By Martin Gould and John Bachman

The top people at both the Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration should quit for using “Gestapo-type” tactics which violate privacy rights and civil liberties, GOP Rep. Paul Broun tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview.

And either the TSA should be privatized or the military should be brought in to the nation’s airports to conduct security screenings, the Georgia congressman added.

But the TSA will resist any attempts to bring private firms in, he added, “because they want to continue their Gestapo-type tactics of patting down grandma and grandpa and little children.”

Broun was talking after a series of recent incidents have brought further scrutiny to the TSA. They include allegations that:

* Agents labeled a 4-year-old girl a “terrorist threat” because she hugged her grandmother at a security checkpoint at the Wichita Airport in Kansas;

* Forced the family of a 7-year-old cerebral palsy victim to miss a flight from New York’s Kennedy Airport because they insisted on inspecting the girl’s crutches;

* Ordered a 95-year-old woman to remove her adult diaper during a search at North West Florida Airport;

* Threatened Rep. Quico Canseco of Texas with arrest after he complained he was being patted down so hard at San Antonio Airport that it hurt.

“This makes absolutely no sense but it’s indicative of the TSA as well as the Department of Homeland Security, an agency that has just run amok,” said Broun.

Broun said it is not only time for TSA head John Pistole to go, but that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano should step aside too. “The rot starts at the head. She is the one who is at the head of an organization that is totally broken,” he said.

“TSA needs to be totally changed, I would like them to be privatized,” added Broun, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee. He said a pilot program at Kansas City’s airport involving a company called FirstLine has been a success.

“It had great responses from the public, but TSA seems to be trying to delay privatization and has done everything it could to prevent FirstLine from getting a contract. They don’t want to be privatized and they will do everything they can to prevent it,” he warned.

“We need to get rid of the whole thing altogether. In fact our national security should be upheld by the military and not by an organization such as the Department of Homeland Security. I would like to get rid of the whole department and start all over again and let the military do what it needs to do, and let the CIA and FBI do what they should do to focus on those who want to harm us and stop this inanity of political correctness that is going to get Americans killed.”

Broun said the problem is that policies force agents to “look for objects” rather than concentrate on the likely terrorists.

“We need to start focusing on those people who aren’t harmless, instead of patting down grandma and patting down kids. It’s just absolutely a waste of taxpayers’ dollars. It’s not going to keep us any safer than doing nothing in my opinion.”

Decent intelligence needs to play a bigger role, he said. “We need to focus upon terrorists. We need to focus on those wanting to harm us. We need to focus on them prior to them ever getting to the airport and interview them before they ever get there. We need a stronger intelligence community.

“Most of what the federal government does today is not authorized in the original intent of the Constitution but national security is; strong national defense is,” he added. “This administration is destroying our national security and our defense capability and we have got to build those things up.”

Broun cited a recent investigation by WSB-TV, the CBS affiliate in Atlanta, that interviewed a whistleblower who claimed it was easy to get weapons on board planes by smuggling them in on the unsecured food carts.

“We know also from the investigation that was done by the WSB investigative reporter that people could get through the security without much challenge, so we’re not any safer today than before 9/11,” he claimed.

He also said that the TSA had admitted it had hired people at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport without proper background checks. “They said recently that they have gotten the backlog of background checks straightened out, but what other airports are they allowing people to go to work without background checks?” he asked.

Broun said one of the biggest problems is that Congress rushed through the Patriot Act within 10 weeks of 9/11. “The Patriot Act has been an abomination,” he said. “We had Congress push through all these things without thinking through them in the proper way.

“We have got to protect privacy rights. We have got to protect our God-given, constitutionally protected civil liberties and we are not doing that in the federal government. The Department of Homeland Security, as well as the TSA, is a great culprit in being a Gestapo-type organization.”

And they are chomping at the bit to come to your hangar.  Notice the latest from the White House — they will continue with the $100 USER FEE; why, because it’s class warfare.

This fits exactly with various statements made by Senator Rockefeller (D-WV) about how he gets patted down and believes I can just waltz out on the ramp at Dulles to my airplane (which would be incorrect but when did the facts stops a politician?).

We can pay the $100, we can get stripped searched — just like everybody else.  Unless you’re a Muslim.

 Four current and former Transportation Security Administration screeners have been arrested and face charges of taking bribes and looking the other way while suitcases filled with cocaine, methamphetamine or marijuana passed through X-ray machines at Los Angeles International Airport, federal authorities announced Wednesday.

The TSA screeners, who were arrested Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, allegedly received up to $2,400 in cash bribes in exchange for allowing large drug shipments to pass through checkpoints in what the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles called a “significant breakdown” of security.

In addition to the two current and two former screeners, prosecutors also indicted two alleged drug couriers and a third who allegedly tried to smuggle 11 pounds of cocaine but was nabbed when he went through the wrong security checkpoint.

The TSA employees “placed greed above the nation’s security needs,” Andre Birotte Jr., U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement.

The 40-page indictment outlines five alleged smuggling incidents over a six-month period last year. In one incident, screeners schemed to allow for about eight pounds of methamphetamine to pass through security, then went to an airport restroom where he was handed $600, the second half of the payment for that delivery, according to prosecutors.

Briane Grey, acting special agent in charge of the DEA in Los Angeles, said the scheme was particularly reprehensible because it took place at LAX.

“The defendants traded on their positions at one the world’s most crucial airport security checkpoints, used their special access for criminal ends, and compromised the safety and security of their fellow citizens for their own profit,” he said in a statement.

The indicted screeners are Naral Richardson, 30, and Joy White, 27, who were both fired by TSA last year; and John Whitfield, 23, and Capeline McKinney, 25, both currently employed as screeners. All four have been taken into custody, and face up to life in prison if convicted.

The accused drug couriers are Duane Eleby, 28, who is expected to surrender, and Terry Cunningham and Stephen Bayliss, both 28, who are both at large.

The TSA’s security director at LAX said the agency was assisting with the investigation. “While these arrests are a disappointment, TSA is committed to holding our employees to the highest standards,” Randy Parsons said in a statement.

So there is something worse than a crooked cop; remember that when they come to search your daughter before you take her for a ride in your airplane…

By Hugo Gye 24 April 2012

Of all the many complaints about airport security and the TSA, one of the most common is that they make little distinction between plausible security threats and passengers unlikely to be doing anything wrong.

And a recent incident in Wichita, Kansas has reinforced that argument, as a four-year-old girl was apparently subjected to a humiliating ordeal after she hugged her grandmother while she was waiting in line.

The girl was accused of having a gun and declared a ‘high security threat’, while agents threatened to shut down the whole airport if she could not be calmed down.

When asked about the overbearing treatment the girl received, a TSA spokesman did not apologise and insisted that correct procedures had been followed.

Four-year-old Isabella’s horrific experience in Wichita earlier this month was recounted on Facebook by her furious mother Michelle Brademeyer.

The family was in Kansas for a wedding, and was travelling home to Montana with Ms Brademeyer’s mother.

Ms Brademeyer and her two children had passed through security when the grandmother was detained after triggering an alarm on the scanners.

Isabella then, according to her mother, ‘excitedly ran over to give her a hug, as children often do. They made very brief contact, no longer than a few seconds.’

The young girl was immediately detained by security agents, who apparently shouted at her that she would have to be frisked too, and refused to let her mother explain what has happening.

Ms Brademeyer wrote: ‘It was implied, several times, that my mother, in their brief two-second embrace, had passed a handgun to my daughter.’

In her terror, Isabella tried to run away rather than face a full body pat-down, which unsurprisingly enraged the TSA officers further.

One officer even told the girl’s mother that the airport would have to be shut down and every flight cancelled if the four-year-old did not co-operate. They also apparently described the little girl as a ‘high security threat’.

As Isabella was taken into a side room for a pat-down, accompanied by her mother, she could not stop crying and refused to let the agents touch her. An officer repeatedly said she had ‘seen a gun in a teddy bear’ in the past, in an apparent attempt to justify the situation.

Ms Brademeyer continued: ‘The TSO loomed over my daughter, with an angry grimace on her face, and ordered her to stop crying.

‘When my scared child could not do so, two TSOs called for backup saying, “The suspect is not cooperating.” The suspect, of course, being a frightened child. They treated my daughter no better than if she had been a terrorist.’

Isabella continued to cry, and officers said the family would have to leave the airport as the TSA was unable to frisk the four-year-old. When a manager was called, he decided that the distraught Isabella could be checked alongside her mother, and let the family pass through security at last.

But their nightmare was not yet over, as on a connecting flight in Denver, an airport employee demanded to know which of the family was Isabella – and ‘looked really confused’ when the girl was pointed out to her.

Ms Brademeyer concluded her Facebook post by drawing attention to TSA rules against separating children from their parents, and added: ‘I feel compelled to share this story in the hope that no other child will have to share in this experience.’

When The Consumerist approached the TSA for comment on the bizarre incident, a spokesman said: ‘TSA has reviewed the incident and determined that our officers followed proper current screening procedures in conducting a modified pat-down on the child.’

Wait until this happens in your hangar or on the ramp.  Your tax dollars at work.

AP – 12 hrs ago

It’s not unusual for 17-year-old to find themselves in hot water with the fashion police. But on a flight from Virginia to Florida, Vanessa Gibbs found herself detained by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) over the appearance of her purse.

And just to be clear, it wasn’t the content inside the purse that the TSA objected to. No, agency officials took exception with the design of a gun on Gibbs’ handbag.

“It’s my style, it’s camouflage, it has an old western gun on it,” Gibbs told News4Jax.com. Gibbs didn’t run into any trouble while traveling north from Jacksonville International Airport. But on her way back home, TSA officials at Norfolk International Airport pulled her aside.

“She was like, ‘This is a federal offense because it’s in the shape of a gun,’” Gibbs said. “I’m like, ‘But it’s a design on a purse. How is it a federal offense?’”

After TSA agents figured out the gun was a fake, Gibbs said, they told her to check the bag or turn it over. By the time security wrapped up the inspection, the pregnant teen missed her flight, and Southwest Airlines sent her to Orlando instead. The changed itinerary created no small amount of anxiety for Gibbs’ mother, who was already waiting for her to arrive at the Jacksonville airport.

“Oh, it’s terrifying. I was so upset,” said Tami Gibbs, the teen’s mom. “I was on the phone all the way to Orlando trying to figure out what was going on with her. It was terrifying.”

Less terrifying is the actual design on the purse, which is only a few inches in size and hollow. “I carried this from Jacksonville to Norfolk, and I’ve carried it from Norfolk to Jacksonville,” Vanessa said. “Never once has anyone said anything about it until now.”

Nonetheless, the TSA says the design could be considered a “replica weapon,” something that the agency has banned since 2002. Just imagine what would have happened if Gibbs had also been wearing stiletto heels.

So, a couple of studs on the outside of a leather purse is a “replica weapon”?  You have to practice to get this stupid, and these are the people that AOPA, EAA, NBAA and the other alphabet soups compromised with over LASP II…

It’s coming soon, and it’s just a start.  When the bored moron can’t find a 30,000 pound takeoff weight aircraft to fondle, er inspect; what’s to prevent him from wandering into your hangar?  How many “weapons” do you keep there?  How much “HAZMAT”?

Call Congress, call the subcommittees, call Sam Graves (R-MO) and John Mica (R-FL), get behind this.  Call John Rockefeller (D-WV) and tell him he’s a moron.  And above all VOTE when able.

November 16, 2011By: George DooleyTravel Agent

A sure to be controversial report released by U.S. House Congressional leaders that alleges a decade of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) “mismanagement and failures” calls for “dramatic reform of the nation’s bloated transportation security agency.” The report, entitled “A Decade Later: A Call for TSA Reform” addresses a host of tough issues impacting travelers and the traveling public. The TSA is marking its tenth year.

“Congress created TSA ten years ago to be a lean, risk-based, adaptive agency, responsible for analyzing intelligence, setting security standards, and overseeing the nation’s transportation security structure. Unfortunately, TSA has lost its way,” said U.S. Rep. John L. Mica (R-FL), Chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

“TSA has strayed from its security mission and mushroomed into a top-heavy bureaucracy that includes 3,986 headquarters staff, making $103,852 per year on average, and 9,656 administrators in the field. Currently, TSA has 65,000 employees. Unfortunately, over the past ten years, the agency has spent $57 billion on numerous operational and technology failures,” Mica said.

“While we are safer today than we were ten years ago, this is largely thanks to the vigilance of American citizens and passengers, the actions of flight crews and armed pilots, the addition of hardened cockpit doors, and the assistance of foreign intelligence agencies,” Mica continued. “After ten years, we cannot continue to rely on luck. It is time for reform. TSA must become the kind of agency it was intended to be – a thinking, risk-based, flexible agency that analyzes risks, sets security standards and audits security performance. “

The report is being provided to Congress and there are plans to introduce legislation to improve this critical security agency, the committee reports.

“TSA was envisioned and sold to the American people as a proactive agency that would strategically deploy the latest technology and cutting-edge tactics to protect travelers,” said U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “Despite these high ambitions, the agency has become a backwards-looking dinosaur that seeks employees through pizza box advertising and struggles to detect actual terrorist threats. TSA needs a vision and purpose that goes beyond throwing expensive equipment and invasive searches at passengers who do not pose a security threat.”

“Despite TSA’s massive bureaucracy, reports indicate that more than 25,000 security breaches have occurred in U.S. airports since 2001,” said U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, M.D. (R-GA), Chairman of the Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, and a member of the House Homeland Security Committee. “The agency as a whole has been a colossal disappointment; the one thing it has been successful at is violating the rights of the American people (italics — STOPLASP.com). Instead of worrying about ‘political correctness’, TSA should be putting our resources into intelligence and technologies that could be more effective when it comes to catching highly elusive and dangerous terrorists. We should know about terrorist attacks before they materialize on U.S. soil, and I have yet to see that kind of progress come out of TSA.”

“Terrorism is a global problem and we should continue to consider and learn what other countries are doing to effectively safeguard the public and stop terrorism,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI), Chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee of the House Transportation Committee. “We need to focus more on identifying and thwarting terrorists rather than spending vast resources on programs that simply inconvenience the traveling public who are not a threat.”

“This report highlights what we have known for years – that TSA is misguided, overly bureaucratic and mismanaged,” said U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations of the House Oversight Committee. “It invests in tomorrow’s technology to fight yesterday’s threats and wastes billions of taxpayer dollars in the process. It’s time for President Obama and Secretary Napolitano to refocus the troubled agency and get serious about real solutions.”

From the top down, TSA is a troubled agency, the report says. TSA and its administrator are buried within the Department of Homeland Security along with 21 other agencies. Turnover in the position of TSA Administrator has been excessive, and too little priority has been placed on naming a new administrator when the position has become vacant, the committee says.

The list of TSA operational failures has grown over the last ten years, and the agency has expended a significant amount of taxpayer resources in too many efforts that have provided little or no security benefits, the report says.

Earlier this year the agency undermined a successful – and congressionally mandated – program to allow airports to opt out of the all-federal passenger screening model in favor of a model in which qualified private contractors conduct screening under TSA standards and oversight. TSA’s expenditure of a quarter of a billion in taxpayer dollars resulted in a poorly designed, poorly tested, and poorly performing behavior detection program, known as SPOT. The agency has also failed to successfully implement a long-delayed Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) program at many of the nation’s ports, the report says.

TSA personnel failures include its inability to retain its workforce, high training costs for replacements and decisions to recruit employees with ads on pizza boxes and discount gas pumps, according to the report.

The agency has also failed to effectively deploy technology, the report charges. Since 2001, “TSA has obligated over $8 billion on screening technology, a significant portion of which has been useless, unused, discarded, poorly deployed, or sitting idle because of a lack of trained personnel,” the report says.

“Despite great expenditures, TSA’s record of stopping terrorist plots is dismal. Classified evaluations of security performance continue to reveal concerning results. For example, the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the Times Square bomber, and the toner cartridge bomb plot were not thwarted by TSA, but by flight crews and passengers, or by foreign intelligence agencies, ” the report says.

The report was prepared by the majority staff of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

October 24, 2011

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials have told NBAA that they hope to issue a new proposed business aircraft security program by the end of this year. The new proposal, which is expected to be markedly different from the Large Aircraft Security Program (LASP) offered several years ago, will need to be reviewed and approved by the Department of Homeland Security and Office of Management and Budget before being published for public comment.

“TSA heard our concerns about the most egregious elements of the original LASP proposal,” said Doug Carr, NBAA’s vice president for safety, security & regulation. Those provisions included the aircraft weight threshold, prohibited items list, and the requirements for third-party auditors and armed security guards onboard business airplanes. Even the name of the new security proposal is expected to be different, no longer including the word “large,” which was a misnomer anyway.

TSA has included a “trusted pilot” element in all of its other security programs, and Carr expects it to be part of the new proposal as well. Carr also believes that the new proposal will reflect more of a risk-based approach to security, since TSA Administrator John Pistole, in an effort to evolve his agency into a high-performance counterterrorism organization, has announced plans to reorganize TSA so it can adopt a more intelligence-driven, risk-based approach to security.

Besides having received input from NBAA Staff, business aircraft operators (including NBAA’s Security Council) have helped TSA officials re-craft the business aviation security proposal, said Doug Hofsass, TSA’s deputy assistant administrator for Transportation Sector Network Management, during a well-attended security session at the recent NBAA Annual Meeting & Convention. “This rule is going to make a lot more sense, and it’s really good security,” he declared.

Wow, maybe the NBAA and the TSA should get a room, what with all the mutual admiration?

This is a bad idea, period.  No matter what it’s called.  The DHS and TSA’s own studies have already covered the limited utility of GA in any terrorist threat.  There are already programs to cover Part 135.  There is no need for this.

But, it’s a great segway into the rest of aviation. 

Oh no, the TSA would never do that… then you better read that article on the “road warriors” in Tennessee again.  I’m telling you the alphabet soup is selling us out, compromise and declare victory will not get you the freedom to fly your airplane like you do now.  If you want that to continue, you better join the fight.

From Channel 5 in Nashville, TN

By Adam Ghassemi

PORTLAND, Tenn. – You’re probably used to seeing TSA’s signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).

“Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate,” said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.

Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.

Agents are recruiting truck drivers, like Rudy Gonzales, into the First Observer Highway Security Program to say something if they see something.

“Not only truck drivers, but cars, everybody should be aware of what’s going on, on the road,” said Gonzales.

It’s all meant to urge every driver to call authorities if they see something suspicious.

“Somebody sees something somewhere and we want them to be responsible citizens, report that and let us work it through our processes to abate the concern that they had when they saw something suspicious,” said Paul Armes, TSA Federal Security Director for Nashville International Airport.

The Tennessee Highway Patrol checked trucks at the weigh station with drug and bomb sniffing dogs during random inspections.

“The bottom line is this: if you see something suspicious say something about it,” Gibbons said Tuesday.

The random inspections really aren’t any more thorough than normal, according to Tennessee Highway Patrol Colonel Tracy Trott who says paying attention to details can make a difference. Trott pointed out it was an Oklahoma state trooper who stopped Timothy McVeigh for not having a license plate after the Oklahoma City bombing in the early 1990s.

Tuesday’s statewide “VIPR” operation isn’t in response to any particular threat, according to officials. (Bold and Italics from StopLASP.com)

Armes said intelligence indicates law enforcement should focus on the highways as well as the airports.

No threat, just going to start looking.  See, we’re the good guys, we just want you to be a responsible citizen and give us a call if you see something ‘suspicious’… 

And when you get a dime dropped on you because you cut somebody off in traffic?

And when your kids drop a dime because you make them be home by a certain time?

Or your neighbor’s dog is barking all night and you think that’s suspicious?

Once again, here at StopLASP we’re not against security nor safety.  But we are for Constitutional freedoms, like the 4th Amendment.  You don’t have to like what I do, but if it’s not illegal, I have a right to do it.

That includes flying airplanes.  If you see your hangar neighbor putting 55 gallon drums in his aircraft and filling them with avgas — there’s no STC for that and you should maybe ask a question or two and maybe make a phone call.  But if you fly out of an airport where the jump plane thinks he owns the pattern, being impolite isn’t against FARs either.

It’s a slippery slope and we are very, very close to it.  The world your children will grow up in could be extremely different if you don’t get involved.