TSA’s Quiet Skies Program under scrutiny as former congresswoman snagged in its net and whistleblower faces retribution.
August 12, 2024
By: Bobby Casey, Managing Director GWP
In the the TSA’s case, their Quiet Skies Program got both: a whistleblower exposing abusive deployment against a prominent individual, former congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard and her husband Abraham Williams. This, in conjunction with the failures of the US Secret Service in the recent attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, has all eyes looking at what’s going on with national security.
What is the TSA’s Quiet Skies Program?
The TSA (Transportation Security Administration) in November 2001 in response to the attacks on September 11th. Nine years later, they initiated the Quiet Skies Program. Quiet Skies aims to recognize individuals who indicated a potential threat to aviation security, identifying those people as domestic terrorists.
It’s said that there are between forty and fifty individuals on that list flying at any given time.
Quite Skies relies on what is called “Silent Partner Rules” to determine who should get additional or more enhanced screenings. The rules are based on intelligence assessments of potential threats to aviation security or the United States. The TSA then shares the rules with the Air Transportation System (ATS) to help identify these individuals.
There are apparently fifteen criteria used in these rules, but when the Boston Globe asked for them, neither the TSA nor the Air Marshals could provide that list.
It operates in a tenuously legal grey area to begin with, but what keeps it on the not-quite-illegal side is that it’s a “pre-crime” operation which means they aren’t ever going to court. Nothing they do is meant to be submitted as evidence of a crime, so they aren’t necessarily worried about the constitutionality of their actions.
The TSA and, more broadly, the DHS have a horrible record of failure and abuse. As Reason put it, “After 20 Years of Failure, Kill the TSA: The agency is far more of a threat than the dangers from which it supposedly protects us.”
In 2018, a hearing with TSA Administrator David Pekoske that the Quiet Skies Program hadn’t led to a single arrest, nor foiled any plots. This record remains flatly failed to this day.
Why is the Quiet Skies Program under so much scrutiny now?
The US Marshals are who enforce the Quiet Skies Program. While several whistleblowers have come forward about the waste of resources and money fixating on individuals that don’t pose any actual threat, the most recent target is Tulsi Gabbard and her husband Abraham Williams.
Uncover DC said Gabbard was initially placed on the list on July 23rd, and that trios of Air Marshals first began following her on flights on July 25th. As Racket would learn, surveillance was conducted on at least eight flights, with different three-Marshal teams for each flight, part of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) “Quiet Skies” regimen that can literally surround people with human watchers. There are “potentially 15 or more TSA uniformed and plain clothes” at a gate for such assignments, LaBosco told Racket. The story about Gabbard was surfaced by two TSA whistleblowers, including one detailed to follow her.
There have been cases of mistaken identity where late Senator Ted Kennedy was on the list because it was thought a possible terrorist was operating under the alias of “Anthony Kennedy”. Not the case.
No one can… or no one will… explain how former House Representative Gabbard wound up on this list, but it has uncovered a great number of ordinary individuals who have been swept up in its dragnet.
One of the whistle-blower’s (a US Marshal of twenty-seven years) wife was found on the Quiet Skies Program list, ostensibly as retaliation for “leaking” the activity on Tulsi Gabbard. According to Sonya LaBosco, the Executive Director of the Air Marshal National Council (AMNC), an advocacy association for Federal Air Marshals:
“They’re watching 8-year-old children. They’re following 17-year-old cheerleaders that were traveling for cheer competitions, people who lost their legs in combat… TSA is out of control against the American people.”
The Boston Globe explains there’s very little oversight, while travelers are being monitored for bathroom breaks, what they eat, their general disposition, etc.
Quiet Skies Program isn’t the only “naughty list” the TSA has…
In 2018, the TSA faced fading off into obscurity when then President Trump cut its funding. In response, the TSA conjured up another list to preserve its relevance.
“The Transportation Security Administration has created a new secret watch list to monitor people who may be targeted as potential threats at airport checkpoints simply because they have swatted away security screeners’ hands or otherwise appeared unruly.
“A five-page directive obtained by The New York Times said actions that pose physical danger to security screeners — or other contact that the agency described as ‘offensive and without legal justification’ — could land travelers on the watch list, which was created in February and is also known as a ‘95 list’.”
The issues with these lists remain the same: a total lack of transparency. You don’t know when you’ve been added. There’s no clear process to get removed, much less understand how you landed on that list in the first place.
What’s Next?
In the immediate future, Empower Oversight, a third-party watchdog is going after the TSA directly for their abuse of power, retributory actions against the whistle-blower, and general lack of response or action to their questions concerning the Quiet Skies Program.
What makes this particularly bad is that people are often coaxed out of their civil liberties and taxes in the name of national security. When those national security institutions are then weaponized against its own people, the quiet parts are spoken out loud: You are paying for your own oppression in treasure and liberty.
In January 2024, In January, reporting revealed that DHS allowed a known terrorist to roam freely throughout the country for almost a year before being arrested in Minnesota after U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released him into the United States at our southern border.
How do you reconcile that with hawkishly tracking people like the Marshal’s wife or Tulsi Gabbard?
Who will keep us safe from the institutions supposedly meant to keep us safe?
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