Meet Steve Bierfeldt: 2006 magna cum laude graduate of Sacred Heart University; co-author of the exposé “Who Is the Real Barack Obama?”; campaign manager for a Republican congressional candidate in Virginia last year – and terrorist, or so the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) apparently believes.
Its screeners “detained” him at a checkpoint in Lambert-St. Louis International Airport last week after searching his bag. There they found his weapon of choice: cash. “In addition to things like my keys and phone charger,” Steve says, “[my carry-on] included a box of money. …” Almost $4,700, in fact, because he was returning from a political rally with the profits from sales of “merchandise … promotional material and Ron Paul bumper stickers.” Perhaps the TSA feared Steve would blitz the flight crew with dollar bills.
And so half a dozen cops interrogated him for almost 30 minutes – an ordeal Steve courageously and coolly recorded on his cell-phone. Fox.com’s “Freedom Watch” played a clip. It’s reassuring to hear how delicately cops teased intelligence out of this menace to national security: Cursing and belittling Steve, they refused to advise him of his rights, threatened to sic the DEA and FBI on him, and eventually tried to hustle him off to jail. At that point, Steve says, “a senior officer came and stopped them. I was permitted [to go] on my way shortly afterward.”
Steve isn’t alone. Whether his money or his political views drew the TSA’s attention, Steve typifies the agency’s trophies: Americans who pose absolutely no threat to their fellow passengers – but who do threaten the government with their dissent. You need not be a conservative like Steve, either: Any dissent will do.
In 2002, the fledgling TSA prevented members of Peace Action Milwaukee from boarding their flight to Washington, D.C. James Moore, author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” found himself on the No-Fly List following publication in 2003. So did CNN’s correspondent Drew Griffin after he criticized the TSA’s air marshals last year. The TSA denies profiling passengers politically – but it also insists that putting three ounces of toothpaste in a baggie turns the tube non-explosive. This is not an agency with a firm grip on reality.
Fine – if Steve’s politics didn’t pique the TSA’s interest, his money did. And the cops’ mention of the DEA tells us why.
Like most enforcers, the TSA assumes that anyone carrying more cash than authorities consider necessary is dealing drugs. Set aside the lunacy behind such reasoning; unless they’re circulating in a pilot’s bloodstream, why are drugs any concern to airport security? How exactly does pot or even methamphetamine bring down a plane?
Yet the TSA has ruined hundreds of lives with its warrantless searches – whether its victims are patients like 21-year-old Adam Morris with his doctor’s prescription for medical marijuana in accordance with California law, or Paul Francis Smith, 22, a naval veteran caught with cocaine last month.
Since its inception in 2002, the TSA has cost us about $6-7 billion annually – in addition to the time it wastes. Arriving at the airport hours before a flight to wait in the checkpoint’s line not only annoys you, it also siphons another $32 billion from the economy every year, according to conservative estimates.
It’s all for nothing, too. Screeners routinely fail test after test of their abilities to find weapons – even when the TSA rather than a rival bureaucracy administers the tests and even when screeners cheat.
Meanwhile, are disarmed passengers really safe passengers? The belief that they are has ruled the feds’ approach to aviation security since the late 1960s. Yet absolutely no research substantiates it – and it may have sealed the fate of 3,000 Americans on 9/11. Had passengers been able to defend themselves against the terrorists that day, perhaps only dozens, not thousands, would have died.
The solution lies in liberating the industry from the feds. Free airlines to protect their inventory and customers, just as shopping malls, banks and other businesses do. Rifling bags for drugs, cash and the bottle of prune juice Grandma forgot in her carry-on distracts attention from what truly imperils passengers in favor of ferreting out threats to the State.
If we want to safeguard ourselves and our families, rather than government, we must abolish the TSA.
Becky Akers has written for the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Post, the Freeman, the New American, the Independent Review, American History Magazine, Military History Magazine and other publications.
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