Former LAX Baggage Handlers Accused Of Trafficking Cocaine

Another case of multiple breeches of TSA Security at LAX by unscreened employees.

https://consumerist.com/2016/04/05/f...cking-cocaine/

The security flaw is evident to anyone who takes just a moment to reflect on how TSA handles, or more correctly mis-handles, employee security. I have to ask myself, as others should be doing, just why TSA accepts this level of degraded security while using almost abusive screening practices with the people who are actually paying for TSA?

But... background checks!

This isn't news to any of us on TS&S with half a brain (which includes everyone except me...) .

You never hear a word from Neffy or anyone else in the TSA about this. You wonder how many TSA clerks are involved in drug trafficking at airports...

Let me assert up front that none of this has anything to do with civil aviation security. I will also assert that a baggage handler or TSA clerk would knowingly allow drugs through a checkpoint but not a terrorist bomb for these reasons:

1. Transit of drugs through an airport is not terrorism-related, so it's OK as a second income source
2. Druggies would never blow up an airplane in which they were transporting drugs worth multi-millions on the street.
3. The average TSA clerk's morals won't allow a bomb through their checkpoint, but drugs are OK.

As far as terrorism is concerned, drug trafficking doesn't matter, except that it is an embarrassment to the TSA that they will exact on passengers

I agree with all of your points, but I don't believe that a crooked TSO or baggage handler involved in smuggling drugs always inspects and tests each package of each shipment to make sure there are no nasty concealed surprises - something that could be a hazard to aviation safety.

Commenting about the highlighted statement above.

This has everything to do with commercial aviation security.

The ability to introduce any form of contraband to the sterile area demonstrates a critical weakness in security screening process that remains unaddressed by TSA. While I agree that illegal drugs are not a direct threat who is to say that supposed package of drugs isn't something that is a direct threat? The problem is that TSA's refusal to screen all airport workers leaves open the question of just what materials are being introduced and loaded on commercial aircraft. Drugs today bombs tomorrow.

I'm not saying that the ability to bypass security screening isn't a vulnerability. Perhaps drug trafficking through airports simply demonstrates the vulnerability. But, I think that's all it does....

If a druggie wants to get a quantity of drugs with a huge street value through airport security, all of the risk is on the druggie. If the civilian employee or TSA clerk getting the stuff through the checkpoint screws up, the druggie stands to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition to the lost revenue, the druggie probably has someone above him in the chain of command who will also be very upset. The druggie might lose a kneecap or worse.

So, my point is that the druggie is going to thoroughly vet the employee/clerk before entrusting them with a big mission. Similarly, the employee/clerk will be on the take and know exactly what they are being asked to do.

Further, the druggie needs flying airplanes in order to be able to conduct commerce. Both the druggie and helper want to be able to do this multiple times because they both profit.

I think that the only thing a bomb-smuggling mission has in common is the requirement to bypassing security screening. The people certainly won't be the same. Unless the bad guys appeal to radical ideology to recruit somebody, neither an airport employee nor a TSA clerk benefits from airplanes blowing up. In fact, if airplanes are grounded and an airport is being rebuilt, neither of these people have a job.

Politically, the TSA simply can't acknowledge that this vulnerability exists, let alone ask Congress for money to fix it. They can't ask for the money because of drug trafficking because, at least on paper, it's not their mission.

Right now, I think the bad guys believe that smuggling bombs around security screening in order to blow up airplanes is too tough. There are a lot more soft targets out there at airports and elsewhere.

I agree with you, I think there are much more vulnerable targets to tempt bad guys.

I'm suggesting that a crooked TSO/baggage handler is functioning as a courier. He assumes he is facilitating the movement of drugs, but he has no real way of vetting the drug dealer's credentials. The dealer could slip something much nastier to a TSO to bypass security and the TSO would probably be none the wiser - until something really really ugly happened.

Likely? Perhaps not, but I would argue it's much more likely than a pax getting the same nastiness past screening.

That's aside from the fact that no one can positively say that no TSO or baggage handler could or would ever go off the rails and deliberately engage in a terrorist act. That's a far bigger threat, given their unfettered access, than if a pax tries the same.

I wonder how the percentage of pax caught at the checkpoint or in the sterile with genuine threats and likely intent* compares to the percentage of TSOs caught smuggling what they assumed were drugs or guns into the sterile area.

* I don't include pax, including some LEs and at least one PHX supervisor and one DEN TSO, who show up with guns at the checkpoint. The threat is real, but one generally assumes their was no evil intent. There are zero acceptable excuses for a TSO smuggling contraband of any sort into the sterile area.

The point is that in cases like this no TSA employee has to be compromised. These guys were using employee entrances and we all know that they receive almost no screening when going through the employee access points. It's not the drugs that I am concerned about but the demonstrated security flaw. If an employee can introduce drugs then they could also introduce other types of contraband, some of which could go boom.

Another factor, in a deal like this the employee only loads the contraband on the airplane. What do they care if the airplane blows up halfway across the country? Their skin isn't on the flight.

So stop focusing on the drug trade and look at the security weakness that TSA knows about and allows to continue.

I don't think TSA gives 2 cents about security and the abuse that passengers are put through by TSA is truly Security Theater.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Decorated officers using their "official" status at airports
to bypass traditional checkpoints and smuggle drugs? I will
simply not believe this.

Read up on Minetta Walters, former BDO at BUF.

"I don't think TSA gives 2 cents about security and the abuse that passengers are put through by TSA is truly Security Theater."


Don't kid yourself. They take airport "Security" very seriously because it makes committing crimes easier for them.

TSA's security amounts to locking the front door, the door passengers use, while leaving the employees door, the back door, standing wide opening. If that is TSA being very serious about security then TSA has failed the citizens of this country.

I'll leave off at that, anyone who has been here for a couple of days knows my position on the other aspects of TSA and its employees.