Also from the article:
She relented. "I said, 'I just want to go home. Do your stupid pat-down and let me out of here.' "
But then, she said, she got the pat-down deluxe. "The agent comes over and starts on my left side. Under my arm, over my shoulder, down the side of my body to my waist, around my waistline, and then she comes up to my bra strap in the back and goes across to my right side, under the armpit, over the shoulders, and then she comes around front and touches me right between my breasts, and then follows the edge of my bra cups around both breasts.
"I was like, 'Whoa! What are you doing?' and I backed up. The supervisor was right there and he says, 'You're not allowing the screening to happen.' And I said, 'You're kidding me. You can't be touching me between my breasts.' "
The supervisor summoned the police. Four officers promptly arrived on the scene. "Real cops - guns, clubs, the whole nine yards, all for me, this big security threat," Ms. Gaynier said.
She does concede, "I pitched quite a fit" at the intervention. To make a long story short, she did not make her flight. The police escorted her from the gate area.
I don't see how anyone, regardless of their employer, can read this and not be enraged. A woman is genuinely feeling she is being violated, and the cops are summoned to accuse
her of being the problem. And oh, BTW, the article later says she was secondaried the next day when she attempted to fly again, probably out of retaliation.
How does TSA come up with these policies? The Russian incident apparently was enabled by bribery; I've seen no indications the women were hiding explosives in their bras. It's seems strangely similar to TSA banning pen-knives because the 9/11 hijackers exploited the hijack-cooperation policy. There's a huge disconnect here. All indications are that if TSA finally realizes someone might hide explosives in a body cavity, they'll instute vaginal/anal searches. I'd really like to see the video of a one-on-one discussion between the innocent victims of this policy and the idiot administrators that created it.
America has to draw the line, here and now, to stop this crap from progressing. Screeners and pax alike. The more media attention the better. Otherwise it will keep going further. Just look at the progression from wandings to shoes to stripping to groping over the past 3 years.
I doubt any well-intentioned TSA screeners signed up to perform gropings/cavity-searches on pax, and I don't believe for a minute that pax knowingly consent to such invasive activity when they buy a ticket, regardless of the misguided claims of the quoted supervisor.