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Terminal Mixup Implicates TSA Agents In LAX Smuggling Plot
First time accepted submitter ian_po writes "The U.S. Attorney's office has filed indictments against 7 people, including two Transportation Security Administration Screeners and two former TSA employees, after federal agents set up several smuggling sting operations. The alleged smuggling scheme was revealed after a suspected drug courier went to Terminal 5, where his flight was departing, instead of going through the Terminal 6 checkpoint his written instructions directed him to. Court documents indicate the plan was to return to Terminal 5 through a secure tunnel after being allowed through security by the accused Screener. The courier was caught with 10 pounds of cocaine at the other checkpoint by a different TSA agent. If convicted, the four TSA employees face a minimum of 10 years in Federal prison." If ten pounds of anything can get onto a plane by the simple expedient of bribery, please explain again why adult travelers, but not children, must remove their shoes as they stand massed in an unsecured part of a typical U.S. airport.
If it's possible to move ten pounds of cocaine through an airport, it's just as possible to move ten pounds of explosives. Hell, the TSA agents don't even need to know it's a bomb. If they think it's just drugs they probably won't care. Terrorists don't even need to get a bomb on a plane. They'd do far more damage setting it off in the airport, probably killing a larger number of people and likely resulting in air travel being grounded around the country for a few days while the powers that be try to figure out what happened and whether other airports are at risk.
Really, the only way to make it stop is to completely leave the Middle East alone, in which case they'll probably go bother someone else or each other. The only other alternative is to make sure they know that if they bomb our airports, we'll hit them back with one hundred times as much force and an equal disregard for human life. Either way, the TSA becomes completely pointless.
TSA employees took payments of up to $2,400 to provide drug couriers unfettered access at LAX over a six-month period last year.
Up to $2,400 bucks. That's less than the cost of a first class ticket for the average Joe who doesn't want to deal with TSA. It's also well within the budget of a terrorist organization. That's awfully cheap.
Quite right. You would (probably not) be surprised to learn that the rank and file airport workers, you know, those minimum wage folk who flip the burgers, empty the trash, haul the bags, and fuel the aircraft (more on that in a moment) go to work in the secured areas without going through screening of any kind. Well, there's that pre-employment background check, but that's... let's call it "less than exhaustive".
My spouse used to work for one of the companies that fuels commercial aircraft at many of our nation's major airports. These workers have an extremely important job, and as you might expect, they have access to extremely sensitive parts of airport and aircraft. Nevertheless, their background checks are (or were) done by the cheapest contractor they could find. The results were... spotty. It seems reasonable to assume that the same goes for workers at the terminal food courts, news stands, custodial services, etc. Those poor smugglers could probably have bought the services of a Cinnabon worker for a lot less than a TSA agent.