By Andrew W. Griffin
If you’re a frequent flyer and interested in “doubling your pleasure” via the TSA, I urge you to take a flight out of the Corpus Christi International Airport in south Texas.
And when I say “doubling your pleasure,” well, the boys in blue at CC International seem intent on punishing travelers for “opting out” of having to go through their unethical, naked body radiation scanner.
More and more experts are coming out and revealing how dangerous these machines are to human health. The Department of Homeland Security and the TSA won’t reveal this information to the traveling public. Still, with that knowledge, when I concluded my visit to the Corpus Christi area this weekend, I cringed at the thought of flying back out knowing full well what I was facing.
Red Dirt Report had already reported (Corpus Christi TSA workers double-up on pat-downs) on the St. Louis couple that had also traveled through Corpus Christi International back in early March. As we reported, one RDR reader was forced to be patted-down twice – after opting out of going through the radiation scanner – for “training purposes.”
As we reported at the time: “The reader then asked the screener why did they have to inconvenience and insult American citizens with two pat-downs when they could pat-down each other?”
The reader said the TSA goon responded that they had to do the training in “real time.”
When one of them demanded to talk to a supervisor, a woman she referred to as “Cruella DeVil” said that since so many passengers “love” going through the scanners, not many want pat-downs and they need to train on those few that do.
Remembering this as your Red Dirt Reporter got into the “chow line,” unloading my bag and pockets – and turning on my recording device, hidden in my backpack. Unfortunately, since I was traveling alone, I did not have anyone to film me.
I then motioned to a TSA worker nearby that I was opting out of the naked-body scanner. Not really interested in getting cancer from some X-ray machine. I should not have some unhealthy-looking guy leering at my naked body in some back room. Neither should you.
I was taken to a nearby mat with feet-shaped spots where you are supposed to stand. A Hispanic man in a white shirt, no name-tag, mumbled something about “training” but it was inaudible. I nodded and went along with it and was instructed to put out my arms.
No-name, in a monotone, said he would be patting me down all over my body and in “sensitive areas” – groin, buttocks and bottom of the feet – and all over my clothed body and into my pants. As he did this, a short TSA guy in their blue uniform, name tag “Fernando” stood nearby, leering at me. I would later find out why he was there.
“Would you like to do this in a screened-in area?” No-name asked.
“No. I want to be out here in open so everyone can see this,” I responded. “I hope you know that you are violating my Fourth Amendment rights and that this is what the Nazis used to do.”
Oh, and he thought it was hilarious when I told him that back home in Oklahoma City, the TSAers love to give passengers "free body massages" in the form of at-the-gate patdowns. They actually call them "free body massages." It's just a big, fat joke to these clowns.
When it came to sticking his hand down my pants I laughed and said, “Man, this is the best part!” so all could hear it. Meanwhile, a few feet away about a half-dozen TSA goons were standing around, getting radiated by the uncalibrated naked body scanner. Remember Ground Zero in New York? Remember then saying the air was just fine?
No-name doesn’t respond to my exaggerated comments. He doesn’t respond to my comments about how he and others are destroying America by treating us as criminals. He didn’t respond when I told him people are far more likely to be killed in a car crash than by a terror attack or a bomb blast on a plane.
No, No-name simply continued on with his prison-guard groping and prodding on my body. Hands did go down my pants. I had flashbacks to when some dumb Canuck at the Calgary airport racked me when I got a Canadian-styled patdown in the wake of the Underwear Bomber's failed attempt on an airliner over Christmas 2009.
And when No-name was done, No-name says Fernando will now be patting me down for “training purposes.”
What?!?!
That’s what No-name had mumbled earlier. I hadn’t caught it but that was what he was telling me when I first decided to opt out.
That I would be inconvenienced and violated not once – but twice – an absolute outrage and wrong. Well, I protested this and asked for a supervisor. An unsmiling goon named Isaac came over and said that they have to do this to train the trainees. I said, just as the couple I had previously interviewed that they should go to the bathroom and practice on each other. This had no effect. Isaac asked me if I wanted to talk to his supervisor. Well, if it was “Cruella DeVil” we were clearly not getting anywhere. I declined, figuring there was no point. I sure as hell wasn’t going through the radiation scanner.
Remember that it was this TSA goon squad in Corpus Christi who insulted and humiliated that Amarillo woman whose blouse was lifted up and the TSA guys laughed about it. Interestingly, the woman won a “nominal” settlement with the TSA following her “breast exposure suit.”
So, Fernando, who tries to defend this violation of my rights, proceeds to feel me up and down and all around. Doesn’t even offer me dinner, the cad.
Fernando was faster. I’ll give him that. He knew it was pointless, following No-name’s thorough petting party on my person. But he wasn’t about to admit it and lose his precious job – working next to the radiation scanner that will probably give him and his colleagues cancer in the not-too-distant future. Where will the government be then? Probably will ignore them like they did the 9/11 first responders.
I was then free to go. I was not under arrest. I was found innocent. No-name and Fernando and under the watchful eye of supervisor Isaac, I was free to catch my flight home.
Yeah, not much has change at the Corpus Christi International Airport. At least some Texas legislators are taking some of these TSA horror stories seriously and are looking to make it illegal for a security officer to intentionally touch someone's private areas - even atop clothing - unless they have probable cause to believe the person is carrying something illegal. This was triggered, in part, by the inappropriate treatment former Miss USA Susie Castillo received when she went through at TSA patdown at Dallas-Fort Worth Int'l Airport.
Castillo said, as reported in the media: "The TSA employee at (Dallas-Fort Worth) touched my private area four times, going up both legs from behind and from the front, each time touching me there. Was I at my gynecologist's office? No! This was crazy!"
Of course the TSA spokesman, Luis Castillo, said the screener was questioned and it was determined that the screener had acted appropriately when they touched Castillo's vagina.
We have spoken with TSA's Luis Casanova before. He is the media contact for Texas and Oklahoma. However, we were unable to reach him today to get him to comment on the "double patdowns" and why passengers must submit to a trainee and a regular TSA employee when getting a patdown. Seems like overkill to me and a deterrent to those who don't want to be exposed to radiation.
Yeah, Texas is starting to get a bad reputation when it comes to the professionalism of their TSA screeners. We wish these brave Texas legislators luck as they put forth their bill and we hope other states follow their example.
And in the meantime, if you care about your health, dignity and your Constitutional rights, and you have business in the Corpus Christi area, you may want to drive instead.
Link:
http://www.reddirtreport.com/Story.aspx/18375
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