Covert airport-security
inspectors ‘grounded’

By Paul Sperry

WASHINGTON – The Transportation Department’s elite team of undercover airport-security inspectors has been “grounded,” a team member told WorldNetDaily.

Instead of testing checkpoints for security failures, undercover agents have been tasked with administrative chores such as answering congressional mail, says Red Team member Bogdan Dzakovic, a Federal Aviation Administration special agent for the past 14 years.

“We have been completely grounded,” Dzakovic said. “We’re basically doing idiot work.”

He says they spend much of their time answering letters forwarded to the department by members of Congress. The letters are from constituents asking about air-travel issues.

Before Sept. 11, the department’s Red Team traveled across the country covertly probing security at major U.S. airports by trying to sneak guns and explosives past checkpoint screeners.

Dzakovic says department brass have not tapped the Washington-based unit, which now operates with just two full-time inspectors, down from the five it had in recent years.

“Our last instruction two or three months ago was, ‘If we want you to do more Red Team inspections, we’ll let you know,'” he said.

Dzakovic in late February went public with charges that FAA officials ignored the alarmingly high penetration rates of security stings routinely conducted by the Red Team before the Sept. 11 hijackings. He says the “bad guys” were able to breach security at major international airports 80 percent to 90 percent of the time.

A former Red Team member, Steve Elson, claims the FAA actually tried to cover up the findings to appease airlines that complained about delays at checkpoints. He also charges that the FAA had the Red Team use easy-to-detect dummy bombs and guns in their stings so screeners would have a better chance of passing.

The newly created Transportation Security Administration, or TSA – which on Feb. 17 took control of airport security from the FAA and airlines – so far hasn’t shown any more interest in utilizing the Red Team, Dzakovic says.

“I have not had one person from TSA come in to talk to us,” he said.

Phone calls to TSA were not immediately returned. John Magaw, a Secret Service veteran and friend of the Bush family, heads TSA.

To be sure, the Transportation Department has used its inspector general to test airport security since Sept. 11, as USA Today first reported.

But Dzakovic argues that the high failure rates found by the inspector general beg for continued and routine testing – the kind performed by the Red Team.

Of 783 tests of airport-security posts conducted between November and early February, investigators for the inspector general were able to slip banned items – guns, knives and bombs – past screeners 48 percent of the time.

It’s also worth noting that, as yet, TSA does not actually employ all of the roughly 28,000 screeners at the nation’s 429 airports.

Under the recently signed aviation security law, TSA has until Nov. 19 to screen, rehire and train all airport security personnel.

In fact, TSA only recently started recruiting federal security directors, or FSDs, for each of the airports, in addition to the six deputies in Washington who will manage the FSDs.

The recruitment and conversion effort suffered a setback when Kevin Houlihan – the senior TSA official in charge of recruiting the managers, and federalizing and training the screeners – stepped down for medical reasons after just over two months on the job, as WorldNetDaily first reported. Houlihan reported directly to Magaw.

Related stories:


Top air security official resigns


Airline screening system ignored hijackers’ nationalities


FAA-certified machine tied to 3rd bomb scare in 9 days


CTX bomb screeners ignore ‘alarmed’ luggage


Airport-security firm, Argenbright, at mercy of Muslims


Bomb, gun security tests rigged: FAA whistleblower


San Francisco airport flunked secret security test


Know your rights at airport checkpoints


Flying United (gulp) out of Dulles (gulp)

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Paul Sperry

Paul Sperry, formerly WND's Washington bureau chief, is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington." Read more of Paul Sperry's articles here.