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 The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) protects airline passengers from terrorists, or so it claims. In actuality, it only protects us from each other.
This federal agency has groped us at checkpoints and rifled our bags for seven years – without catching a single terrorist. So it manufactures bad guys out of vacationers who forget the 8-ounce tube of sunscreen in their carry-ons and grandparents in wheelchairs. One recent victim is Justin Reed, a Marine the TSA is prosecuting because he inadvertently made a fool of the agency.
Corporal Reed, 22, is the sort of man most passengers would want seated next to them. Not only does he teach an urban-warfare course for the Marine Corps, he’s won the Global War on Terrorism Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, and a Good Conduct Medal. Only the TSA would mistake him for al-Qaeda’s accomplice rather than an asset against them.
Cpl. Reed left class to fly home last month with a gun, a fully loaded gun magazine, a grenade fuse and detonator, three model-rocket engines containing explosive mixtures, some electrical components, and ammunition. None of these “pose an imminent threat to aviation,” as even the TSA admits.
Nevertheless, Cpl. Reed followed the Feds’ arcane, absurd, and changing regulations on what we supposedly free people can and cannot transport with us when he declared the gun and checked it in its locked box with his carrier. He also checked the other tools of his trade. Then he boarded his flight at Las Vegas’ McCarran International.
The TSA recently spent $1.25 million of our taxes on an in-line baggage screening system at McCarran that’s supposed to detect explosives. But Cpl. Reed’s bags sailed through that boondoggle. In fact, his non-threatening gear made it all the way to Boston Logan. Screeners there searched his luggage again during a layover. This time they stumbled across the gun, ammo, and other items.
That launched the TSA into its Keystone-Kops routine. Cpl. Reed was arrested for possessing an “infernal machine” as the agency scrambled to excuse its stunning — and typical — incompetence in Las Vegas.
“While the items found in the passenger's checked luggage were prohibited and illegal,” sniffed spokesman Dwayne Baird, “they did not pose an imminent threat to aviation." Then why are they prohibited and illegal? And why can’t Cpl Reed just put them in a plastic baggie? The TSA says that works for explosives like mouthwash and toothpaste.
The agency’s silliness cannot and does not protect us. That’s because politicians, rather than experts in security, established the TSA and its policies. They didn’t research the nonsense they foisted on us, either. No studies prove that disarming passengers of everything but their fingernails keeps anyone safe; more likely, it endangers them since they can’t defend themselves. Imagine how differently 9/11 might have ended had someone besides the hijackers wielded a boxcutter.
But even if studies proved that defenseless passengers are safe passengers, it wouldn’t matter because screeners can’t find contraband anyway. They flunk every test of their job skills, whether the TSA or the Government Accountability Office tests them — or whether a Marine innocently checks a bag of “prohibited and illegal items.”
Astoundingly, screeners can’t pass even when the TSA helps them cheat. The agency’s management supplied employees with descriptions of undercover agents sneaking fake bombs and components past them as well as the locations of said items — in a backpack, taped to an agent’s leg, etc. Screeners still failed to find 75% of the bogus weapons.
Given its baseless procedures and ineptitude, the TSA only pretends to secure aviation. It fools some passengers into thinking it protects them by persecuting others like Cpl. Reed.
Or Cecilia Beaman. This grandmother and middle-school principal from Washington State not only accompanied students on a field trip, she also packed a bread knife to make them sandwiches. Screeners threatened to fine her $500 and designate her a terrorist when they found the “weapon” in her carry-on bag. “I'm a 57-year-old woman who is taking care of 37 kids,” she protested. "I'm not gonna commit a terrorist act." When that didn’t sway her tormentors, she asked about her “constitutional rights.” She says the TSA retorted that “’at this point ... you don't have any.’”
A mother from Connecticut taking her toddler to Disney World went to jail instead when a penknife surfaced in a canister of Huggies. The TSA insisted she had “artfully concealed” it despite her pleas that it accidentally fell out of her husband’s pocket when he changed the boy’s diaper.
Perhaps the TSA’s inability to find weapons or bombs explains its zeal in ferreting out penknives and other innocuous items that endanger nothing but bureaucratic whims. On January 24, 2008, screeners at Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport in California found marijuana, hashish and some psychedelic mushrooms after rifling 21-year-old Adam Morris’s bag. Cops arrested him even though he said he had medical permission for the pot in accordance with California’s statutes. But according to Lt. Scott Dunn, airports under federal security jurisdiction can prohibit possession of such drugs regardless of state laws.
Indeed, checkpoints are becoming aviation’s equivalent of the speed trap: “It's unknown how often contraband is transported through the single security checkpoint at the Sonoma County airport, but Dunn said it's not uncommon that someone is caught. ‘It seems like about once a week that we've got somebody who has a small quantity of marijuana, the personal-use type,’ he said. ‘About once a month we do get significant quantities.’” Checkpoints enrich the local sheriff’s departments, too, just as speed traps do — even when their victims are young and poor: “Dunn said Morris, who told officers he is unemployed, also had $3,800 in cash in the bag. Deputies seized the money as evidence, pending further investigation.”
Conveniently, the TSA doesn't compile statistics on drugs or people captured while trying to board a plane with them. If it did, the public might realize this agency is fighting Americans like Adam Morris, not terrorists.
Hardly a week passes that the TSA doesn’t ruin another life. Indeed, it endangers us far more than terrorists do. It’s past time we abolished it. Let aviation protect its customers and inventory the way other industries do: privately, politely, and effectively.
Meanwhile, Cpl. Reed pled innocent and is free on bail until his trial this week. The TSA assures us this “incident” has its “full attention." It should have ours, too.
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