The story of former Federal Air Marshal Jeffrey Denning just took an Orwellian turn. Turns out TSA criminal investigator Greg Neiderer called Denning's wife — veiled as an old friend — while Denning was serving a tour of duty with the Army Reserves in Iraq.

"My right of privacy and my freedom of speech are being bludgeoned," Denning says. 

The TSA's spook wanted to know who sent Denning an email he'd forwarded, in March of this year, from his personal email account. By then, Denning had resigned from DHS. (He was working as a private contractor when he got called to duty in Iraq.) The email sought current and former federal air marshals who might be wiling to talk to CNN.

The good news? Not only is Denning an asset to the country's counterterrorism efforts and a brave soldier, but he can eloquently articulate what's wrong with this picture:

"..it has been said that the TSA stands for Thousands Standing Around, so maybe they have nothing else better to do with our taxpayer money than harass a soldier who has just returned from war."

Read Denning's excellent article:

An Unruly TSA?

By Jeffrey Denning

Monday, May 26, 2008

I have a new email account now, created after the upsetting phone call I received recently from Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Criminal Investigator Greg Neiderer. It was a terrible welcome home gift after serving a year in Iraq. The government has snooped in on my other personal and private email account. It infuriates me. My right of privacy and my freedom of speech are being bludgeoned, for lack of a better term. The Constitution is really hanging by a thread when government officials use more time, energy and resources to attack whistleblowers than to stop the real threat of terrorism.

My wife and I had an interesting conversation last night. It turns out Mr. Neiderer called my home and spoke with my wife while I was in Iraq. My wife of ten years said he knew I was in Iraq when he called our home. Of course, she was the only one home when he called.

She said he acted like he knew me, and since I had been a Federal Air Marshal (FAM) under the arm of the TSA, and since the caller ID read “U.S. government” with an area code “703” out of Virginia, she thought he may have been an old friend of mine. With that in mind, she told him I was in Iraq. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said, and then he laughed.

There’s nothing funny about that, Mr. Neiderer.

To everyone else, Mr. Neiderer is not an old friend, or even an acquaintance. In fact, I’ve never heard of him in my life until a couple of days ago.

When I got home from Iraq last Monday, he didn’t even allow me a week to relax before calling me and probing me with questions in a supposed all-important government investigation. One would think the nature of this investigation would be terribly serious given the fact that Mr. Neiderer and his ilk at the TSA office in Virginia took some painstaking strides to conduct a thorough search on my recent activities since leaving the Federal Air Marshal Service.

From my personal email he, 1) found out I was a former air marshal; 2) found out I was in Iraq with the Army Reserves and knew that I wasn’t home yet; 3) dug up my personal phone number and called my wife while he knew I was in Iraq. What else did this guy find out about me or my family? Oh, probably everything. Shoot, I wonder if the private email conversations I had with my wife while I was in Iraq were being monitored too! It makes me livid.

All of this just because TSA wanted to know who sent me an email I forwarded in March of this year from my personal email account asking for current and former air marshals to talk to CNN.

I’m flabbergasted. What an extreme waste of tax payer money. It’s absurd. It’s outrageous. Who would have guessed that was more important than fighting terrorists in Iraq or safeguarding commercial aviation assets in America.

Come on! I left the Federal Air Marshal Service in early 2007. Why would government investigators from the TSA violate my personal privacy over something so ridiculous? Why would they violate my personal privacy, period?! It’s outlandish. But then again, it has been said that the TSA stands for Thousands Standing Around, so maybe they have nothing else better to do with our taxpayer money than harass a soldier who has just returned from war.

My wife, who’s been all alone with our young children for the last year and a half, and who was all alone while I was traveling weekly as an Federal Air Marshal for years before that, has been very scared at times for her personal safety. It was Mr. Neiderer’s laugh and the uncomfortable way he said things that made the whole conversation seem unusual and odd to my wife, but by then it was too late. She thought she could trust someone calling from a U.S. government telephone line. That is a disturbing fallacy.

The truth is not everyone in the government can be trusted, and not everyone in the government is smart or looks after our best interests. And that infuriates me.

In October of last year, The Star-Ledger out of New Jersey reported [ here  here and here ] on the hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on transportation security.

Kip Hawley, who runs the TSA, told members of Congress during that meeting, “You can’t do this job if the work force is not trusting of the leadership team.” And then speaking of whistleblowers, who often go to the media since management won’t listen, he added, “Chasing after leaks is not a productive activity.”

Well, Mr. Hawley, I like what you said. But you are either lying to Congress, or someone – probably a lot of “someone’s” – in your organization are outright disregarding what you testified about before Congress. My guess is it’s not just one TSA Investigator named Greg Neiderer, but an entire group or miscreants. And if that’s the case, sir, either you’re guilty of perjury in a federal hearing or your own people are making you look incompetent as a leader.

(photo: Jeffrey Denning) 

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Jeffrey Denning is a former Federal Air Marshal. He's just returned home from serving in the war in Iraq as an officer with the U.S. Army Reserves. He's got a master's degree in Military Studies and Terrorism with a specialty in counterinsurgency. Now he's being investigated by his former employers at the Federal Air Marshal Service (an agency run by TSA) — for sending an email from his personal computer.

On his blog, Denning explains:

The Government Hates Whistleblowers and CNN

By Jeffrey Denning

May 23, 2008

TSA investigator Greg Neiderer called me today. I don’t know him, and I’ve never spoken with him until today.

“Welcome home from Iraq,” he began cordially.

“Thanks. It’s great to be back home,” I replied.

It didn’t take long until he told me the reason for calling. The Transportation Security Administration, the giant bureaucratic knee-jerk creation that sprang from the rubble of 9/11 and has multiple problems protecting U.S. aviation assets, was investigating a message I sent from my personal email account, I was told.

I thought of the blogs I wrote and occasionally forwarded about the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS). It’s one of the most messed up organizations in the world, and unfortunately, they’re charged with stopping terrorists in U.S. commercial airplanes. I don’t believe they’ll be able to stop any dedicated terrorists – ever – because of the poor management decisions since 9/11.

Mr. Neiderer asked me if I knew who forwarded me an email asking for “current and former air marshals to talk to CNN.” He said I forwarded the email to “a couple of people.” I didn’t even recall that email when he said it. I get so many emails how would I know who sent it to me? Besides, I forwarded something else like that not long ago – a Washington Times reporter wanted to know some information and I forwarded the question to dozens of FAMs. He didn’t say anything about that though.

So now I’m getting investigated for forwarding emails? Holy cow! Talk about a waste of tax payer money, having “federal agents” track down my phone number and my background (he knew I left the FAM Service and just returned from Iraq). Is the government also monitoring my personal emails and phone calls now – all because I support the idea of government whistleblowing when going public would save lives?!

After I asked, Mr. Neiderer said I wasn’t in any trouble. Of course I wouldn’t be either, right? Shoot, I left the defunct Federal Air Marshal Service in 2007, a little before getting called to Iraq. And I have freedom of speech, protected by my First Amendment rights. The TSA investigator said I forwarded the email in March of this year.

I don’t know who forwarded me the email, and I’m pretty sure I deleted it. But if I forwarded the email, Mr. Neiderer should have the email of the person or group that sent it to me. What’s the big deal? Was there some kind of hidden code in that email that jeopardized national security? Was there a virus or worm in the email that would involve the TSA to get involved? Of course not. But apparently, there’s something seriously wrong about someone sending an email asking for people to speak to CNN. I don’t get it.

Here’s what baffles me: Who cares if air marshals speak to CNN or anyone in the media. I don’t think they should give away classified data that will help the enemy, but after my tenure with the air marshals, I’d be willing to talk to anyone to help protect America from another 9/11.

I was ready and eager to speak to members of the media while working as a FAM, but I didn’t; I waited. Why? Because I saw what happened to Spencer Pickard. He was retaliated against after he went public to say the things the FAMS managers ignored, that the TSA and FAMS policies were so dangerous and ineffective that American’s weren’t safe. Behind the scenes, Pickard was supported by hundreds of FAMs like me. We were all cheering him on, even though we didn’t know him. We were afraid to speak up because we didn’t feel we had enough whistleblower protection.

There’s one thing for sure: the TSA and the FAM Service should be concentrating more on protecting American’s than trying to usurp anyone’s First Amendment rights! I’m ready to talk to CNN today.

I’m a patriot at heart. I’m eager to protect America and American’s from bad guys. It makes me sick to my stomach that too often we’re our own worst enemy. I know a bunch of bad guys who work for the federal government and every policy they make and every terrible decision they enact must be stopped. Sometimes blowing the whistle in the media is the most courageous and appropriate action.

Jeffrey Denning may be contacted at: JD@LPSsafety.com 

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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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Last November, in When Terrorists Talk in Turkey, I reported on a 34-year-old Syrian named Louai Al-Sakka who, from his Turkish prison, claimed to haven been a top Al Qaeda operative. According to his lawyer, “He was the number one networker for Al-Qaeda in Europe, Iran, Turkey and Syria.” Before the Sunday Times of London ran the original story, Al-Sakka was virtually unknown. 

Former FBI translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds read the article as well; it compelled her to act. Sibel Edmonds has spent the past five years trying to tell her story — one where corrupt U.S. government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets — but wasn't able to because the Department of Justice has a gag order against her. When Edmonds brought her case to court, the DOJ again interfered, allowing only officials with top-secret security clearances to attend hearings.

After reading the aforementioned article in the Sunday Times (which is tangential to her story) Edmonds contacted the paper and broke her silence in an exclusive, frightening story, For Sale: West's Deadly Nuclear Secrets. 

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.

Now, Philip Giraldi — a former CIA Officer and current international security consultancy — has written about Edmonds' story in the current issue of American Conservative. In Found in Translation, FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Spills her Secrets, Giraldi prints names.

Her allegations are not insignificant. Edmonds claims that Marc Grossman—ambassador to Turkey from 1994-97 and undersecretary of state for political affairs from 2001-05—was a person of interest to the FBI and had his phone tapped by the Bureau in 2001 and 2002. In the third-highest position at State, Grossman wielded considerable power personally and within the Washington bureaucracy.

He had access to classified information of the highest sensitivity from the CIA, NSA, and Pentagon, in addition to his own State Department. On one occasion, Grossman was reportedly recorded making arrangements to pick up a cash bribe of $15,000 from an ATC contact. The FBI also intercepted related phone conversations between the Turkish Embassy and the Pakistani Embassy that revealed sensitive U.S. government information was being sold to the highest bidder. Grossman, who emphatically denies Edmonds’s charges, is currently vice chairman of the Cohen Group, founded by Clinton defense secretary William Cohen, where he reportedly earns a seven-figure salary, much of it coming from representing Turkey.

Giraldi's piece ends with this: 

Sibel Edmonds makes a number of accusations about specific criminal behavior that appear to be extraordinary but are credible enough to warrant official investigation. Her allegations are documentable: an existing FBI file should determine whether they are accurate. It’s true that she probably knows only part of the story, but if that part is correct, Congress and the Justice Department should have no higher priority. Nothing deserves more attention than the possibility of ongoing national-security failures and the proliferation of nuclear weapons with the connivance of corrupt senior government officials.

Marc Grossman is testifying for Congress today on another matter for the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs. Edmonds is encouraging media to attend. The U.S. media has been largely remiss in covering the story since the Times ran it in its Sunday section two weeks ago. 

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NASA has just released thousands of pages of pilot complaints that were part of a report which the federal space agency originally classified. Under pressure from Congress, that classification was partially reversed. NASA explains on its website:

"In the interest of timeliness, this first release is by nature conservative to ensure the responses do not contain confidential commercial information or information that could compromise the anonymity of individual pilots. Efforts will be made in 2008 to release additional NAOMS information that was redacted for this release."

A portion of the responses of 4,777 pilots surveyed can be downloaded here. 

The study, called NASA National Aviation Operational Monitoring Service (NAOMS), cost approximately $1 million to conduct and took three-years and eight-months to complete. NASA says the information will now be turned over to the National Academy of Sciences, as well as aviation security experts, to analyze.

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Are you one of the 27 million people traveling by airplane this Thanksgiving? Please read my piece "Terror on the Tarmac" today at Pajamas Media (PJM) and ask yourself what you would do if this happened to you?

If the FBI wants the support of the American people when it comes to fighting terror in the skies, it needs to treat them with respect. Annie Jacobsen has the harrowing tale of what happened when a Good Samaritan was transformed into a terror suspect. Required reading for Thanksgiving travelers.

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Yesterday, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin met with Congress to explain why the Agency's four-year, $11 million dollar survey — one in which 24,000 pilots were asked about perilous aviation incidents including near collisions, engine failures, and runway interference — was being withheld from the public, other than because it could "affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies" (i.e. upset people and hurt profits).

The survey was completed, or rather "cut short," a year ago and the findings kept secret despite Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from the Associated Press and others. Under public pressure and Congressional questioning, Griffin has now agreed to release a "scrubbed" version of the report (i.e. one with the scary dirt cleaned off.)

But the real focus of this controversy lies in Griffin's apology to Congress, saying part of his reasoning for the secrecy was that he doubted the reliability of his own agency's research. That he, speaking on behalf of NASA, considers the  data and methodology used in the survey unverifiable.

That's funny, none of that is mentioned in the 2003 update by NASA on how the project was going, which you can download here.

NASA’s Aviation System Monitoring and Modeling Project
Irving C. Statler and David A. Maluf
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA

In fact, Statler and Maluf, the NASA Research Center's authors of the survey, which is called National Aviation System Operational Monitoring Service (NAOMS), conclude quite the opposite, calling their process "revolutionary."

"In sum: The ability to monitor continuously, convert the collected data into reliable information, and share that information among the stakeholders for collaborative decision making is the basis for a revolutionary, proactive approach to managing the aviation system for prevention of accidents." 

The real question then, is who are the stakeholders and what's really at stake?

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Steven Aftergood, senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), writes in Secrecy News about an unidentified US Senator who recently threw a monkey wrench into a bill aimed at strengthening government transparency. Aftergood later outed the Senator as being Senator John Kyl of Arizona. 

Anonymous Senator Blocks FOIA Bill

An unidentified Republican Senator placed a secret hold on the Open Government Act, a bipartisan bill to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act, thereby preventing the Senate from acting on the bill this week.

"Regrettably, an anonymous Republican hold is stalling this important Freedom of Information Act legislation, needlessly delaying long-overdue reforms to strengthen FOIA and to protect the public's right to know," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), a co-sponsor of the bill along with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).

"It is both unfortunate and ironic that this bipartisan bill, which promotes sunshine and openness in our government, is being hindered by a secret and anonymous hold. This is a good government bill that Democrats and Republicans alike, can and should work together to enact," Sen. Leahy said in a May 24 floor statement.

"I hope that the Senator placing the secret hold on this bill will come forward, so that we can resolve any legitimate concerns, and the full Senate can promptly act on this legislation," he said.

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