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Human Events...
TSA Follies: See SPOT
Fail
by Michelle Malkin
04/08/2011
Air traffic controllers have been catching a lot of grief for sleeping
on the job lately. But do you know what Transportation Security
Administration officials have been doing -- or rather, not doing --
lately? A federal watchdog revealed this week that TSA’s
counterterrorism specialists failed to detect 16 separate jihad
operatives who moved through target airports “on at least 23 different
occasions.” The name of the TSA monitoring program paying for all this
flying-blind failure, I kid you not:
SPOT.
Under the “Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques” plan,
TSA’s designated behavior detection officers are supposed to closely
watch travelers who pose potential security risks and who exhibit any
number of appearances or activities “indicative of stress, fear, or
deception.” But long-entrenched, bipartisan American political
correctness hampers the kind of effective, efficient national security
profiling that Israeli airline security officials practice so well.
The result? TSA’s snoozing SPOT-ters catch nobody -- for fear of being
accused by the grievance lobby of singling anybody out.
Stephen Lord, who specializes in homeland security issues at the
Government Accountability Office, reviewed Justice Department documents
showing that “in December 2007 an individual who later pleaded guilty
to providing material support to Somali terrorists boarded a plane at
the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport en route to Somalia.
Similarly, in August 2008, an individual who later pleaded guilty to
providing material support to al Qaeda boarded a plane at Newark
Liberty International Airport en route to Pakistan to receive terrorist
training to support his efforts to attack the New York subway system.”
Other terror suspect travelers who slipped through the cracks have been
subsequently tied to the 2008 Mumbai bombings; the plots to attack a
Quantico, Va., Marine base and New York City infrastructure; and an
attack by a Pakistani-trained American jihadi on an Afghanistan base.
Young. Male. Muslim. Traveling to al-Qaida friendly hot spots. How did
these at-risk terror tourists escape scrutiny?
The GAO noted that the TSA SPOT team uses a numerical grading system
that has no basis in science or research. But TSA deployed it anyway
despite the government’s lack of validation. More appalling: Nearly 10
years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks highlighted vast gaps in
information-sharing and dot-connecting, TSA is still “not
systematically collecting and analyzing information obtained ... on
passengers who may pose a threat to the aviation system.”
Nobody has guidance on how, when or what data to enter into the
agency’s “Transportation Information Sharing System.” Nationwide
airport access to the system, such as it is, only came online last
month.
As usual, the now-unionized TSA is clamoring for fatter taxpayer
rewards for their systemic failure. SPOT took in more than $211 million
in fiscal year 2010; the Obama administration wants to pour $232
million into it this fiscal year -- a 9.5 percent increase in funding
-- to subsidize 3,350 SPOT personnel.
The Department of Homeland Security wants separate funding of another
$254 million to support 350 more SPOT officers. If they get what they
want, TSA will have invested over $800 million since fiscal year 2007
in a program that is not spotting anyone. Labor bosses are too busy
counting the $30 million in new dues they’re raking in.
In the end, the reckless ethos established by first TSA overseer Norm
Mineta still haunts and hamstrings the feds’ indiscriminate
grab-and-grope airline security apparatus.
Remember? Asked by CBS reporter Steve Kroft whether “a 70-year-old
white woman from Vero Beach, Fla., would receive the same level of
scrutiny as a Muslim young man from Jersey City,” Mineta responded in
2001, “Basically, I would hope so.”
Yep, that’s your TSA tax dollars at work: Thousands Standing Around,
watching the clock while jihad jet-setters fly by.
Read it at Human Events
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