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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.
As always, the weakest link in anything security related are humans. This begs the question of whether we really need the TSA
The government assumes as usual that terrorists don't have money... why would they they only live in tents with sand all around.
They get the same kind of inhuman treatment.
http://boingboing.net/2012/04/25/tsa-agents-bully-7-year-old-wi.html
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
Clearly this indicates that travelers should be tipping their screeners more, and more often.
Really, how is one meant to sell cancer causing X-ray scanners if the public realizes that the costly scanners can't stop well funded people from bribing severely underfunded people.
Who would have thought?!?!
Seriously, though, as someone that proctored the TSA tests for years, believe me, I'm not surprised at all. Half the people I sat for the tests seemed to be under the influence of some type of narcotics, not to mention the gang tattoos and shit.
The test itself was stellar, too, asking hard hitting questions like "Have you ever lived in a house you thought was haunted?" I wish I could say I was kidding, but I'm not.
Remember this next time they've got their hand in your 8 year old's waistband....
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. aiport.
Because the TSA isn't about security, it is about making people feel secure. Well, that and wasting billions of federal dollars on "security" equipment manufactured by private companies run by buddies of TSA directors and/or former TSA directors. I'm not actually sure which one is their main goal, right now.
Kudos to the Terminal 6 guy for actually noticing the 10 pounds of cocaine. I would not want to be a TSA agent who got thrown into Federal prison. That does not sound fun, at all.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
So why would the TSA give a shit?
Oh yeah, they'll never actually catch or stop an actual terrorist so using their fourth amendment exemption to search for things that aren't security risks is all they can actually do.
Those poor TSA agents thought that it was the CIA's cocaine they were waving through. They were just doing their jobs.
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.
I'd like to think that since these people were in positions of power regarding 'Homeland Security', TSA agents after all, are supposed to be there to stop threats right, that such a violation of public trust and authority would warrant them much harsher penalties than some common bloke caught smuggling dope. Sadly I know this not to be true.
I've always thought that Federal employees, be it lowly TSA employees, postal workers right up to Supreme Court Justices, should be held to a much harsher judicial standard than your every day citizen, or local and state public servant. Why? Because the amount of power within the system that is retained by those positions, makes the violations of it that much more severe because they breaking the public trust.
In short, if the system is rotten from within, kinda hard to support in it theory, much less in practice.
That little of a bribe is required! That is horrible, the "accused" agent met the smuggler to get the second payment of $600. Why would a terrorist not just see that as part of the costs of doing whatever plot they have planned. I'm sure they could easily scrounge up that much money, just call the whichever explosive cocaine and they'll be fine. Ugh.
Several decades ago a popular author of thrillers said something along the lines of "the best way to smuggle a nuclear bomb into the USA is to disguise it as drugs and bring it in through the Miami airport".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Because they can tell that a 10 pound package contains 10 pounds of cocaine and not 10 pounds of explosives with their magical ESP powers?
Or that there's not a knife or gun hidden in the center of that cocaine like substance?
Or, god forbid, a bottle of water hidden inside?
I'd also wager that said screener was bribed t let the smuggler through with a 10 lb brick of whatever the heck he was carrying. I don't think the screener pulled out the DEA drug test kit to make sure that was a block of coke and not a block of say, semtex. It's probably also fair to assume that this wasn't the first time he's done this, this is just the first time getting caught at it. After the first few, the screener that was getting used to the quick cash probably was paying a lot less attention to what the courier was carrying.
The only reason it got caught this time is the smuggler screwed up. That indicates there's a fundamental flaw in the system. But it doesn't really matter, nobody that can fix it is listening to anything we have to say.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I'm annoyed by the TSA as much as the next guy, but it's their job to screen people and baggage for threats to aircraft (snow globes, nail clippers, pasta sauce, hand grenades etc.). Since when is it their job to detect drugs? That's the job of the police, not the TSA. Cocaine and meth are not threats to aircraft.
Those humans are letting smugglers through ... but they haven't caught a single terrorist yet.
I'd say that almost all of the "additional security" since the WTC attack is only "security theatre". Aside from the improved flight deck doors and increased passenger involvement.
Get rid of the TSA.
I've always thought this is one of the biggest holes in the entire system -- all a terrorist has to do is bribe one of the thousands of screeners (or a few of them) in some small airport anywhere in the country, and the terrorist can fly his 10 pound bomb to JFK or any other large airport.
The screener will think he's getting paid $25,000 in cash to smuggle in some drugs, he doesn't even have to know it's a bomb.
How could it be a terminal mixup if no one died?
You're assuming that the TSA agents are checking to make sure that's 10 pounds of cocaine and not 10 pounds of semtex.
How about ten pounds of weaponized Anthrax?
That's enough to kill several hundred thousand people, maybe even a million or more, depending.
There's a video I saw somewhere where a radical Islamic cleric is talking about smuggling Anthrax across the Mexican border by paying Mexican drug cartels and coyotes, where he mentioned that a few pounds could kill 300,000 Americans.
Sleep well, fellow citizens! The high level of security at the southern border combined with thorough TSA security at our airports, train, and bus stations means there is almost no danger whatsoever.
These security-theater idiots in the DHS and TSA remind me of the steward trying to control & calm the fleeing passengers abandoning the luxury starship in the movie "The Fifth Element" that starred Bruce Willis, screaming at the top of his voice "REMAIN CALM!! as the computer voice counts down to the big KABOOM! The last shot showing the steward showed him flat as a pancake on the deck, having been trampled flat.
We're doomed, aren't we?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
as they stand massed in an unsecured part of a typical U.S. aiport.
And that is the biggest, most glaring, elephant-in-the-living-room hole in U.S. airport security. The last time I had the misfortune to go through Chicago O'Hare airport, there must have been 300 people packed into an area the size of a basketball court, all waiting to go through the TSA checkpoint. Never mind a nail bomb, the place was so packed that if someone had dropped a lit road flare, the panic and stampede would have caused casualties.
Not that I'm advocating dropping lit road flares in check-in lines, but if I can think of it, I'm sure someone else can.