The TSA blows it again!
 

Aboard Continental Airlines flight 246

Those of you who regularly read this space know that I have absolutely no use for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) whatsoever, and that my overall take on this sad agency is that it is nothing more than a federal jobs program and has absolutely nothing to do with airport security. From the widely publicized reports that caught the TSA squandering five figures in caviar at an awards banquet to the huge piles of citizens’ cash that it blew on a “retreat” at a golf resort to the almost nonstop reports of TSA screeners “missing” prohibited items, this ship of fools is under full sail and nothing seems to be able to stop it…for example--congress, the federal courts or anything short of a full scale taxpayer revolt.

To be fair, there’s a lot wrong with the TSA that is wrong because it’s a governmental agency. Governmental agencies are almost universally wasteful and incompetent and employ career featherbedders whose only goal is to not get fired and collect their pension after three decades of not getting fired. Been to the DMV lately? The federal government is the worst offender as the rules of civil service make it almost impossible to can a career bureaucrat unless there is something done that is so patently outrageous that there’s just no justification to keep that employee around any longer. In other words, almost exactly like a labor union.

But this story is even more blatant than most that come out about the TSA. By now you have probably heard about the traveler that went through security at Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport earlier this week who was detained for 25 minutes. His offense was a political protest that revolved around the TSA’s newest brainstorm: Requiring toiletries in a quart-sized plastic baggie. This traveler, who has been contacted by the Associated Press for an interview, wrote the words “Kip Hawley is an Idiot” on the baggie with a black marker. (Kip Hawley is the TSA boss in Washington, D.C). The screener saw this and told him that this was a threat and the traveler made the mistake of bringing up the first amendment to the United States Constitution.

(First mistake: Never bring up the bill of rights to an out of control governmental agency.)

The screener allegedly pointed out to the ticketing area and said “Out there you have rights,” then pointed inside the screening checkpoint and added, “In here you don’t.” The traveler then asked when the TSA suspended the constitution, that he had apparently missed the news report.

(Second mistake: Never challenge an employee of an out of control governmental agency a second time.)

The screener called over a supervisor who continued the harassment, then called a Milwaukee police officer who told the traveler that he was being detained for investigation. This has yet to shake out, but this episode would tend to paint the TSA as an agency that is going to make damn sure we’re secure by unilaterally suspending the protections afforded us in one of the two most basic founding documents this country has. Well, today in Denver, they swung the other way.

I was passing through security at Denver International Airport, the tent-like structure that exists as a permanent memorial to Federico Pena and the amount of money he wasted while in office. This airport has two screening checkpoints in the center of the main terminal, I was in the northern end. This checkpoint has seven or eight individual screening lanes, I was in the second farthest to the right, where the elite status travelers and first class passengers get screened. There was a very long line, not unusual for Denver, so I availed myself of the first class lane and got into a queue line of maybe 10 or 15 people to go through the X-ray process.

So far, so good, right? Now in walks a man looking fairly businessman like, with a dark-yellowish mustard colored sport coat and dress pants. He was a dark complected white guy (think George Hamilton or Jerry Orbach), facially looked kind of like a cross between Dan Hedaya and Jerry Orbach, and somewhere between 50 or 60 years old. He had straight black hair, graying at the temples. He muscled his way to the front of our line, irritating those of us who had been standing in it. After several other passengers gave hi the stink-eye, I piped up and said “The line starts behind us, chief.” He said “I’m an employee, sir” and finished muscling his way to the front of the line and grabbed a plastic bin.

By this time there’s at least four other travelers besides myself checking this fool out and openly discussing if he’s an employee why he has no picture ID on him like every other employee in the airport. This discussion was cut short when we all watched him place a folded POCKET KNIFE with his pocket change and whatever else he had that was metal into the plastic bin and carefully fold his sport coat and place it on top of the knife to conceal it. He sends the whole thing through the X-ray machine and the other passengers and I were just agog. Did we REALLY just see what we all saw??

We get through the walk through metal detector and there is a TSA screener on the other side that is swabbing the large broadcast television camera that I travel with. I tell him that I observed something that concerned me and told him that I wanted to tell him what I saw. He said “go ahead” and kept swabbing the Ikegami. I explained what I saw and kind of expected him to at least stop what he was doing and pay a hell of a lot more attention. At this point the two travelers that were directly in front of me and also saw this confirmed what I was witnessed. Instead, he looked up and said “That may have been some kind of a test or something, I don’t know,” finished with my camera and wished me a good flight.

THAT’S IT??!? Man, it’s a damn good thing he didn’t try to bring WATER through the checkpoint, there might have been some REAL trouble!

Now let’s get back to my assertion that the TSA is nothing more than a jobs program. While I realize that there are a double handful of TSA employees that have law enforcement, corporate security or investigative backgrounds, by and large the majority of their screener workforce are people who were either the ineffective screeners that allowed 9-11 to happen who were rehired as governmental screeners after an outcry over their being replaced with people who hadn’t allowed that to happen, or people who are otherwise unemployable and are in this for the government paycheck. I have a relative who retired as a police lieutenant who has gotten into vocal arguments with the TSA screeners pointing out things that they missed right in front of him. I have watched as they body search a Roman Catholic nun, do a pat down on a 5 year old girl, and recently as they forced us to divest ourselves of water, lest we bring down a jumbo jet with the same stuff that three quarters of our own bodies are comprised of. I have videotape that I took one day when I decided to turn my camera on while at the screening station at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, and got four TSA employees standing around at the screening checkpoint in uniform, on duty, complaining about their schedules. (Anyone wonder why the TSA also stands for “Thousands Standing Around”?) I stand by my accusation that the TSA is not about security in any form, it’s just a federal jobs program the likes of such we have not seen since the Works Project Administration under President Roosevelt that heralded the beginning of the welfare state in America.

Ever since 9-11 we have been exhorted by the talking heads on the television to report anything that looks suspicious. I tell a TSA screener at the airport that I just saw a guy put a prohibited weapon through the security checkpoint and he mumbles that it may have been a test? We recall the recent “terminal dumps” where the TSA has ordered everyone in an airport evacuated and re-screened because someone ran through without taking their shoes off for the TSA to check for explosives using an X-ray machine that the TSA openly admits will not detect explosives, and a screener is told about a weapon in the sterile area (which was confirmed to him on the spot by an elderly couple that was directly in front of me) and he dismisses it as a “test”??

Flabbergasted, I took my stuff and got onto the underground train that whisks you to one of the three terminal buildings at Denver. The couple that was in front of me in line was waiting for the train as well and we further discussed what we had seen, not only the guy with the knife but also the screener and his lack of concern. I got to the terminal building and decided to call the Denver police, figuring that if the TSA didn’t care, at least Law Enforcement would be interested in this.

Wrong again, Buckwheat.

I lifted one of the white courtesy phones and dialed 4211, only to find that this phone was dead. I found another one, dialed the in house emergency number again and the voice said “Denver Police, DIA”. I went through my story to the police employee (I could not tell if it was a dispatcher or a sworn officer) and was told “I have an officer down there, I’ll let him know” and thanked me for my call. No “what did he look like”, no “what is your name”, no “where are you so we can have an officer talk to you about this”. The Denver police cared only slightly more than the TSA.

There’s going to be another terror attack on an American airliner and more Americans will get hurt. I say hurt and not killed because I have absolute faith that the next time something like 9-11 is attempted, the actor or actors carrying this out will find themselves beaten to death in front of the cockpit door by passengers like myself and many of you reading this who aren’t going to tolerate their crap for more than 15 seconds. The problem here is that it will take the passengers of an airplane in a United 93-like uprising because the TSA is doing what some posters on the internet’s frequent flyer blog “Flyertalk” (www.flyertalk.com) refer to as “Kabuki Security”. The TSA is so damned busy making sure we take off our shoes and saving us from a bottled death sentence 16.9 ounces at a time that they forget to make a big deal out of actual weapons in the checkpoint. I don’t know what to think of the room-temperature reaction from the Denver Police Department, because they absolutely know better.

Congressmen get complaints and send back form letters to their constituents mentioning something about national security and take no action to reel the TSA in and make them start actually providing security instead of jobs to ne’er-do-wells. Do we really have to rehash the stories of convicted criminals that “somehow” got by the “extensive background checks” we were promised and were working as screeners? Do we have to rehash the firearms and bombs that got by the TSA at Newark’s Liberty International Airport?

When the newest asinine security measures banning liquids, creams and gels was announced, the television networks descended upon their local airports and showed shot after shot of soccer moms saying “Oh, ANYTHING for security!” as a way to justify the TSA’s abuse of passengers and their wasting of almost $6 billion dollars this year alone. What’s going to be really funny is the next time a terror attack hits the skies, we’ll see more teary-eyed Americans saying “I don’t understand how this could happen” just like they did after 10:00AM on September 11, 2001. Yet we do nothing about the agency that isn’t making us secure. To quote the immortal Walt Kelley’s “Pogo” comic strip character, we have met the enemy, and he is us.

Have a good flight.

Another story that needs airing by the press.

Well written post, VP. Two points: (1) a pocketknife, though a prohibited item (as is water), is not a credible weapon to bring down a plane, so I am not as concerned about it; (2) I carry a "pocketknife" each time I travel, however, the knife portion has been removed so it is legal. It sounds like they did not, however, check to see about this one. In addition, my "pocketknife" has been "found" about 20% of the time, so TSA is missing it quite often. Even the 20% of the time that it is found I am not sure that it is what triggers the bag search.

Point taken on the destructive force of the pocketknife, although we do need to rememer that 9-11 happened with boxcutters.

My problem wasn't with the pocketknife per se either, but with the TSA screener's don't care attitude toward the situation when specifically bought to his attention. Either they are about security or they aren't. That is what should frighten all of us.

Thanks for your thoughts.

--PP

My thoughts as well; it wasn't that the pocketknife was a credible threat, but that the TSA has its panties completely in a collective wad about WATER and contact lens solution, and cream cheese, and jelly donuts... yet nonchalantly let a knife pass through without even a check.

I don't disagree with you about the TSA attitude towards this at all. As for the boxcutters (if they were truly involved), today those boxcutters would not take down a plane. There has been a paradigm shift in our attitude towards hijackers and we also have reinforced cockpit doors.

I'd read this thread last night and coming to work this a.m. I heard one of those radio spots that encourage people to keep their eyes open for suspicious behavior: "If you see something, say something." Well, you did just what is being encouraged and you got blown off. Just wonderful. DHA/TSA doesn't know their *** from a hole in the ground.

The box cutters used on 9/11/2001 were absolutely legal to carry on board at that time. There is no evidence to suggest that the screeners on duty then were to blame for any of the incidents.

Wow, a great read and as a fellow business traveller concerning as well.
I have frequently been through security, actually whisked through because the screeners were either talking about how they got their nails done or comments on anothers hairdo. "That's correct Shaniqua, your nails are gorgeous". At DIA you need to show someone (a checker) your boarding pass before continuing to the X-machines. In August a guy couldn't find his and said it has to be in my briefcase, and she let him through....... :confused:

Lets not go to YYZ's obvious choice of screeners. Aren't they the er... (never mind). It is amazing what we tend to HAVE to tolerate as we board a plane. It's somewhat akin to a medical procedure. Sure we know what to do but know we cannot do anything either. We are effectively controlled once we get the boarding pass.

Then there is the other end of the spectrum. Here in Quebec City, the flights basically go to Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa... that's about it. Sure there are a few to Newark and Boston as well but that takes off at the other side of the terminal. Going through screening, there are about 7 people working there. Sure they are polite and say "good morning". But 7 people jammed around 1 X-ray machine? Smells like a work program to me chief!

Good post, cheers :cool:

Exactly. This bears repeating over and over and over again.

The FAA's rules at the time (right or wrong) permitted knives with blades of four inches or less. Pocketknives, exacto knives, boxcutters, etc. WERE PERMITTED ITEMS and no US airlines (AFAIK) prohibited them.

There was widespread perception that the screening contributed to September 11. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mineta pushed for the federalization of screeners by his "zero tolerance" policies toward airport breaches in the weeks following September 11. Airport terminals were cleared repeatedly because of unplugged WTMDs and other outlandish failures.

Sorry to be such a pain in the butt about this - but not even the 9/11 Commission blamed the tragedy on the screeners. There was simply no causal link.

My personal view is that the allowed knives didn't "cause" Sept. 11, either, but that discussion has already taken place dozens of times here in the last five years.

There is an interesting article about this from Mr. Argenbright himself here: http://enews.securamericallc.com/ Take it for what it's worth but it is the other side of the story.

If I may offer a correction, it is (I believe) better known as "Security Theater," not "Kabuki Security."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater

Actually just a whiner that likes to hear himself talk. What's that saying, something like, walk a mile in someone's shoes before you pass judgement on them. I'd like to see anyone who's whining about the TSA try an do their jobs for one day....forget one day...try an hour. To talk about Videopaul's soap opera of a story would take all night but I will touch on a few things.

1) Everything they had on Sept 11th was legal for them to carry on the plane.

2) The person who wrote that was the idiot, not Kip Hawley

The TSA is so damned busy making sure we take off our shoes and saving us from a bottled death sentence 16.9 ounces at a time that they forget to make a big deal out of actual weapons in the checkpoint.

Did you sleep through all the arrests becasue people were planning on bringing liquid explosives on airplanes in Europe? Remeber Richard Reid? You're saying the TSA is the enemy? I really wish I would've ran into you when I worked for the TSA. So tired of people slamming the screeners. Could you do your job when the way you do it changes daily, sometimes hourly? Come down off the high horse and join the rest of us. I have better things to do tonight...say what you want about me and what I said. 90% of the whiners in here just like to hear themselves talk.

And yet, here you are. :rolleyes:

Yes or no, are ALL KNIVES AND BLADES prohibited? Because the signs at the DEN checkpoint surely says they are.

Yes or no, are we asked to "If you see something, say something?"

Yes or no, did this screener totally blow off a prohibited item as perhaps a "test"?

Yes, I wish you had run into me when you were working at the TSA. You surely would have made another great article.

Welcome to FLYERTALK.

--PP