The Corrupt TSA – How Bad Is It?

In this piece from Top Secret Writers, authors examine a shocking report we seemed to have missed here at ATS.

The Committee’s May 9, 2012 report titled Airport Insecurity: TSA’s Failure to Cost-Effectively Procure, Deploy and Warehouse Its Screening Technologies gave a startling insight to the corruption and negligence of the agency assigned the duty of securing the nation’s airports...

...The committee reported that the TSA has wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars in equipment that has been sitting in warehouses unused. As much as 85% of the equipment had been in storage for longer than six months with 35% longer than one year. “One piece of equipment had been in storage more than six years – 60% of its useful life”. (1)

Click link above embedded for actual pdf.

www.topsecretwriters.com...

What makes this story so compelling is the culture of the involved TSA employees and how they work together like a ring of thieves.

Between 2003 and 2012, nearly 400 TSA officers were fired on charges of stealing from passengers.

Some thieves boldly lifted large sums of cash from luggage, including $40,000 from one passenger and $30,000 from another. One TSA agent stole a passenger’s wallet from his jacket as he went through the security sweep.

Republican Representative John Mica from Florida, who is also the Chairman of the House Transportation Committee said, “TSA is probably the worst personnel manager that we have in the entire federal government. It is an outrage to the public and, actually, to our aviation security system.” (4)

Until the TSA tightens its control over hiring practices and personnel screening with due diligence and enforces higher standards of personnel work ethics and character, the oversight of its own security will continue to threaten that of the American public that’s dependent upon air transportation.

I just don't know how much longer the States are going to take to realize that this federal government is a colossal failure at every level. And that's not to say that the States don't have their own problems, cause they do. But the waste, mismanagement and corruption exhibited at TSA pretty much typifies the new Amerika. Drones, surveillance, body scanners gone wild.

I think the states have every right to kick these bastards out, and deal with their own security measures at their airports. Deny this New Fricken World Order of centralization of power, which only leads to situations like this, and fails miserably at local levels. And these are the people taking over our highways and trains?

Bend over and take it some more Amerika.

This government is evil in every possible way.

reply to post by TrueAmerican


They tried letting the airlines handle security. It was almost as bad, only instead of stealing and being corrupt as hell, nothing could get done. It was all about the profit of the airlines, and if they had to pay for things, they played the "Oh no, we don't pay for that" game, and whatever needed to get paid went for a year before it got paid by someone else because they were so frustrated. The states don't have the money right now to pay for airport security, only the federal gov't does (thanks to printing their own money). What they need to do is go back to how it was before the TSA took over, and use private companies, but the government pays for them, instead of the airlines.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by TrueAmerican

 

They tried letting the airlines handle security. It was almost as bad, only instead of stealing and being corrupt as hell, nothing could get done.

Well frankly I don't see what the problem was. I mean, it's not like we had hijackings every single day. No no, my friend, I honestly think at this point that this all came about as a planned agenda, of which 9/11 was the key masterpiece to get the ball rolling.

The TSA,CIA,NSA,FBI,HOMELAND SERCURITY, FEMA, and all those other orginations that we spend billions of dollars on for what? Has anyone one figured out if they communicate with each other or do they just have their own agenda. Why do we have all these agencies? to me they are a waste of money, I was wondering how Russia done it after seeing the advertisments for the show (american Russian). The russian only used the KGB and that seem to work for them, is this what we are headed for in the future?

More questions than answeres, who really knows what the heck is going on.

reply to post by TrueAmerican


Ah, but you weren't working with them. That was a frustrating period in my life. We were expected to keep everything running by the FAA, but couldn't get anything done because of the airlines. We didn't have hijackings every day, but part of that was the quality of the people we had working, because at times the equipment was barely working. We had one unit that was gone for over a year, because after it got fixed back at the factory, it took so long to get the bill paid they sent it out to various airports as a loaner unit.

reply to post by Zaphod58


So what in effect you are saying is that yeah, security, for all intents and purposes, and for the most part, WAS working- even though yeah there were problems. Point being is that there was really no need to centralize authority. And certainly not to the point that they're groping my granny's boobs.

reply to post by TrueAmerican


It was working just fine as far as catching things went. Yes, some things went through, but usually the things that were really hard to catch anyway, like pepper spray. But for the most part we were catching everything we should have caught, and almost all of the FAA tests (and our FAA liked to make them difficult for us), with the rare exception.

Originally posted by TrueAmerican

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by TrueAmerican

 

They tried letting the airlines handle security. It was almost as bad, only instead of stealing and being corrupt as hell, nothing could get done.

Well frankly I don't see what the problem was. I mean, it's not like we had hijackings every single day. No no, my friend, I honestly think at this point that this all came about as a planned agenda, of which 9/11 was the key masterpiece to get the ball rolling.

Follow the money.....(and the jews) Michael Chertof, Dov Zackhiem, and others.....
Literally hundreds of billions are being raked in by this corruption.....
We are being sold a bill of goods people...............

It should be no wonder, everyone who's tried to sneak a bomb on board a plane since the TSA's inception has gotten past them every single one. Worthless people so worthless.

Dont steal!! You all know the government hates competition.

I think the TSA, where it relates to Airport Security (remember? What it was ONLY supposed to be for? Hmm.. DHS doesn't seem to sometimes) is a good example of a decent idea destroyed by Government planning and P.C. insanity.

If they'd built the TSA as a law enforcement agency dedicated to their very specific task and hired like a law enforcement agency, I think we could have ended up with some of the best Airport security in the world. IF if if. None of that happened of course.

T.S.A. Screener Hiring Requirements

I've literally interviewed for rent-a-cop positions which get assigned out to things like Mall Security or special events (County Fair type stuff) that require a lot more than that list right there. Note, that is a Federal .gov website, not a conspiracy blog somewhere on the net claiming it in terms of credible sourcing.

They get what they screen and train to get. In this case? It's Barney the Security Guard with a GS rank and civil service benefit package.

Want to end the TSA and make flying 1000% safer? Let law abiding gun owners with a concealed carry permit carry on board.

The entire Homeland Security entity in all of its components, from border security (lack there of), cyber security, continuation and doubling down of the patriot act and all of the infrastructure that goes along with it is merely a subsidiary of the Military Industrial Complex. Of course its corrupt. It's corrupt in the same manner that the entire defense industry is corrupt.

With respect to both, do we have any indication of the value, in real terms these massive expenditures deliver? How many incidents have been prevented, stopped that saved lives? Oh - can't disclose that or we advertise our methods.

The entire business has been designed to place citizens in the position of proving a negative - of course we can't prove it does not work - we have been given no information to enable us to do so. The business is advanced through propaganda. Senior members of the government on a stage with a bunch of children with the whole "if we can save the life of a single child, any investment is worth it". Really? Is the constant observation and reduction of the autonomy and freedom of hundreds of millions of people the price we must pay?

Give us the facts, the cost, the verfied results and let the citizens of the country make the decision about what the risk/rewards are. Personally, I'll take more risk and more independance and freedom.

The entire business is dirty. Its simply a method to funnel cash to political contributors and in the case of DHS, to use the spectre of terrrorism to gather information about law abiding citizens to violate their freedoms in ways that are far wider than protecting us from terrorists. This is the infrastructure that enable the government to even begin to contemplate taxing cars by the mile, to hunt down internet piracy, to track the flow of cash associated with legitimate purchases, to observe people going about their normal, legitimate business via cameras, to track individual spending patterns, utimately to bolster tax collection and impose differrent methods of taxation. Track by monitoring phones where you are, what your habits are, and many other efforts to "manage" law abiding people. Its a beautiful thing - implement this massive infrastructure under the notion of keeping us safe and then leverage that infrastructure to enable a massively more intrusive government. Better yet - its all funded off the backs of the tax payers! A classic win/win.

Old wine in new bottles.

reply to post by zonetripper2065


To give you a basic idea of why, without going into details (because even though it was years ago, I signed an SSI agreement, and I won't go into detail about the equipment), I was a CTX5500 operator, in the third class of operators after the machines had first come out. To get certified, we had a week of classroom theory, which included basic bomb making (good times), with a test at the end of the week. Less than an 80% and we were done. The second week was a week on an actual machine, with simulated bags going through, with a test at the end. Less than an 85% and we were done (FAA standards were 80 and 85, the company training us wanted higher). After that we worked the machine for a minimum of two weeks with a certified operator running real bags (no test this time but they looked over our shoulder like starving hawks eyeing a rabbit). When we were ready, and enough operators were ready (anywhere from three weeks to a month with a certified operator depending on class size), then Raytheon came in, and we had to do The Test. This consisted of running 150 real passenger bags, with no one looking over our shoulder (but the certified operator was at the front of the machine loading it just in case). In addition to those 150 bags, there were 50 threat bags that would be added to the mix. These threat bags had simulated bombs in them, and if you missed more than 5, or overidentified too many (meaning you saw bombs where there weren't any) you failed. If you failed you might get a shot at trying again, depending on your scores along the way.

Now along comes the TSA. Keep in mind the CTX is an amazing piece of equipment that can just about tell you the time on the clock in your bag. The TSA gathers a group of operators together, and tells them they're going to be trained to be CTX operators. Their training consists of anywhere from 1-3 hours in a classroom, and the instructions "If the machine alarms, then you call for a bag check, open the bag, and identify what alarmed."

We had operators (me included) that could identify different types of products just by how they appeared on the screen without ever opening anything. Now they have to open every bag that causes the machine to alarm. This is just one problem with the TSA, and their training. They had the potential to hire every certified operator and certified screener, but they had to vilify us, and blame us for 9/11 so that no one could say that the FAA was to blame for their rules allowing knives and box cutters onto planes prior to 9/11.

reply to post by Zaphod58


So what your saying is nowadays any yahoo is hired to safe guard hundreds if not thousands of lives....great.
Prior to 9/11 my father and I always flew with knives. Not like weapons but we used knives in our line of work. We also used them to eat fruit, cheese etc. We're hickabilies.

reply to post by zonetripper2065


Not so much the people that operate them as it is the people above them. Some of their screeners are pretty good, but whoever came up with the training curriculum needs to be taken out and beaten and then shot and drawn and quartered because their training isn't even good enough to be called a joke in some cases.

reply to post by Zaphod58


That is just plain old sad. But as usual its the "upper management " that screws it up.

Originally posted by OptimusSubprime
Want to end the TSA and make flying 1000% safer? Let law abiding gun owners with a concealed carry permit carry on board.

Errr... Uhh... Wow... NO, is my opinion on that idea summed up in a word. No No No No No. Good Lord....CCW carry on an airplane??

I'm not worried about John Q deciding today is a fine day to Hijack a plane to Havana and see the Castro family with a jet to offer in the bargain .....which is a big part of what FIRST started airline security rolling in a major way. That isn't even on the radar screen, since pilots would be armed to a person if it ever returned to passengers having weapons as a legal policy.

I'm FAR more worried about Homer Simpson adjusting the gun in the small of their back and shooting a hole right through the floor of the aircraft at altitude.

I'm worried about some Goober in the bathroom taking it out to do something with and shooting a kid in the seat on the other side of the lavatory wall...or again, giving the plane ventilation it was never designed to have at 35,000 feet. (If Oxygen systems don't work, you may or may not have the mind left intact to spell your own name ..ever again..by the time the pilot gets under 10,000 feet and into comfy air again ...If they aren't impacted too).

Mythbusters did an involved and elaborate test on the ground and with pressure differentials to demonstrate while shooting right through an airline window. It didn't blow anything out, despite repeated efforts pushing to stupid numbers as they're apt to do. Still tho...? CCW on a plane?