Author: James Bovard

The Intercept has a great story this morning with confidential documents revealing the official TSA warning signs.  My favorite terrorist giveaway is “excessive complaints about  the screening process.”

Ya, that was the first trick my Al Qaeda buddies told me about how to finesse airport security prior to wreaking havoc aboard a flight.

I have whacked TSA’s behavior detection program plenty of times in recent years. Here’s an outtake from a 2013 Washington Times op-ed:

Other TSA programs have also pointlessly harassed or subjugated Americans. Gerardo Hernandez, the TSA agent slain on Friday, was part of the agency’s “behavior-detection” program involving thousands of TSA agents who “chat down” passengers at airports and watch for “micro-expressions” that signal potential trouble. Though Mr. Hernandez may have been a model employee — competent, courteous and fair-minded — that program has failed to detect a single terrorist and has spurred the arrests of thousands of travelers.

More than 30 TSA agents complained in 2012 that the behavior-detection program at Boston’s Logan International Airport had become a “a magnet for racial profiling, targeting not only Middle Easterners, but also blacks, Hispanics and other minorities,” The New York Times reported. The agents relied on “terrorist profiles” such as black guys wearing baseball caps backward or Hispanics traveling to Miami. In Honolulu, some behavior-detection agents were nicknamed “Mexicutioners” for their proclivity for harassing Mexican travelers.

The behavior-detection squad at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey engaged in such blatant stereotyping that it was derided as “Mexican hunters” by other TSA agents. Some behavior-detection officers complained that their supervisors pressured them to fabricate false charges against illegal aliens to justify reporting them to law enforcement. Last June, an inspector general slammed the behavior-detection program as a perennial flop, deriding the TSA for failing to develop “performance measures” or to “accurately assess” its effectiveness.

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I have clashed with TSA screeners plenty of times over the years.  I was cross-examined by a TSA “behavior detection” officer last year when returning from  the Free State Project Liberty Forum in New Hampshire:

As I was going through the TSA checkpoint last Sunday at the Manchester, NH airport, I was cross-examined by a TSA Behavior Detection Officer (BDO). The BDO engages in “chat-downs” of travelers to select which passengers are pulled aside for special searches or third-degree interrogation.

This BDO guy was a colicky, low-watt, middle-aged white guy who looked like he signed on with TSA after receiving a pension for spending 30 years writing parking tickets in some one-horse New England town.

He  asked if I was traveling on business or pleasure.

“Business.”

“What were doing in New Hampshire?” he grumbled.

“I was giving a speech on the TSA.”

“Huh.  How did it go?”

“It was a great audience. They seemed to really enjoy the speech.”

“Okay” –  and he shrugged and signaled I could move along.

I was waiting for his followup question – and I would have told him folks liked the speech because every person there despised his agency and would like to see him thrown out of his uniform and into the street.

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Here’s a vignette of a 2011 encounter at Baltimore-Washington Airport:

I was traveling out to a conference in Las Vegas  when I got accosted at Baltimore Washington International Airport. The culprit had epaulets and more swagger than a second-term Arkansas congressman. All the women who had warned me for years that cigars would be my downfall were finally vindicated.

I was passing through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint. I was trying my damndest to be a good citizen. I had skipped going to the shooting range that morning so that my hands and shirt would not reek of cordite. I had double-checked to confirm I had not left any ammo clips in my carry-on bag. And I was not even wearing my favorite “Government Sux!” t-shirt. And I even took off my boots and send them down through the carry-on scanner.

I slipped through the magnetometer with nary a beep. But this tall prematurely balding TSA agent with bulging eyes stepped towards me, pointed, and bellowed: “WHAT’S THAT IN YOUR POCKET?!!?”

I glanced down at my shirt pocket. “It’s a cigar.”

He glared like he’d caught me smuggling a pipe bomb in my underwear.

“Let me see!!!” he barked as everyone with a 75-foot radius turned to look.

I handed it to him and explained: “It’s a brand called ‘Factory Throwouts.’ First time I tried ‘em – 20 bucks for 20 cigars, and free shipping. I like cheap cigars, but they’re too cheap even for me.”

He snorted and thrust it back at me. Perhaps he was suspicious because the cigar didn’t have a band wrapper. If it had been a Macanudo, he might have changed his attitude.

“WHAT ELSE YOU GOT IN THAT POCKET!?!”

“A business card.”

I retrieved it and showed it to him. He glanced at it the way an illiterate person looks at a map you hand him when you’re lost and seeking directions in some woebegone backwoods crossroads.

He eventually snorted that I could pass, but probably only because he couldn’t figure out whether my Cheshire Cat grin was moronic or seditious. After I passed, I turned and watched this guy for a few minutes. He was acting like a prison guard browbeating a bunch of convicts lined up to take a shower.

One of the heroes of the Waco fights of the 1990s has passed away.  Mike McNulty did more than any other single person to doggedly pursue the truth about Waco.  And he produced or co-produced a number of superb films that vividly and compelling explained why the feds were lying about the carnage they unleashed in Texas.  And he fed great information to me and other journalists – as well as sometimes impatiently pushing us forward, urging us to turn over more rocks. (I think my sense of humor puzzled or irked him at times during our phone calls, but I came out on the right side of the issue, so he usually tolerated me pretty well.)  Mike was never cowed by official bullshit or by the strutting and intimidation attempts by lawmen or political appointee poohbahs.  Mike helped Janet Reno get the legacy she deserved.

I quoted Mike at length on an article on the Waco coverup that came out in the Washington Times on the morning of the Oklahoma City bombing, April 19, 1995:

Other investigators are also raising questions about the government’s possible role in killing the Davidians. Michael McNulty, chairman of the Citizens Organization for Public Safety, of Fort Collins, Colo., has conducted an extensive analysis of videotapes on the final assault, as well as interviews with forensic scientists and Davidian survivors.

Mr. McNulty believes FBI snipers shot Davidians on the morning of April 19 as they were running out of the back of the compound to escape the CS gas. (During the FBI-Randy Weaver confrontation a few months before the Waco conflict, one FBI SWAT team member summarized the rules of engagement as “if you see ‘em, shoot ‘em,” according to a confidential Justice Department report). Mr. McNulty argues that infrared videotape indicates that the tanks may have pushed the bodies of the slain Davidians back into the building before the fire began. (Mr. McNulty has portions of the tape, but there are significant gaps that the government has refused to release).

Mr. McNulty also believes the FBI intentionally ignited two fires in the compound the final day with pyrotechnic devices. He says that FBI pyrotechnic devices were fired into areas inundated with CS gas particulates at precisely the same time that fireballs exploded from the back of the gymnasium. According to Army manuals, there is a significant risk of flammability from CS gas particulates. For instance, Army field manual FM-21-27 states on page 21: “Warning: When using the dry agent CS-1, do not discharge indoors. Accumulating dust may explode when exposed to spark or open flame.”

Continue reading “Mike McNulty, Waco Hero, R.I.P.”

In his speech this week to his anti-extremism conclave in Washington, President Obama declared that “former extremists have the opportunity to speak out, speak the truth about terrorist groups, and oftentimes they can be powerful messengers in debunking these terrorist ideologies.”

But what about former victims of government extremism speaking out?

Maher Arar is a Canadian who was kidnapped at John F. Kennedy Airport in 2002 and renditioned to Syria, where he was tortured at the behest of the U.S. government. I mentioned his case in a 2007 American Conservative article optimistically titled, “Will Torture Bring Down Bush?”:

But the evidence of CIA “torture taxis” secretly racing around the globe carrying gagged, sedated detainees to some of the most brutal regimes in the world proved too much for Bush to deny. He revised his defense in April 2005: “We operate within the law and we send people to countries where they say they are not going to torture people.” But then why would the U.S. go to the trouble of kidnapping people—Canadian Maher Arar, who was grabbed at JFK Airport and renditioned to Syria or Australian Mamduh Habib, seized in Pakistan and flown to Egypt, for instance—and turning them over to governments the U.S. has long denounced for using torture?

I also blogged about his case in 2010, “Obama Administration: Don’t Question Sincerity of Torturers” –

The Supreme Court disgraced itself on Monday by torpedoing the appeal of Maher Arar, the Canadian who was kidnapped at John F. Kennedy International Airport and sent by the U.S. government to Syria for torturing.

The Canadian government has publicly apologized to Arar for providing false information to the U.S. government about Arar’s suspicious connections. The U.S. government has refused to admit it did anything wrong in shipping Arar to the Middle East to be tortured at U.S. behest.

Continue reading “Obama’s Latest Hokum on Violent Extremism: Arar Retorts”

I was stunned that Maryland voters gave the heave-ho to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Anthony Brown yesterday.  Obama’s “Mini-Me” never recovered from his role as the mastermind of perhaps the most disastrous ObamaCare Internet site rollout in the country.

I accidentally participated with Brown in the Rockville Memorial Day parade earlier this year.  It wasn’t my fault  –  maybe I was distracted by the garish Gaithersburg Police Humvee and did not notice where I was supposed to exit the parade route. Here’s the story-

I was out biking that morning and finished up by swinging into Rockville Town Center to get incensed by politicians milking hell out of Memorial Day. The speeches at a poppy wreath dedication were the usual “they died for your freedom” trope – and thus all the politicians that sent troops to die are absolved. The unctuous mayor of Rockville was the emcee, and her blather was enough to make listeners wish they were deaf.

There was a half hour break between the belated end of the speeches and the start of the Memorial Day parade – so I roamed a mile or two north out to where the marching groups were assembling.

There I saw the mayor sitting there in the back of a convertible like a homecoming queen, smiling as if people actually gave a damn who she was. She would be followed by half a dozen other local pols and candidates in convertibles.  Anthony Brown was there, and he had a flock of volunteers wearing his t-shirts and looking like they were the advance guard of a progressive era. Or at least a vast expansion of government jobs for Brown’s followers. Brown was acting like he was on the way to his coronation by voters later that year. (He easily won the Democratic primary for governor a few weeks later.) Brown tub-thumped about his military service in Iraq as if both Brown and the war itself had been a glorious success.

I wasn’t causing any trouble when, out of nowhere, the mayor started throwing candy to nearby little kids. The tykes scrambled like dogs fighting for a bone, and the mayor beamed and threw more Tootsie Rolls. Brown’s troop were also throwing out candy to onlookers. This is Maryland politics reduced to a 100 calorie thumbnail.

The mayor’s convertible took off for the parade and I figured I’d trail it – at least until I got kicked off the street. At that point, the parade was haphazard; units were getting launched far too slowly, leaving big gaps between performers.

To get a good photo of the mayor dispensing goodies, I realized that I needed to be in front of her. I saw where the parade was heading and took a turn down a street seeking the best chance for a good shot.  And then I noticed – OOPS – that the sidewalks were fenced in and people 4 to 5 deep were waiting to see the parade.   The mayor’s convertible turned into the street behind me –  – there was no graceful way to go back – and the only thing ahead of me was the Rockville Police military-style color guard.  So I biked along for a couple blocks between the mayor and the color guard – including past the reviewing booth and emcee.

People were gawking: “What the hell is he doing in the parade?” I finally found a break in the fencing.  As I was taking my bike through it, some old lady growled at me: “People probably thought you were a clown!”

I didn’t stick around to see Brown’s contingent pass by the reviewing stand, but a Washington Post story later detailed how Brown had been barking out orders to his street walkers the whole way through the parade.

Folks were snapping endless photos that day and I checked on Flickr to see if any shots of a wayward cyclist turned up. No luck.

On Twitter @jimbovard      www.jimbovard.com

President Obama and a heap of other politicians are imploring us to view voting as the ultimate expression of our freedom and self-government. The reality is that the vast majority of politicians will do as they damn well please after Election Day.

Edward Snowden’s revelations should have been a battering ram to use against the incumbent party. Instead, the National Security Agency’s crimes seem to have all been forgotten.

The Senate report on CIA torture has been stonewalled for years. The Obama administration succeeded in delaying the release until after tomorrow’s elections – perhaps to avoid its grisly revelations from distracting from the president’s denunciations of cynicism.

Obama’s Syrian war became far more of a debacle this weekend when masses of “moderate” Syrian fighters defected to ISIS. But almost no one on the campaign trail is holding the administration liable for plunging the nation into another pointless (and mindless) war.

Regardless of the results tomorrow, Americans can expect a continued bipartisan conspiracy against their rights and liberties.

One bright side – if the Republicans win big, it may become more difficult for Obama & team to coverup their abuses and crimes. And that could sow some seeds that will later haunt the political establishment.

On Twitter @jimbovard   www.jimbovard.com

(the Tom Toles cartoon at the top is one of his best ever)

 

Like Richard Nixon always said, the nation’s cartoonists are a pox on national security.  And now Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury has gone and exposed the secret calculations behind the latest U.S. intervention in Iraq. Sorta.

If American citizens had real-time access to the secret memos, emails etc. that are driving Obama’s latest bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria, the truth would probably be at least as absurd as this cartoon.   It is the secrecy that permits Obama to bomb with impunity.  Secrecy prevents far more opposition to Obama’s latest harebrained scheme for benevolent carnage.

And if the ISIS terrorists begin targeting Americans and U.S. facilities abroad or here, the Obama administration will assure us that there was no way they could have anticipated such a response to the bombing campaign against ISIS.  And homeland security and nitwit pro-bombing foreign experts will win lifetime job security as a result.

On Twitter @jimbovard       www.jimbovard.com