Lawmakers slam “baloney” Americans are forced to put up with at the hands of “arrogant” TSA screeners
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch was forced to go through a TSA naked body scanner against his will, according to testimony heard at the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, as lawmakers complained to DHS head Janet Napolitano about the “baloney” Americans were forced to put up with at the hands of “arrogant” TSA screeners.
Despite the TSA’s official policy stating that travelers can select whether to pass through the radiation-firing body scanner or take an “enhanced pat down,” Utah Senator Hatch told Napolitano during the hearing that he wasn’t offered the choice.
“Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, raised the issue, saying he’s been forced twice to go through the scanning machines when he would have preferred another method of screening,” reports the Washington Times.
“Maybe I look like a terrorist,” Hatch joked sardonically.
Hatch also said that he had witnessed TSA screeners “force” other travelers to go through the naked body scanner when they had expressed a wish to pass through the standard x-ray metal detector instead.
Vermont Democrat and committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy complained that TSA screeners were punishing travelers who rejected the body scanner, stating, “Sometimes you get the impression they almost want to make you miss your plane because you have to go through the pat-down.”
Leahy went further, telling Napolitano that TSA workers had an “arrogant disregard for real Americans who have to put up with this baloney,” and were disconnected from reality, while also criticizing the fact that children have to pass through the radiation scanners.
The Democrat also slammed TSA agents for claiming that it was illegal to film them. “There is no such law,” Leahy stated.
Napolitano responded to the lawmakers’ grievances with a smug reference to the incident that provided the pretext for the introduction of the scanners in the first place. “I can say the answer in one word, and that’s Abdulmutallab,” she stated.
What Napolitano failed to mention was the fact that underwear bomber Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab was aided through airport security by a “well-dressed man” despite the fact that he had no passport and was a known terror suspect.
It later emerged that the State Department was ordered not to revoke Abdulmutallab’s visa by “federal counterterrorism officials” even though the accused bomber had known terrorist ties, in addition to the fact that his own father had warned U.S. intelligence officials of the threat posed by Abdulmutallab a month before the attempted attack on Delta Flight 253.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
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