In a recent turn of events that is nothing short of remarkable, FBI agents have raided the home and office of Office of Special Counsel Scott Bloch, "seizing computers and documents belonging to the agency chief and staff," as reported by The Wall Street Journal.

FBI agents and investigators are working to determine if Scott Bloch and his senior staff are part of a cover-up.

Bloch was caught erasing files on his own computer as well as the computers of two of his former staff members after discovering he was being investigated back in 2005.

In an earlier WSJ article, Bloch admitted using a private computer service called "Geeks on Call" to erase files but claimed he was just getting rid of a virus. 

The OSC is seen by many federal agents I have interviewed as the standard-bearer in fighting fraud and corruption within the federal government. Many agents appeal their cases to OSC; the office take on but a few.

And yet in recent years, a growing number of these federal agents (interviewed by me) have been unexpectedly dropped, or their cases inexplicably "settled," in what they thought to be the homestretch of accountability.  

Perhaps the motivation behind this FBI raid explains why. The Inspector General is now looking into claims that Mr. Bloch "abused his investigative authority, improperly retaliated against employees or dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination."

So, who's guarding the guards? 

FBI Agents Raid Work, Home Of Special Counsel's Bloch 

By JOHN R. WILKE

May 6, 2008    3:10 p.m.

WASHINGTON — Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Office of Special Counsel here, seizing computers and documents belonging to the agency chief Scott Bloch and staff.

More than a dozen FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas shortly after 10 a.m., shutting down the agency's computer network and searching its offices, as well as Mr. Bloch's home. Employees said the searches appeared focused on alleged obstruction of justice by Mr. Bloch during the course of an 2006 inquiry into his conduct in office.

The independent agency, created by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal, is charged with protecting federal employees and deciding whether their complaints merit full-scale investigation — a first line of defense against fraud and mismanagement in government. It also enforces a ban on U.S. employees engaging in partisan political activity.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Mr. Bloch had used "Geeks on Call," an outside computer-service firm, to erase his computer and those of two former staff members in December 2006. (See related article)

Mr. Bloch's agency is typically involved in sensitive investigations of alleged government wrongdoing. Before the departure of White House political director Karl Rove, Mr. Bloch's staff was looking into whether he or other White House officials improperly used federal agencies to help re-elect Republicans in 2006.

At the same time, Mr. Bloch has been under investigation himself since 2005. At the direction of the White House, the federal Office of Personnel Management's inspector general is looking into claims that Mr. Bloch abused his investigative authority, improperly retaliated against employees or dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination.

The computer erasures became part of that investigation and are one of the reasons behind today's raid, employees said. Investigators were trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, the Journal article reported.

Bypassing his agency's computer technicians, Mr. Bloch phoned 1-800-905-GEEKS, the mobile PC-help service. It dispatched a technician in one of its signature PT Cruiser wagons. In the Journal story, Mr. Bloch confirmed that he contacted Geeks on Call but said he was trying to eradicate a virus that had seized control of his computer. He said the erasures didn't delete any files related to the inquiry.

  Illustration by: Steve Brodner

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Last week, the State Department Report released its report on various countries' performances in fighting terrorism around the globe. As far as catching terrorists and keeping them in custody, the USG calls Pakistan's performance "uneven."

In fact, the policy more closely resembles "catch and release," as exemplified by what happened with London Planes Plot mastermind Rashid Rauf. 

Pakistani security services cooperated with the United States and other nations to fight terrorism within Pakistan and abroad. Hundreds of suspected AQ operatives have been killed or captured by Pakistani authorities since September 2001.

Close cooperation between Pakistani, British, and American law enforcement agencies exposed the August 2006 London-Heathrow bomb plot, leading to the arrest in Pakistan of Rashid Rauf and other alleged conspirators connected to the case. On December 15, 2007, Rashid Rauf escaped from police custody in Rawalpindi and remained at large. Two of the police officers guarding him were arrested and questioned. 

I wrote about this here.  

The UK trial of the rest of the cell — charged with plotting to blow up as many as eighteen airliners –  goes on.

To read: U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2007 (html format). 

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Kidnapped private pilot Robert Wiles, 26, has now been missing for one month. There have been no leads since kidnappers contacted his parents demanding money just two days after his disappearance on April 1st. The FBI calls his case — adult kidnappings for ransom — very "rare."

Wiles was last seen at Lakeland Linder Regional Airport where he worked for his family's airplane maintenance company as a business development manager and pilot. CNN reports:

Co-workers at the Florida airport facility said they're baffled by the kidnapping. They said they can't think of a reason for kidnapping the young man.

His mother, Pam Wiles, said there is "no way" her son was involved in anything illegal.

His friends and family said Wiles wouldn't simply run away. They also said Wiles, who is not married, would never abandon his family.

According to the FBI, Robert Wiles is a pilot who flies company planes to meetings throughout the U.S. and Caribbean. According to public records, the Wiles family business had $8.5 million in sales last year and has 105 employees.

Robert Wiles is 5 feet 9 inches tall, weighs 165 pounds, and has hazel eyes and brown hair. Any one who believes they have seen him should contact the Tampa FBI office at 813.253.1000.

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Audrey Hudson reports exclusively for the Washington Times that bureaucratic errors have landed some Air Marshals on the no-fly list.

That would be the same no-fly list that has allegedly undergone a rigorous clean up — thanks to new rules according to Homeland Security's acronymed agency known as TERP, or the Terrorist Encounter Review Process.

The moral of the story: acronyms don't solve problems. People do. 

False identifications based on a terrorist no-fly list have for years prevented some federal air marshals from boarding flights they are assigned to protect, according to officials with the agency, which is finally taking steps to address the problem.Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) familiar with the situation say the mix-ups, in which marshals are mistaken for terrorism suspects who share the same names, have gone on for years — just as they have for thousands of members of the traveling public.

One air marshal said it has been "a major problem, where guys are denied boarding by the airline." 

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My newest installment from Pajamas Media on TSA's secretive and bogus psyche testing policy — and why this should unnerve you: Unarmed Pilots, Unsafe Skies — Thanks to TSA.

Pilots who are licensed firearms instructors have been deemed unfit to carry weapons in the cockpit. Yet the TSA is fast-tracking unqualified screeners to become air marshals:

Last fall, I received a mysterious telephone call from a commercial airline pilot asking to meet me for coffee at an airport hotel. Pilots are prohibited from discussing security issues with members of the press. Before 9/11 most pilots wouldn’t have dreamed of such a thing. But in the years since, a growing number have felt the need to speak out. Many issues involving pilots have fallen into the hands of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), including the program that allows pilots to fly armed.

I met the pilot for coffee. Let’s call him Captain X. A veteran pilot for a major air carrier, he is licensed to fly DC9s, 727s, Airbus 320s, and 757s. Captain X has logged over 18,000 hours of accident- and incident-free flying time in twenty-one years of service. Presently, he flies thousands of people back and forth across the Pacific Ocean each week.

Captain X faces a conundrum. As a volunteer for the Federal Flight Deck Officer’s (FFDO) program — pilots fly armed for free — the TSA gave him a psyche test and failed him. In other words, according to the TSA, Captain X is psychologically unfit to carry a gun. “At first I thought there was something wrong with me,” Captain X told me over coffee. “Now I think there is something wrong with the way the TSA runs the program.”

What struck me as equally bizarre about Captain X’s predicament is that in addition to being an airline captain, he’s a firearms instructor in his home state. He’s been handling and using guns since he was old enough to hunt. And in order to keep his skills current, he maintains rigorous training with a personal firearms coach who is the number one competitive pistol shooter in the state. Captain X owns guns, he trains people to shoot guns, and his state licenses him to carry a gun. But the TSA says he can’t carry a weapon in a lock box in the cockpit of the aircraft he’s flying on any given day because he’s psychologically unfit to carry that gun.

For over a year, Captain X kept this information private. He found the TSA’s results to be conflicting, confusing, and upsetting. There is no official recourse or review for a pilot who’s failed a TSA psyche test. The pilot can’t even find out why he failed; the agency considers the results of its psychological testing to be classified. I put the word out among my sources to find out what was happening with other pilots regarding this psyche test. Over the next few months, as various pilots reported back to me, I learned that Captain X was far from alone.

Consider pilot Dean Roberts, a former federal agent. For ten years, Roberts flew as an armed agent/pilot for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Roberts failed to pass the TSA’s test. Then there’s pilot Robert Sproc, a former U.S. Air Force captain who held a “Top Secret/Special Compartmented Information clearance.” Sproc was also failed by the TSA.

“Given the vast numbers of pilots found unfit to be FFDOs, [there is] strong anecdotal evidence suggesting a deep, institutional opposition to the FFDO program within the TSA,” says Captain David Mackett, president of the 23,000-member Airline Pilots Security Alliance (APSA). Mackett cited an example of a “nuclear-cleared” military pilot (i.e., someone who flies planes with nukes on board) whom the TSA deemed “unfit to fly armed.”

The pilot’s psyche test is called the Hogan Personality Test and is administered by an Oklahoma-based company called Hogan Assessment Systems. From public records, I learned that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) first contract with Hogan was in July 2002. Their five-year contract was worth $5,162,761, or a little over a million dollars a year. In August 2006, Hogan signed a new, four-year contract specifically modified for the TSA. And then, sometime in 2007 — according to the public records — the TSA cancelled the Hogan Assessment Systems contract.

I reached Dr. Robert Hogan, president and co-founder of Hogan Assessment Systems, in his Tulsa office. Articulate, affable, and clearly dedicated to his work — Hogan says he published the first paper using personality to predict police performance back in 1970 — Hogan spent twenty minutes with me, anecdotally explaining why he thinks it’s important to personality test people who will carry weapons in high-risk situations, including in cockpits and inside nuclear facilities.

“Here’s one story,” Dr. Hogan said, “There was this security guard in a nuclear power plant smoking weed. He came out of the bathroom just as something had gone wrong. The supervisor yelled ‘cut the valve!’ so the guard grabbed a pair of [pipe] cutters and literally cut the valve. That’s why we have personality tests.”

I asked Dr. Hogan to speak about subjecting pilots — who are routinely drug-tested, by the way — to the Hogan Test. “There is a distinction between technical talent and emotional maturity. You can fly a plane and be crazy — or at least be a complete hot-head — which is what we find all the time,” Hogan said.

Captain Tracy Price, vice president of the Passenger/Cargo Security Group (PCSG) disagrees. Captain Price lobbies on Capitol Hill on behalf of armed pilots and is an expert on the FFDO program and the Armed Pilots Against Terrorism Act of 2002. “Airline pilots are an incredibly carefully vetted group of professionals,” Price told me. “For decades, we’ve had psyche testing as a requirement of employment. The FAA requires us to visit a physician every six months. Our view is that it is entirely illogical to tell a pilot he is not stable enough to carry a weapon in the form of a gun when at the same time, he has access to the weapon we are all most in fear of after 9/11 — a plane loaded with thousands of pounds of jet fuel.”

In my interview with Dr. Hogan, I asked him to respond to his critics, including me, who might see his logic as flawed. “We have our critics and our detractors,” Dr. Hogan said.

I asked Dr. Hogan if he knew why the TSA cancelled his contract (TSA refused to be interviewed for this story). Hogan said, “They liked what we did. We had all kinds of data saying the quality of airport security was on the rise, and then they just said ‘go away.’”

I asked Dr. Hogan if he had any idea who would be administering the new psyche test to FFDO applicants. What Hogan said next surprised me: “We still have the [TSA’s] FFDO and air marshal contract, but it’s small because the numbers of new hires in those programs are significantly lower now.”

If Hogan Assessments still had the TSA’s FFDO and air marshals contract, then what million-dollar-a-year contract did Hogan lose? I asked.

Dr. Hogan explained that the largest portion of his original TSA contract was to psyche test TSA screeners, also called TSOs. “The TSA shut down the TSO psychological testing program,” Hogan explained.

So, who will be screening the screeners? I asked. Hogan told me, “TSA is doing that in-house.”

What this means is that there will be no more outside psyche tests for the TSA employees who are searching your bags for weapons and bombs. And yet these are the same TSA employees who, CNN reported just last week, are being fast-tracked to become air marshals — to carry guns on planes. In the absence of logic, Captain X’s point is well taken. Perhaps there is something wrong with the way in which the TSA administers its programs.

As one air marshal told CNN, “TSA screeners [who] have no college, no law enforcement, no military background,” are being fast-tracked to carry guns on planes. TSA acknowledges that 36 screeners recently became air marshals. Meanwhile, pilots are being turned down.

In this evidence, Captain David Mackett sees a disturbing trend: “Ultimately, there is ample evidence suggesting the TSA is abusing the psychological screening process to unjustly dismiss FFDO candidates.” The TSA bills the American taxpayer approximately $350,000 per air marshal, per year. Armed pilots are volunteers and fly armed for free.

Captain Mackett cited an example from the written part of the psyche test — since changed — that asked: “Would you like to be a fighter pilot?” Considering that many commercial pilots are and have been fighter pilots it’s natural that many would answer that question with a “Yes.” According to Mackett, the TSA concluded that these pilots “had overly aggressive personalities and disqualified them from the program.”

In the absence of logic, Captain X may feel some relief. He’s not the only pilot who has been black-marked by TSA’s illogical, secretive, and draconian FFDO psyche testing rules. But this absence of logic should unnerve the rest of us.
 

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It's been widely reported that several of the London Planes Plot jihadists visited Pakistan in the months and weeks leading up to their arrest.

Yesterday, the court learned the group's ringleader, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, also visited Saudi Arabia. In an attempt to hide those visits and the passport marks they leave behind, Ali claimed he lost his passport. 

A cleaner found Ali's passport on the street and turned it over to authorities. 

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. What role does Saudi Arabia play in the London Planes Plot, which was made up of a majority of Pakistani nationals with British citizenship?

Weeks before his arrest Ali reported that he had lost his own passport and applied for a new one. He said it had “fallen out of a window”. Prosecutors say he was trying to get a “clean” replacement before launching attacks.

A cleaner later found the damaged document discarded outside his flat. It had details of visits to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Abdulla Ahmed Ali had also applied for a passport for his baby whom he was considering taking on the suicide mission for use as a decoy. 

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British undercover agents conducted surveillance on Abdullah Ahmed Ali, the ringleader of the London Planes Plot, as he checked flight timetables and relayed information to other operatives — a British court heard today.

Ali and seven other Muslim males are accused of plotting to blow up as many as eighteen passenger aircraft en route from England to the United States and Canada. 

Abdulla Ahmed Ali was observed by an undercover officer checking flight timetables in an internet cafe and speaking on his mobile.

Woolwich Crown Court heard how Ali entered T&I Communications in Wood Street, Walthamstow, east London on August 6, 2006.

Richard Whittam, prosecuting, described how he was watched speaking in "hushed tones in a foreign language" on taking a mobile phone call.

Ali was observed looking at the BAA Heathrow website showing "some sort" of timetable, then flicking to a flight-booking website.

He was seen taking a second call, this time in English, where he was overheard, no longer whispering, referring to radios in boxes.

Ali and seven other men are on trial accused of conspiring to murder thousands of people by exploding home-made liquid bombs on passenger jets in August 2006.

In Ali's martyrdom video, he says: "The time has come for you to be destroyed" and that he is "over the moon that Allah has given me the opportunity to lead this blessed operation."

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Yes, Virginia, the TSA is now making screeners air marshals. Chris Strohm, reporting for Government Executive, reveals the official number. "According to TSA, 36 screeners, have become air marshals."

Strohm also cites a quote from Kip Hawley to members of Congress that is appalling. Even Hawley can't wrap his brain around a Screener becoming an air marshal. Note how he calls the new air marshal a TSO.

"Trust me, you do not want to mess with those guys," Hawley said. "Anybody who messes with a flight having a TSO on it who is now an air marshal will be dead." 

And as far as the appropriateness of Hawley's your "dead" if you mess with a TSO — oops air marshal — bravado, please read "Terror on the Tarmac." I report the story of what happened to an entirely-innocent airline passenger named Jerry Wynn after he was mis-identified as being a terror suspect and subsequently man handled by FBI agents at Raleigh-Durham Airport last September.  

Hawley's look-out-or-your-dead comments remind us that the TSA is an agency in a free-fall. 

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