Add 85-year-old grandmothers using walkers to returning veterans and bitter clingers on Homeland Security’s list of potential terrorists

Posted: December 4, 2011 | Author: barenakedislam

After a humiliating strip search by TSA agents at JFK Airport, Lenore Zimmerman missed her flight to Ft. Lauderdale.  How’s that system working out for you now, Butch Napolitano?

NY DAILY NEWS (H/T Malakh)  Lenore Zimmerman, 85, who lives in Long Beach, says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes. “I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she said sarcastically. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds and I was strip-searched.”

As she tried to lift a lightweight walker off her lap, she says, the metal bars banged against her leg and blood trickled from a gash. “My sock was soaked with blood,” she said. “I was bleeding like a pig.” She says the TSA agents showed no sympathy, instead pulling down her pants and asking her to raise her arms.

TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the airport shows “proper procedures were followed.”

But Zimmerman, whose hunched back puts her at 4-foot-11, said her ordeal began after her son, Bruce, drove her to the JetBlue terminal for the Florida flight. She checked her bags, waited for a wheelchair and parted ways with her doting son — her only immediate relative.

When Zimmerman reached a security checkpoint, she asked if she could forgo the advanced image technology screening equipment, fearing it might interfere with her defibrillator. She said she normally gets patted down. But this time, she says that two female agents escorted her to a private room and began to remove her clothes.

As she tried to lift a lightweight walker off her lap, she says, the metal bars banged against her leg and blood trickled from a gash. “My sock was soaked with blood,” she said. “I was bleeding like a pig.” She says the TSA agents showed no sympathy, instead pulling down her pants and asking her to raise her arms.

The TSA claims, “Our screening procedures are conducted in a manner designed to treat all passengers with dignity, respect and courtesy,” Farbstein said.

Zimmerman says a medic arrived to treat her injury. The process took so long that she missed her 1 p.m. flight and had to catch a later one. Her son said he was shocked when his mom called around 9 p.m. that night and described what happened. Zimmerman, who takes blood thinners, later had a tetanus shot for fear of infection from the walker wound.

Posted on 4 Dec 11 by BNI

SAUDI ‘MUSLIM’ MAN arrested at JFK with a cache of weapons in his luggage

Posted: September 25, 2011 | Author: barenakedislam

A Saudi Arabian man was busted at JFK Airport after the Transportation Security Administration spotted a stun gun and four other weapons in his checked bag on a flight bound for Riyadh.

NY POST  (H/T True Grit) Mohamed Hefni, 54, was arrested in a first-class lounge at JFK at 4 p.m. Thursday after agents found the contraband in his luggage before he could board his Saudi Airlines flight to Riyadh, authorities said. Hefni, told officials he was taking them home to Saudi Arabia to protect his family. (Sure, he was)

After TSA agents first noticed the gun’s outline during a routine screening, they opened Hefni’s package. Inside they discovered a fully operable battery-powered electric stun gun, three electric stun batons, an electric stun pen, and a large can of pepper spray, authorities told the New York Post.

Hefni’s lives in New York City and was arrested by Port Authority cops on misdemeanor weapons charges. The New York Times reports that Hefni was released Friday evening without bail, and a TSA spokeswomen told the Times that “We do not believe this was related to terrorism.” (No, of course it wasn’t related to terrorism. Why would we ever suspect a Saudi Muslim carrying weapons onto a plane to be a terrorist?)

Hefni told the police he had bought the weapons “for his protection,” according to court papers, and NY1 reports that the man told TSA agents the weapons were to protect his family in Saudi Arabia. Hefni was charged with five misdemeanor counts of illegal weapons possession, each of which carries a penalty of up to a year in prison.

Posted on 25 Sep 11 by BNI

DRY RUN OR WHAT?

Three African refugees were arrested after what police described as a fake bomb was found in one of their carry-on bags during security screening at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

ABC NEWS – Phoenix police didn’t yet know what the motive was behind the Friday incident and weren’t ruling out the possibility of a terrorism connection, Phoenix police Sgt. Steve Martos told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “We’re taking it seriously, not just because of the substance they were trying to take on board a plane, but also the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 and the proximity of that date to now,” Martos said.

Martos said that Luwiza Daman, a 51-year-old woman from Ethiopia, had the suspicious item in her carry-on bag as she tried to get through security at the airport Friday, and that Transportation Security Administration workers alerted police.

Martos described the item as an organic substance inside a container, with a cellphone taped to the outside of the container. He was unable to describe the container.

A bomb squad and a hazardous materials crew found that the item was not explosive, and Martos said it could not have hurt anyone. He said that Daman told investigators that an acquaintance gave her the item to be delivered to someone in Des Moines.

Police tracked down the acquaintance, identified as 25-year-old Shullu Gorado of Eritrea, which is next to Ethiopia. Gorado told police that he got the item from another man, 34-year-old Shani Asa, also of Eritrea, Martos said.

He said that Asa admitted to attaching the cellphone to the container, and said he was asked to have the item delivered to Des Moines. Police have not identified the Des Moines contact who was supposed to receive the item.

Daman, Gorado and Asa all have been booked into Maricopa County jail on a charge of having a hoax device and conspiracy to obtain a hoax device. More charges may be filed as the investigation continues. Martos did not know how long Daman, Gorado and Asa have been living in the U.S. He said Gorado and Asa most recently were living in Phoenix but did not know where Daman was living.

posted on 14 Aug 11 by BNI

FAA issues pilot licenses to 27 on Terrorist Watch List!

Posted: August 3, 2011 | Author: barenakedislam |

The Transportation Security Administration cannot determine the real identities of thousands of the people to whom the Federal Aviation Administration has issued licenses as pilots and aircraft mechanics, but has located an additional 27 who should not have held them because of terrorist connections, according to an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security.

Family Security Matters(H/T Rose) -New York Times report entitled: “27 Deemed to Be Threats Held Aviation Licenses” stated that that the FAA has no meaningful handle on those to whom that agency has issued pilots’ licenses. This news article was based on a report (pdf document) issued by the Inspector General (Internal Affairs) that has oversight responsibility for the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration).

Over the past ten years our nation has spent huge sums of money, and we have witnessed such an erosion of our expectations of privacy and a curtailment in our rights that the Fourth Amendment is truly a shadow of its former self.  This has been attributed to our nation’s “War on Terror.”

As a former INS Senior Special Agent who has conducted investigations into international terrorists and transnational criminals whose tactics are nearly indistinguishable from those employed by terrorists, it is utterly unfathomable that the FAA has no meaningful handle on those to whom that agency has issued pilots’ licenses.

The magnitude of the incompetence of the FAA is nothing short of insane – just consider this excerpt from the New York Times news report:

The new report, by the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, found that the F.A.A. had Social Security numbers of only about 750,000 people out of the 1.3 million names in its Airmen Registry, and that among those for whom it had numbers, more than 15,000 of them did not match the Social Security database for name, sex or date of birth. By law, the F.A.A. cannot require a Social Security number, the report noted, and as a result, “T.S.A. may not identify U.S. citizens who have provided false biographic information to receive an airman certificate.”

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Not all of the discrepancies represent a potential security threat; the report said that more extensive study over the past few years found that 8,000 of the license holders were dead. The report offers no details about the 27 individuals whose certificates were canceled, but does indicate the poor state of federal records, almost a decade after the Sept. 11 attacks. An initial computer scan found about 29,000 certificates that matched names on the government’s Terrorist Screening Database, but further study found that 28,500 of the matches were invalid; 506 were turned over for closer scrutiny, yielding the 27 names.

Posted on 3 Aug 11 by BNI