smokes.

Interestingly enough, I know that the TSA (motto:  “Respecting Privacy, Preserving Freedoms“) opened up the bag - they put a blue tie on the zipper and enclosed a “Notifcation of Baggage Inspection” leaflet.  Which reads:

“During the inspection, your bag and its contents may have been searched for prohibited items.”  I wonder if someone thought the Cohiba's were Cuban and decided to play Customs Inspector.  Then I read, “At the completion of the inspection, the contents were returned to your bag, which was resealed.”  NOT!

The leaflet gives a toll-free number, 866-289-9673 for the TSE Consumer Response Center.  Well, it's just a recording telling you to go to the web site (www.tsa.gov) to download a claim form.  You can leave a message with your address though.  Which I did.  The page to make a claim directs me to call the Consumer Response Center, which in turn directs me to the web site.  Ugh.  The only privacy being protected is that of the thief's.

I'm thinking that while my cigars were being lifted, the TSA (remember our motto - “Respecting Privacy, Preserving Freedoms“) was making me wait 15 minutes in a line, then suffer the indignity of making me undress by having me take off my shoes, jacket and unpack my briefcase.

Another page indicates that valuables shouldn't be in checked baggage.  They think the airlines are to blame however; “The air carriers retain possession of your checked baggage for the entire trip with the exception of a short period of time while it is screened by the TSA.”

Of course, it's during that “short period” where my bag actually gets opened up by TSA folks.  How else would someone know the cigars are in there?  It's not like they show up on a X-ray and a baggage handler goes - “hey, let's nab that one.”

FYI, if I felt that the TSA was truly helping America be a safer place, I'd be more understanding.

posted on Monday, April 05, 2004 10:42 AM

















US

9/11 Families Blast TSA for Excessive Secrecy, Abuse of Power
Author: 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism
Published on Mar 14, 2006, 07:14

Charging the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) with wrongfully denying them access to documents once in the public domain, the 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism today called on Congress to force TSA to change its practices on classifying materials as "Sensitive Security Information" (SSI).

"Why has TSA provided documents to attorneys for an admitted terrorist, Zacarias Moussaoui, but denied them to us?" asked Julie Sweeney Roth of Yarmouthport, Mass., whose husband, Brian Sweeney, was a passenger on United flight 175. "Whose side is TSA on?"

"The truth is our most powerful weapon in the war on terrorism," said Alice Hoglan of Los Gatos, California, mother of Mark Bingham, one of the United flight 93 passengers who charged the hijackers and prevented the airplane from being crashed into either the Capitol or the White House. Contending that TSA would be fulfilling its responsibility to protect the nation's transportation system by releasing the information the families are requesting, Hoglan said, "It was because my son and his fellow passengers learned the truth about the hijackers' intentions that they were able to save countless lives as their final, brave act. That is why I am outraged that TSA is trying to hide the truth and making Americans less safe."

"SSI should have a different acronym -- CYA," said Dr. Stephen Alderman of Bedford, N.Y., whose son, Peter Alderman, died at the World Trade Center. "The materials we're requesting deal with pre-9/11 security procedures that have changed, making them of no use to would-be terrorists. Some aired on national television and were published in newspapers. TSA's only conceivable motive is avoiding embarrassment or protecting the airlines."

Sweeney Roth, Dr. Alderman, and his wife, Elizabeth, are among a group of 9/11 family members meeting with members of Congress today as part of an effort to educate U.S. senators and representatives about the problems at TSA and to change TSA's SSI practices.

Congress created the SSI designation to enable TSA to prevent the release of information that the agency determines presents a threat to the nation's transportation system. The 9/11 Families made clear that they are not challenging TSA's right to withhold information that could present a genuine security threat. Instead, they charged that TSA is abusing its authority by stamping as SSI and keeping secret a host of materials that clearly pose no threat whatsoever -- including many documents once openly available but now shrouded in secrecy.

TSA's classification of these documents and its insistence that its SSI decisions are essentially unreviewable brazenly violate the intent of Congress, the families charged. They cited a June 2005 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, blasting TSA for its failure to implement adequate policies, guidance, procedures, internal controls and training regarding the SSI process. Though TSA claims to have subsequently set in place a structure for reviewing SSI, the agency has still failed to offer any guidelines by which it trains its employees to determine what is and is not SSI, despite many congressional requests.

The 9/11 Families charged that many of TSA's SSI classifications "are so absurd, they turn real life into satire." For example:

* When the videotape showing hijackers passing through security at Washington Dulles airport on 9/11 was aired on NBC, TSA issued a two-line press release boasting that it "strongly validates the dramatic changes that TSA has made in the world of aviation security." Now, TSA has classified the tape as SSI. Yet TSA itself released a similar videotape showing lead hijacker Mohammed Atta passing through security at the airport in Portland, Maine, on 9/11.

* TSA has taken material that has long been in the public domain -- including information published in the Congressional Record and major newspapers -- and labeled it SSI.

* TSA has classified as SSI the five Federal Aviation Administration warnings to the airlines issued in the months before 9/11, despite the fact that they were quoted in the 9/11 Commission's report and discussed in public testimony.

The 9/11 Families also noted that TSA's policies resulted in the dismissal of charges against a baggage handler, who had been caught stealing from a passenger's luggage, because TSA labeled incriminating materials as SSI and refused to turn them over to the Court.

The 9/11 Families are urging Congress to compel TSA to fulfill the families' requests for access to pre-9/11 documents and materials that were once publicly available. They noted that a House Appropriations Subcommittee wrote last year that it "expects the Department to try to release as much, not as little, information to the public as possible" and that U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said from the bench that TSA's conduct in reviewing SSI "is cruel and inhuman to the people involved."

Some of the 9/11 Families are plaintiffs in litigation against the airlines and are seeking documents withheld by TSA, but others who are not are joining the effort to educate Congress about TSA's abuse of its authority to keep information secret. "This is a matter of principle," said Hoglan, who settled with the Victims' Compensation Fund and thus cannot sue the airlines. "It's about our right to know the truth about why our loved ones were killed. It's about protecting our democracy and our system of checks and balances."

The 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism represents 6,161 survivors and family members of those who died in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The 9/11 Families are seeking to hold al Qaeda's financiers accountable for their central role in these atrocities and to make America safer by cutting off the financial pipeline fueling global terrorism.

© Copyright 2006 YubaNet.com




























Security Screener at JFK Airport Charged with Stealing $80,000 from Checked Bag Posted by: Admin 
TSA ScreenersTSA spokeswoman Ann Davis: "TSA has a zero-tolerance policy for theft in the workplace."

A security employee at John F. Kennedy International Airport was charged Thursday with stealing $80,000 in cash from a checked suitcase headed for Pakistan, the Queens district attorney's office said.

The Transportation Security Administration screener, Frank Ulerio, Jr., 23, allegedly stole the money when he was inspecting checked luggage on Oct. 7 in a Pakistan International Airlines area at the airport. Prosecutors said he stole the cash from the suitcase of a 45-year-old passenger from Astoria, Queens who was flying to Pakistan.

...

When confronted, Ulerio admitted stealing $60,000 and said he used some of it to pay off a gambling debt. Police recovered $18,000 when he was arrested at work Wednesday.