DHS ends weaponized airport surveillance program

The Department of Homeland Security is ending the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) Quiet Skies initiative, it announced Thursday.

Quiet Skies, which costs taxpayers $200 million a year, is a surveillance program launched in 2010 with the stated aim of keeping American travelers safe from domestic terrorists. However, not only has the program failed to stop terrorism, but the Biden administration used it to brand its political opponents as “domestic terrorists” and place them under increased surveillance.

“It is clear that the Quiet Skies program was used as a political rolodex of the Biden Administration — weaponized against its political foes and exploited to benefit their well-heeled friends. I am calling for a Congressional investigation to unearth further corruption at the expense of the American people and the undermining of US national security,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. 

“TSA’s critical aviation and security vetting functions will be maintained, and the Trump Administration will return TSA to its true mission of being laser-focused on the safety and security of the traveling public. This includes restoring the integrity, privacy, and equal application of the law for all Americans,” she added.

One of those targeted by Quiet Skies under the Biden administration was current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Whistleblowers revealed in August last year that after she publicly criticized the Biden administration on July 22, 2024, Gabbard was placed under heavy surveillance in the Quiet Skies program. She was secretly tailed on every flight by three Federal Air Marshals, a plainclothes TSA supervisor, two explosive detection canine teams, and a transportation security specialist in explosives. The DHS has confirmed Quiet Skies’ targeting of Gabbard.

Political opponents were tracked

In November 2023, Air Marshal National Council (AMNC) Executive Director Sonya LaBosco confirmed that Air Marshals were tailing anyone who had flown into Washington, DC around January 6th, even if they had not been present at the Capitol. TSA operatives designated many of those Americans as “domestic terrorists” in the computer database.

Christine Crowder, for instance, made the Quiet Skies watchlist because she was in DC on January 6th, even though she did not attend the Capitol protest. Crowder is married to an active Federal Air Marshal. An infant boy has also been enrolled in the program because his father, AJ Fischer, attended the Capitol protest.

“[Federal Air Marshals] are not flying right now. The only missions that we are doing are ‘Quiet Skies’ missions and those are missions that are following the January 2021 people,” LaBosco told Fox News. “So we’re either on the border for illegal immigrants or we’re following folks from January 2021. We’re not doing our regular missions where we’re out there looking for the bad guys so for now most flights you’re not gonna have Air Marshals.”

LaBosco said she has personally seen the TSA manipulate the database so that anyone suspected of being a political dissident is marked as having breached the Capitol building.

“We’ve caught [the TSA] red-handed and they lied,” she said. “They’ve put indicators inside the computer system, they’ve manipulated the national database computer system and put that individuals . . . broke into the Capitol. That’s what they’re putting on there. I’ve seen these orders and I know exactly what they’re doing.”

Friends were exempt

Friends of the Biden administration, however, were exempted from Quiet Skies. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) asked the TSA to exempt her husband, William, from the watchlist after he had traveled with a suspected terrorist three times. TSA Administrator David Pekoske granted her request and issued William Shaheen a blanket exemption. 

“Shaheen was not the only high-profile individual that was placed on this exclusion list: this list also included members of foreign royal families, political elites, professional athletes, and favored journalists,” the DHS noted.

The SSSS designation

Those who were part of the Quiet Skies program were unaware of it. Sometimes, however, their tickets bore the letters “SSSS,” which singled them out for Secondary Security Screening Selection. LaBosco said that those with an SSSS designation should know they are “denied rights” that other travelers receive.

“Their number one goal is for you to miss your flight,” she said. “They don’t want you to get where you’re going from point A to point B.”

Travelers on the SSSS list are followed by a minimum of three Air Marshals on every flight, she added. Sometimes the Marshals follow the targets when they leave their houses for the airport. Because so many Air Marshals had been assigned to follow American taxpayers who were in Washington, DC around January 6th, LaBosco said there were not enough Air Marshals to follow “bad guys.”

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