Rand Paul Presses TSA Over Weaponization Of Terror Watchlists

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul pressed the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Wednesday on why the agency is weaponizing watchlists to spy on political dissidents as terrorists.

In a letter to TSA Administrator David Pekoske, Paul cited recent whistleblower reports disclosing the transportation agency’s surveillance of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, and the wife of a federal air marshal through the Quiet Skies program.

“Taken together, these incidents seem to be part of a broader pattern in which TSA has repurposed Quiet Skies to surveil individuals based on their political activities, even when there is no evidence of wrongdoing,” Paul wrote.

The whistleblower protection group, Empower Oversight, sent letters to the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month detailing the accusations of misconduct. According to a protected disclosure from a whistleblower whose own wife was “improperly labeled a ‘domestic terrorist,’” the U.S. Federal Air Marshals Service (FAMS) “was improperly targeting individuals for enhanced surveillance” including Gabbard. The whistleblower’s wife was investigated under FAMS “Special Mission Coverage” because “she attended President Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech at the ellipse in Washington D.C.”

“She was nowhere near the U.S. Capitol complex that day, yet her FAMS file falsely stated she ‘unlawfully entered the United States Capitol Building on [Jan. 6, 2021],’” the recent letter read.

“Ultimately, the whistleblower was able to work with the FBI to have his wife’s name removed from the terror watchlist in the spring of 2023,” the letter continued. “Yet clearing his own wife’s name did not remedy the clear abuses of FAMS surveillance or deter further abuses — as the recent Tulsi Gabbard revelations demonstrate.”

The allegations, Paul wrote Wednesday, “echo concerns highlighted in a previous report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), which identified critical deficiencies in TSA’s management of the Quiet Skies program.” Deficiencies include “insufficient oversight and inadequate safeguards to protect against the misuse of passenger data.”

Federal air marshals, Empower Oversight reported in a follow-up letter, surveilled Gabbard on at least eight separate flights after the former Hawaii lawmaker and critic of the surveillance state criticized President Joe Biden on Fox News.

Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt charged the TSA with initiating a probe against an anonymous whistleblower who came forward, writing, “a retaliatory investigation that hunts for whistleblowers in order to intimidate them into silence is exactly the wrong step for the agency to take.”

“Instead, agency leadership should be investigating the abuses on which FAMs are blowing the whistle,” Leavitt wrote.

Read the full letter from Sen. Paul below:

Paul TSA Letter by The Federalist on Scribd