The Towers, Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania were crashed into due to multiple failures by the US government, not because of one security guard or a razor blade.

Aviation security can be achieved without the abuse of our Constitutional rights or sensibilities. For instance, not one single of the measures our passengers endure would have stopped any of the 9-11 hijackers.

The traveling public has been unaware that it was the policy of the FAA and U.S. Government that pilots were instructed to cooperate with hijackers. The rash of AMAL/PLO terrorists’ sky-jacking became such an epidemic throughout the 1980’s, T.W.A came to mean: Travel With AMAL.

All a hijacker had to do was threaten to harm someone or say he planted a bomb, and the plane would be diverted to Cuba, Beirut or Entebbe. Al-Qaeda 9-11 planners exploited this policy and that was how they took over these aircraft.

The TSA employee’s have a tough job without question, but it is the policy and techniques that are unquestionably egregious, invasive and in reality, ineffective. Every procedure is a primarily a search for explosives, disguised as something else or laden underneath a person’s clothes or in their shoes. Firearms are countered by armed security personnel in proximity to the screening area.

The reality is a terrorist willing to blow themselves up will do it just as readily on board the aircraft as they would standing on line with literally hundreds of passengers. The TSA employee that is searching routinely for such an explosive device is completely unprepared to cope with it if they find it.

An explosion at the screening area, with hundreds of people present, will have the same debilitating effect on the industry as it would on the plane. The electronic strip search may detect an explosive, but it does nothing to neither deter nor stop it from detonating on the spot.

I personally surveyed Domodeveo Airport outside Moscow, where the terrorist brought their luggage to the arrival area, placed it down, walked away, and detonated it with a cell phone from the safety of their parked car at the drop off area. I participated with a Global Security Group, consisting of security experts from every technical field, which published a white paper, we submitted to the Committee during the “Underwear Bomber” hearings.

They described evasive countermeasures; for instance a pilot captain could take at their own discretion, such as flight controlled turbulence, employing the laws of aero-dynamics, centrifugal forces and power of gravity, that would incapacitate anyone who is not buckled into their seat, until such time they are subdued.

The mutual consensus is it was not the fault of private security that 9-11 happened, nor will replacing them with a programmed, predictable response beauracracy, out-think a thinking enemy. The terrorist plotter’s exploited the policy of cooperation and surrender. The TSA has faced many accusations and criticisms, but they will never be accused of out-smarting a determined, well planned attacker.

Aviation security world wide is achieved by a multi-dimensional approach; intelligence sharing, technology, profiling and a benign interview process employing trade secrets that I will not divulge here.

The U.S. government should not be in the abrogating the Bill of Rights for the illusion of safety business. Responsible and effective, holistic approaches, using trade secret techniques will protect the flying public. Benjamin Franklin warned us; “Those who surrender liberty for security, will have neither.” Such is the case here.

The TSA should be replaced with innovative security professionals without surrendering, liberty nor security.

It’s Time to Overhaul the Transportation Security Administration

November 19, 2012
By John W. Whitehead

“The TSA has grown into a top-heavy, unmanageable agency, evidenced by its 400% increase in workforce since its founding. The agency’s flaws are not the fault of TSA employees working everyday on the front lines, but instead that of a bloated leadership structure in Washington, DC. When attempting to conduct oversight, instead of cooperation from TSA the committees have been met with obfuscation, excuses and attempts to mislead.”—House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform

If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. Indeed, one of the greatest culprits when it comes to swindling taxpayers is the Transportation Security Administration, one of the most corrupt, ineffective, and downright abusive of the government’s many agencies (which is saying a lot) and a massive waste of taxpayer money.

Nowhere has the TSA’s skullduggery been more evident than in its questionable deployment of and complete mismanagement of millions of dollars’ worth of airport full-body, X-ray scanners—equipment which was funded by the Obama administration’s stimulus tax dollars and is now being pulled from airports and left to molder in a storage facility in Texas.

For almost two years, ever since the Underwear Bomber’s Christmas 2009 attempt at blowing up a Northwest Airlines flight was thwarted, Americans have been told that the TSA’s full-body, X-ray scanners—more than 700 of which have been deployed to airports across the country—are safe, effective and necessary for preventing another terrorist attack.

Buoyed by corporate lobbyists, Congress and the courts, the TSA continued to impose these full-body scanners on travelers at a tremendous cost of $140 million to taxpayers, despite mounting concerns from scientists, physicians and civil liberties advocates that backscatter scanners pose significant threats to health and privacy, while doing little to protect against a terrorist plot. In fact, according to a 2011 investigative report by ProPublica/PBS NewsHour, anywhere from six to 100 U.S. airline passengers each year could get cancer from the backscatter machines.

Making matters worse, for those electing not to be subjected to a radiation-imbued virtual strip search by government agents, the TSA made the alternative—an enhanced pat-down—downright punitive, with TSA agents going so far as to touch passengers’ genitals and breasts and put their hands down travelers’ pants. Adding insult to injury, American taxpayers and airline passengers are actually forced to subsidize this government-sanctioned humiliation. Every airline passenger pays a September 11 Security Fee of $2.50 for every leg of his trip.

Then, in late October 2012, a few weeks before more than 3 million Americans prepared to travel by air for Thanksgiving, the TSA announced a plan to remove the high-priced, invasive scanners from major U.S. airports and ship them to smaller, less busy locations—reportedly not because of privacy or safety concerns but rather in an effort to speed up security at busy airports. In place of the X-ray backscatter scanners, and in a move sure to cost taxpayers even more money, the TSA is going to replace them with millimeter wave scanners (millimeter scanners only take about ten seconds to scan, versus a full minute for backscatter scanners). TSA officials have already readied 14 new machines so they would be up and running in Chicago’s O’Hare airport by Thanksgiving 2012.

Then in another about-face right before Thanksgiving, it was revealed that the scanners were not going to be relocated to smaller airports, after all. Instead, they are going to be housed in a Texas warehouse full of more than $155 million in unused equipment “awaiting either disposal or redeployment.” (Of course, with hundreds of these scanners still being used in airports across the country, the health and privacy risks remain a concern for those unlucky enough to be forced to go through them.)

So what’s really happening here?

Relying heavily on evasive maneuvers and bureaucratic doublespeak, the TSA’s fumbling explanation for why these scanners are being relegated to a graveyard for taxpayer-funded white elephants casts the blame on everything from faulty software and too-small airports to a belated concern for travelers’ privacy concerns. A more plausible explanation for the phase-out of the X-ray scanners might have to do with recent reports that Rapiscan, one of the scanners’ main manufacturers, “may have attempted to defraud the government” by faking test data on software intended to replace the nude images produced by the X-ray scanners with stick-figure images.

The real problem, as the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform recognized earlier this year, is the TSA itself, which has gained a reputation for fumbling, bumbling and general incompetence.

Created in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the TSA was charged with providing effective and efficient security for passenger and freight transportation in the United States. It has since become one of the Department of Homeland Security’s most visible and costly means of clamping down on Americans domestically, boasting an $8 billion annual budget and a roster of employees that includes TSOs (or airport screeners), behavior detection officers, and VIPR task forces (comprised of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, transportation security officers, behavior detection officers and explosive detection canine teams), among others.

The TSA has increasingly drawn the ire of travelers because of its security procedures, which have subjected airline travelers of all ages, most of whom clearly do not in any way fit the profile of a terrorist, to invasive virtual strip searches, excessive enhanced pat downs and unreasonable demands by government agents—what one journalist refers to as “ritualized humiliation of travelers.” In December 2011, for example, TSA agents at JFK International Airport were accused of strip searching three elderly women. One of the women, 84-year-old Lenore Zimmerman, claims that she was forced to pull down her pants after she refused to enter a body scanner, fearing that it would interfere with her heart defibrillator. (Some medical devices, such as insulin pumps and glucose monitors, can be destroyed by scanners.) In another instance, a woman dying of leukemia was forced to lift her shirt at a TSA security checkpoint so that agents could inspect her bandages for possible security threats.

Even if you make it through security without being prodded, poked, and exposed, the possessions you handed over to TSA agents for screening may be gone by the time you arrive at your destination. In fact, an ABC News report reveals that many of the nation’s busiest airports also suffer the highest incidence of theft by TSA employees. Former TSA employee Pythias Brown, who served three years in prison for stealing $800,000 worth of cash and goods from passengers’ luggage, has come forward to explain that TSA thievery is “commonplace.” The numbers don’t lie: about 400 TSA agents have been fired for stealing from passengers since 2003.

Unfortunately, it’s getting downright impossible to avoid the TSA, which has expanded its mission from patting down passengers at airports to all sorts of surveillance and harassment at transportation hubs around the country. VIPR task forces are now deployed to do random security sweeps of ports, railway and bus stations, airports, ferries and subways. Sweep tactics include the use of X-ray technology, pat-downs and drug-sniffing dogs, among other things.

For example, in April 2012, a VIPR task force stopped passengers at a bus depot in Houston, Texas, rifling through their belongings and asking them about what routes they take and their usual transportation behavior. As one bus rider, Derrick Broze, noted, “I don't feel that by purchasing a ticket or riding a bus, I have to forfeit my constitutional rights to my protections and be subject to search or seizure.”

Unfortunately, that is exactly what the federal government is telling Americans: If you choose to travel, you are forfeiting your constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. In an effort to push back against that mindset, travelers are being urged to peacefully protest the scanners by taking part in “National Opt-Out Week” and refusing to go through the body scanners and filming the enhanced pat-downs.

Here’s the bottom line: in the so-called name of security, Americans have been subjected to all manner of treatment by the government—especially the TSA, including being treated like suspects, and then to top it off, we’ve been asked to pay for the humiliations and degradations heaped on us, so that corporations can make a profit. Something has to give. To start with, it’s time to say no to these flagrant abuses of our taxpayer dollars and our rights.

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MAK November 19, 2012 at 12:15pm

It’s Time to Overhaul the Transportation Security Administration

November 19, 2012
By John W. Whitehead

“The TSA has grown into a top-heavy, unmanageable agency, evidenced by its 400% increase in workforce since its founding. The agency’s flaws are not the fault of TSA employees working everyday on the front lines, but instead that of a bloated leadership structure in Washington, DC. When attempting to conduct oversight, instead of cooperation from TSA the committees have been met with obfuscation, excuses and attempts to mislead.”—House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform

If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. Indeed, one of the greatest culprits when it comes to swindling taxpayers is the Transportation Security Administration, one of the most corrupt, ineffective, and downright abusive of the government’s many agencies (which is saying a lot) and a massive waste of taxpayer money.

Nowhere has the TSA’s skullduggery been more evident than in its questionable deployment of and complete mismanagement of millions of dollars’ worth of airport full-body, X-ray scanners—equipment which was funded by the Obama administration’s stimulus tax dollars and is now being pulled from airports and left to molder in a storage facility in Texas.

For almost two years, ever since the Underwear Bomber’s Christmas 2009 attempt at blowing up a Northwest Airlines flight was thwarted, Americans have been told that the TSA’s full-body, X-ray scanners—more than 700 of which have been deployed to airports across the country—are safe, effective and necessary for preventing another terrorist attack.

Buoyed by corporate lobbyists, Congress and the courts, the TSA continued to impose these full-body scanners on travelers at a tremendous cost of $140 million to taxpayers, despite mounting concerns from scientists, physicians and civil liberties advocates that backscatter scanners pose significant threats to health and privacy, while doing little to protect against a terrorist plot. In fact, according to a 2011 investigative report by ProPublica/PBS NewsHour, anywhere from six to 100 U.S. airline passengers each year could get cancer from the backscatter machines.

Making matters worse, for those electing not to be subjected to a radiation-imbued virtual strip search by government agents, the TSA made the alternative—an enhanced pat-down—downright punitive, with TSA agents going so far as to touch passengers’ genitals and breasts and put their hands down travelers’ pants. Adding insult to injury, American taxpayers and airline passengers are actually forced to subsidize this government-sanctioned humiliation. Every airline passenger pays a September 11 Security Fee of $2.50 for every leg of his trip.

Then, in late October 2012, a few weeks before more than 3 million Americans prepared to travel by air for Thanksgiving, the TSA announced a plan to remove the high-priced, invasive scanners from major U.S. airports and ship them to smaller, less busy locations—reportedly not because of privacy or safety concerns but rather in an effort to speed up security at busy airports. In place of the X-ray backscatter scanners, and in a move sure to cost taxpayers even more money, the TSA is going to replace them with millimeter wave scanners (millimeter scanners only take about ten seconds to scan, versus a full minute for backscatter scanners). TSA officials have already readied 14 new machines so they would be up and running in Chicago’s O’Hare airport by Thanksgiving 2012.

Then in another about-face right before Thanksgiving, it was revealed that the scanners were not going to be relocated to smaller airports, after all. Instead, they are going to be housed in a Texas warehouse full of more than $155 million in unused equipment “awaiting either disposal or redeployment.” (Of course, with hundreds of these scanners still being used in airports across the country, the health and privacy risks remain a concern for those unlucky enough to be forced to go through them.)

So what’s really happening here?

Relying heavily on evasive maneuvers and bureaucratic doublespeak, the TSA’s fumbling explanation for why these scanners are being relegated to a graveyard for taxpayer-funded white elephants casts the blame on everything from faulty software and too-small airports to a belated concern for travelers’ privacy concerns. A more plausible explanation for the phase-out of the X-ray scanners might have to do with recent reports that Rapiscan, one of the scanners’ main manufacturers, “may have attempted to defraud the government” by faking test data on software intended to replace the nude images produced by the X-ray scanners with stick-figure images.

The real problem, as the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform recognized earlier this year, is the TSA itself, which has gained a reputation for fumbling, bumbling and general incompetence.

Created in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the TSA was charged with providing effective and efficient security for passenger and freight transportation in the United States. It has since become one of the Department of Homeland Security’s most visible and costly means of clamping down on Americans domestically, boasting an $8 billion annual budget and a roster of employees that includes TSOs (or airport screeners), behavior detection officers, and VIPR task forces (comprised of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, transportation security officers, behavior detection officers and explosive detection canine teams), among others.

The TSA has increasingly drawn the ire of travelers because of its security procedures, which have subjected airline travelers of all ages, most of whom clearly do not in any way fit the profile of a terrorist, to invasive virtual strip searches, excessive enhanced pat downs and unreasonable demands by government agents—what one journalist refers to as “ritualized humiliation of travelers.” In December 2011, for example, TSA agents at JFK International Airport were accused of strip searching three elderly women. One of the women, 84-year-old Lenore Zimmerman, claims that she was forced to pull down her pants after she refused to enter a body scanner, fearing that it would interfere with her heart defibrillator. (Some medical devices, such as insulin pumps and glucose monitors, can be destroyed by scanners.) In another instance, a woman dying of leukemia was forced to lift her shirt at a TSA security checkpoint so that agents could inspect her bandages for possible security threats.

Even if you make it through security without being prodded, poked, and exposed, the possessions you handed over to TSA agents for screening may be gone by the time you arrive at your destination. In fact, an ABC News report reveals that many of the nation’s busiest airports also suffer the highest incidence of theft by TSA employees. Former TSA employee Pythias Brown, who served three years in prison for stealing $800,000 worth of cash and goods from passengers’ luggage, has come forward to explain that TSA thievery is “commonplace.” The numbers don’t lie: about 400 TSA agents have been fired for stealing from passengers since 2003.

Unfortunately, it’s getting downright impossible to avoid the TSA, which has expanded its mission from patting down passengers at airports to all sorts of surveillance and harassment at transportation hubs around the country. VIPR task forces are now deployed to do random security sweeps of ports, railway and bus stations, airports, ferries and subways. Sweep tactics include the use of X-ray technology, pat-downs and drug-sniffing dogs, among other things.

For example, in April 2012, a VIPR task force stopped passengers at a bus depot in Houston, Texas, rifling through their belongings and asking them about what routes they take and their usual transportation behavior. As one bus rider, Derrick Broze, noted, “I don't feel that by purchasing a ticket or riding a bus, I have to forfeit my constitutional rights to my protections and be subject to search or seizure.”

Unfortunately, that is exactly what the federal government is telling Americans: If you choose to travel, you are forfeiting your constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. In an effort to push back against that mindset, travelers are being urged to peacefully protest the scanners by taking part in “National Opt-Out Week” and refusing to go through the body scanners and filming the enhanced pat-downs.

Here’s the bottom line: in the so-called name of security, Americans have been subjected to all manner of treatment by the government—especially the TSA, including being treated like suspects, and then to top it off, we’ve been asked to pay for the humiliations and degradations heaped on us, so that corporations can make a profit. Something has to give. To start with, it’s time to say no to these flagrant abuses of our taxpayer dollars and our rights.
MAK November 19, 2012 at 12:12pm

Time to overhaul the TSA it has grown over 400% since it's inception
Buck Crosby November 19, 2012 at 10:26am

TSA employees and their leadership are ALL constitutional criminals . ANYONE WHO GIVES UP HIS FREEDOMS FOR A LITTLE SECURITY DESERVES NEITHER ! BENJAMIN FRANKLIN I will agree with the idea for veteran infiltration of the TSA only if they join OATHKEEPERS .
Fred Sherman November 19, 2012 at 7:21am

We have a large number of combat ready vets looking for work. This would be a
great time for them to infiltrate and be in position when the time comes.

Don’t let your emotions rule your thinking process, plan and be ready.
GreyTigerTX November 19, 2012 at 6:42am

Yall completely miss the point. The TSA is not the problem. It is the people who created the TSA and continue to fund and control it. They have no idea how to actually stop a terrorist. So, they posture and make traveling a living hell for the American traveler. Hire an expert in airport security from the Israelis. They have been successful in stopping terrorist from boarding without creating the mess that we have at our airports. It isn't a lack of resources, it is a case of inept and bungling supervision and control.
Steven G. Elliott 1SG USA (RET) November 19, 2012 at 12:55am

Mary Ann West,

You are completely correct. I think another Revolutionary war is the only answer. This scum must be dealt with. Pray that GOD will be with us.
Mary Ann West November 18, 2012 at 11:38pm

Isn't that what voted for obama?? REAL scum. The Welfare to work deal allowed Clinton to create govt (protected) jobs for scum. There are so many blacks that have no clue about working in business or logistics in jobs at all levels of US govt. All State Election registeration offices are run by Blacks. This is wht there is so many problems getting accurate voting ballot counted or recounted. These people are 99% Demonrats and Clinton with the the 1994 GOP Controlled Comgress put all these dull witted people in govt jobs. Govt jobs were created for the Welfare to Work group. This is the reason this govt has become so inept. I do not think any other country is going to put this type of worker in their govt offices to screw things up! This is where the cheating in the polls came from. Nothing in this country will ever be the same again. Both Clintons and the Soros machine want this country under one party rule. This country will be a "union" itself before obama gets through. See what Twinkies did. It has been on verge of bankruptcy for 2 years and has declared bankruptcy twice before. The unions broke Twinkies and will break every employer in USA befor obama is finished. I am glad Twinkies went bankrupt--at least that union will not kill that business again. It is disasterous non-union employees sre out too-but the unions are the culprit. Until the biggest unions are broken this country will always be held under Nazism. The Unions are Mafia run by descendents of Mafia. All of us will have to suffer to get the oppressors out of our lives. There is no way the 1st black president was going to be a one term president! Anyone who thinks obama was going after one term was delusional. The Congress knew this was going to happen I am just teed off they put up such a farce of objection. They all are rotten to the core! This country will change only when every politician in this govy leaves. I will never live to see the end of their s#it.
Juanita Holloway-Walters November 18, 2012 at 9:17pm

I have been on hiatus for my health since the election heartbreak. I accidentally forgot, and opened this . . . GRRRRRRRR . . . nope, not ready to return. Bye.
Adolfo O. Perez November 18, 2012 at 8:35pm

I used to work at Miami International Airport ,T.S.A. workers are all former welfare resipients with extremly low gheto I.Q.s Senator Rand Paul after travelling thru an Airport was trying to put an end to the T.S.A,,I have not heard anything more about it but,If people were to boycott the airlines till the T.S.A. was done away with ,I'm sure that the airlines would get extremly active in doing away with the T.S.A. ,nothing gets results like hitting in the pocket book.
Virginia Hurley November 18, 2012 at 6:24pm

I agree with you 100% also!!!! I don't think the average American has a clue as to the seriousness of

the results of this last election, We all need to be on our knees asking the Lord's help in dealing with this and we all need to take a stand, to do something to stop what is happening. The lies we are being fed, and those that swallow them are the most dangerous time in our history. I am 73yrs old and believe me this is the most perilous time of my lifetime!!!!!

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It’s Time to Overhaul the Transportation Security Administration

November 19, 2012
By John W. Whitehead

Comments

It’s Time to Overhaul the Transportation Security Administration

November 19, 2012 By John W. Whitehead

November 19, 2012
By John W. Whitehead