Thank you very much Bart. I shall copy and email your comments to my friends and family to make sure they know what to do next time they encounter this.

This should be handed to passengers as they go through checkpoints. Instead we have to find out about it from insiders like you on internet boards like this.

Thanks again for taking your time to post this.

I will make sure my family and friends have a copy of it as a reminder of the correct thing to do.

As an aside, even if a passenger were to complain about a comment, a lot of times the TSA bully will deny it altogether, or chalk it up to passenger misinterpretation. It's a lot easier to believe the TSA staff than some irritated passenger, so there needs to be a mechanism to record every bit of audio / video at the checkpoint, just like the dashboard cams on police cars.

Are all checkpoints adequately set up to record video and audio so that both TSA and passenger abuses are recorded? Note here I do admit that some passengers take it too far and abuse others as well as the TSA also, but that in the overall scheme of things, the TSA holds the upper hand and the real power to deny / detain abusive passengers, where as the passenger has no such powers.