Our federal government needs to answer some serious questions about its recent responses to a ban on random law enforcement inspections on food catering trucks entering Virginia airports.
Hosted by Fox & Friends’s Brian Kilmeade, Fox News “Tucker Carslon Tonight” did an expose about the fact that my U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) / Transportation Security Administration / Office of Law Enforcement Federal Air Marshal Service (LE/FAMS) Visible Intermodal Prevention Response (VIPR) team was ordered to stand-down during a surprise “Operation Guardian” event. We were ordered to not conduct “open and look” checks into certain food catering trucks because their meals were “specially blessed”. Six months later, LE/FAMS Regional Supervisory Air Marshal in Charge Clyde Porter told me and a TSA-contracted mediator that police “open and look” checks are prohibited on certain trucks because the “public has religious rights under the First Amendment[.]”
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6055304790001/
TSA’s VIPR program has an annual budget of $49.8 million. It was established in response to the 2004 train station bombings in Madrid, Spain.
The TSA’s series of responses to Fox News are nonsensical:
“ongoing investigation…cannot comment”
“[we] do not do any random inspections”
“[we have a] vigorous inspection & testing program” On September 26, 2017, my VIPR team was ordered to set up a vehicle checkpoint inside the Dulles International Airport (IAD) air operations area (AOA) in order to perform “open and look” checks on ALL vehicles entering the AOA. At least two Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) police officers were with us inside the AOA.
My VIPR team in based in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Four months earlier, one of the same MWAA police officers had worked with me on a previous “Operation Guardian” event in which we set up a vehicle checkpoint on the same spot. This office ordered me to not conduct a “open and look” check on a catering truck citing “specially blessed” meals. The MWAA officer stated to us that these meals would later be loaded onto foriegn carriers headquartered in the Middle East. MWAA verbalized its stand-down order within earshot of the driver who already consented to me breaking the blue plastic seals on his truck’s outside cargo latch.
Only the 2016 and 2017 MWAA Annual Reports detail conducting “Operation Guardian” (OG) events with “TSA and Federal Air Marshals”.
My initial “religious exemption policy” disclosure was on September 26, 2017 in an email to my first-line supervisor, now-TSA Headquarters Supervisory Federal Air Marshal (SFAM) Steven Mosely. Then again to TSA LE/FAMS Regional Supervisory Air Marshal in Charge (RSAC) Clyde Porter on February 2, 2018 in which he read from a prepared document that religious food trucks are exempt “open and look” checks under the First Amendment, specifically “religious freedom”. RSAC Porter made his “religious freedom” assertion to me and contracted mediator Yolanda Wade during our March 20, 2018 mediation.
MWAA’s police chief tweeted about “Operation Guardian” events four times tagging it with #OperationGuardian, the last one on August 22, 2017. I also checked MWAA’s other twitter accounts and still no mention of “Operation Guardian” events after August 22, 2017.
July 27, 2016:
https://twitter.com/MWAAPoliceChief/status/758361429531557889
September 29, 2016:
https://twitter.com/MWAAPoliceChief/status/781565347375804416
November 17, 2016:
https://twitter.com/MWAAPoliceChief/status/799240851297865728
August 22, 2017:
https://twitter.com/MWAAPoliceChief/status/900056304764563456
Unlike its 2016 and 2017 Annual Reports MWAA stops citing anything about “Operation Guardian” or “TSA Federal Air Marshals” as its partners:
https://www.mwaa.com/sites/default/files/2018_annual_report.pdf
I made my initial “religious food exemption” disclosure on September 26, 2017, and 10 days later, TSA locked me out of my field office for a psychiatric examination:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/us/politics/air-marshals-scandals-investigations.html
MWAA’s 2017 Annual Report:
Page 17:”Operation Guardian is designed to achieve and maintain a high level of intense proactive law enforcement activity for the entire detail. The overarching objectives of this initiative are to create counter-terrorist and criminal suppression measures through overt enforcement and presence coupled with covert and undisclosed activities. Examples of specific details include high-visibility M4 deployment, K-9 sweeps, saturation patrols, and initiating contacts through traffic enforcement or field interviews. Contacts are made with our Airports community during the operation and See Something, Say Something along with Watch, Listen, Speak Up literature is handed out. Jurisdictional partners routinely participate in the operations. Examples of our jurisdictional partners who participate include Virginia State Police, Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, Fairfax County Police Department, Metro Transit Police Department, Arlington County Police Department, TSA and Federal Air Marshals. The program provides a layered approach to the safety and security of both Reagan National and Dulles International Airports.”
https://www.mwaa.com/sites/default/files/2017_annual_report.pdf
MWAA’s 2016 Annual Report:
Page 4:”We work with our federal, state, and local partners to constantly find inventive methods to keep our traveling public safe through initiatives such as Operation Guardian, Operation Gate Guard, and our consistent focus on our ‘insider threat’.
[ . . . ]Page 19:”Operation Guardian is designed to achieve and maintain a high level of intense proactive law enforcement activity for the entire detail. The overarching objectives of this initiative are to create counter-terrorist and criminal suppression measures through overt enforcement and presence coupled with covert and undisclosed activities. Examples of specific details include high-visibility M4 deployment, K-9 sweeps, saturation patrols, and initiating contacts through traffic enforcement or field interviews. Contacts are made with our Airports community during the operation and See Something, Say Something along with Watch, Listen, Speak Up literature is handed out. Jurisdictional partners routinely participate in the operations. Examples of our jurisdictional partners who participate include Virginia State Police, Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, Fairfax County Police Department, Metro Transit Police Department, Arlington County Police Department, TSA and Federal Air Marshals. The program provides a layered approach to the safety and security of both Reagan National and Dulles International Airports.”
https://www.mwaa.com/sites/default/files/2016_annual_report.pdf
I have polled numerous supervisory and non-supervisory Federal Air Marshals, all of them cannot recall any TSA VIPR participation in “Operation Guardian” events after my September 26, 2017 disclosure.
It may be pure coincidence that MWAA stopped publicizing “Operation Guardian” events–a month before my complaint–but nevertheless, Congress has an obligation to investigate. It is impossible to screen the megatons of food products going into the AOAs, so random law enforcement inspections are ideal for keeping airport employees on their toes and honest.
Past history supports my concerns about airport workers bypassing TSA screening.
In 2007, Las Vegas McCarran International Airport:
https://youtu.be/nh-5ARuZhFo
In 2015, 46 workers, from a single U.S. airport, arrest for smuggling unknown packages provided to them for cash payment:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/forty-six-arrested-in-fbi-drug-sting-based-at-dfw-airport/
Same airport four years later, nine different airport workers convicted:
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2019/05/10/dfw-airport-drug-smuggling-crew-offered-fly-explosives-admits-guilt
Airport worker convicted of smuggling firearms on flights from Atlanta to New York:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/former-baggage-handler-sentenced-smuggling-loaded-firearms-aircraft
For 17 years, a New York JFK airport worker was an agent for China smuggling contraband passed TSA screening for Chinese military officers:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-manager-international-airline-pleads-guilty-acting-agent-chinese-government
Robert J. MacLeanFormer TSA Federal Air MarshalLeesburg, Virginia