Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) revealed that he was targeted by the now-suspended Quiet Skies program, a TSA watchlist.
“I just found out earlier this week. I knew the situation that was happening with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, where she was on that Quiet Skies program,” Hamadeh told Fox News Digital. “I knew about that for a few months, and I didn’t really think much of it, but while I was in Washington, DC, my staff got a call from Senator Rand Paul’s office and let us know that three Republican members of Congress were targeted, and that I was one of them.”
He explained that he was flagged in December of 2022 while he challenged the results of his 2022 election as he ran for the state’s attorney general.
“Also, it’s odd that there’s only three Republican members of Congress that were targeted. I mean, I’m assuming you know, there’s Democrats who have a lot of interesting travel here that I serve with, as well, or, you know, I’m sure that there’s things that would flag them,” Hamadeh added, noting that that those targeted, or those avoiding surveillance, “makes you question, you know, what the Biden administration, who they were focusing on, and who they were targeting specifically.”
Citing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s presence on the list, the congressman said, “What a complete 180 for now to have her be running the intelligence agencies as Director of National Intelligence, and it goes to show you, you know, what we were fighting when Biden was in charge, it was a compromised deep state.”
In June, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ended the TSA watchlist program. “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,” she said at the time.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) held a hearing this week on the program’s weaponization. He called Quiet Skies an “unconstitutional dystopian nightmare masquerading as a security tool costing the American taxpayers $200 million a year.” Instead of stopping terrorist attacks, the program “turned its watchful eye inward—targeting Americans who had committed no crimes, violated no laws, and in many cases were government officials themselves.”
