The organization Empower Oversight, a group supporting whistleblowers, is urging the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General to conduct an investigation into Federal Air Marshals Service surveillance programs.
In a letter to Inspector General Cuffari, Empower Oversight wrote that a whistleblower within the U.S. Federal Air Marshals Service (FAMS) disclosed that FAMS was “improperly targeting individuals for enhanced surveillance” in 2021. FAMS has now “expanded its enhanced surveillance to include former U.S. Representative and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, in what appears to be a clear abuse of authority and waste of taxpayer funds.”
The organization’s 2021 client, described as a senior Federal Air Marshall, “discovered that his wife had been improperly labeled a ‘domestic terrorist’ and targeted for FAMS ‘Special Mission Coverage’ simply because she attended President Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech at the ellipse in Washington, D.C.,” according to the letter. The woman was “nowhere near the U.S. Capitol complex that day.”
While the whistleblower was able to have the FBI remove his wife’s name from the terror watchlist, it did not “remedy the clear abuses of FAMS surveillance or deter further abuses.”
“Now that additional FAMS whistleblowers have disclosed that the TSA is targeting Tulsi Gabbard under the controversial Quiet Skies program, the consequences of failing to detect and deter FAMS’ surveillance abuses has become clear,” the letter says, adding, “Ms. Gabbard was reportedly added to the Quiet Skies program on July 23, 2024—one day after she criticized the Biden Administration in an interview with Laura Ingraham. Air Marshals were assigned to their first flight with Ms. Gabbard on July 25, 2024.”
The extensive nature of the surveillance on Gabbard reportedly included the use of “two Explosive Detection Canine Teams, one Transportation Security Specialist (explosives), one plainclothes TSA Supervisor, and three Federal Air Marshals on every flight Ms. Gabbard boards.”
Such measures were described as a “gross waste of taxpayer resources and an abuse of TSA’s authority” by Empower Oversight.
Executive Director of the Air Marshal National Council (AMNC) Sonya LaBosco told UndercoverDC that Gabbard’s entry on Quiet Skies is “likely politically motivated.”
