Tim Sumner

9/11, Aviation Security

TSA did not pre-screen thousands of aliens for flight training despite post-9/11 law

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Kip Hawley ought to be fired; his alleging there are “layers of airline security” is a sick joke. Six years after 9/11, the Transportation Security Administration remains the poster program for fraud, waste, and abuse.

Atta's temporary airman certificate

Watch the video (click on the image)

Read ABC News’ full report (including the TSA’s internal communications).

And see this report, yesterday, by USA Today:

Frightening findings

In addition, the TSA has been the subject of reports of mismanagement and there have been accusations of wasteful spending — at best. For example, a report from that same Inspector General’s office in 2005 found that a private firm used to hire screeners for the TSA had estimated its fee at $104 million but was paid $741 million, including a $1.7 million bill for the use of a Colorado ski resort for recruiting. An earlier report from the same office criticized TSA’s spending and stated TSA “distributed about $1.5 million in individual cash awards to 88 executives during 2003, making its average award more than any other agency’s average award to executives.”

But perhaps the most frightening findings concern the Federal Air Marshal Service, which expanded dramatically after 9/11, from just 33 marshals to thousands. In recent years, however, government sources say those numbers have been shrinking again; one marshal told me, “Everyone thinks there are enough air marshals on the planes, and there are not.” I also spoke to TSA insiders who have expressed concerns that suspicious individuals continue to conduct “probes” onboard U.S. commercial aircraft. One such incident, involving 13 Middle Eastern men acting suspiciously onboard a Northwest Airlines domestic flight in 2004, was serious enough to generate a report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General.

There are other aviation security issues that require immediate focus as well. They include:

* Procedures for securing airport property and perimeters

* Hiring and screening of airport employees

* Inspecting and handling of air cargo (including air cargo transported on passenger aircraft)

* Security procedures for civil airports and civil aircraft

al Qaeda, World Trade Center

Supreme Court appeal denied for 1993 WTC bomber

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From the New York Daily News:

Fifteen years after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a Palestinian sentenced to more than 100 years in prison in the attack claims that a vengeful U.S. government has blocked him from appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. Ahmad Mohammed Ajaj, who remains in extreme isolation in the nation’s most secure prison, filed a lawsuit last year in U.S. District Court in Manhattan against more than a dozen judges, federal court employees, Bureau of Prisons officials and his former defense lawyer Maranda Fritz. He said they failed to notify him of appeals court rulings and blocked his access to what he would need for a Supreme Court appeal of his conviction on conspiracy charges in the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000 others.
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In his court papers, Ajaj describes a grim existence at the Colorado prison in which he was forced to wear waist and leg chain irons for prison video conferences with the courts. He said his lack of access to the courts has left him depressed and with chronic low self-esteem and stress.

It sounds to me like the guards at Colorado’s Supermax prison are doing a fine job.