It takes one to know one: TSA employee arrested after making terroristic threats

Thursday, February 06, 2014 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: TSA employee, terroristic threats, arrest

(NaturalNews) Calls are growing, both from the general public and from lawmakers, to pull the plug on the hapless criminal enterprise known as the Transportation Security Administration.

And why not? The agency is incompetent, has not lived up to its billing (preventing terrorist attacks), and has made air travel nightmarish for tens of millions of Americans.

Well, now we can add a new one to the list of TSA failures: Actually making a terrorist threat.

As reported by KHOU in Houston:

Houston police arrested a Transportation Security Administration officer accused of making a threat to fellow employees at Bush Intercontinental Airport.

The incident reportedly happened on Jan. 25 in the security checkpoint area of Terminal C.

Jeno Mouton, of Houston, allegedly told a TSA supervisor that "he would rather vent than to come back and shoot up the place," according to an arrest affidavit.

Police say Mouton, a long-time employee, allegedly made his comment during an actual shift when he was on duty as a TSA agent.

Epic fail

A TSA supervisor told cops that she discussed the statement with Mouton for several minutes, and not only did he refuse to recant it, but he reportedly repeated the threat several more times during that conversation.

The supervisor then reported the conservation with Mouton to the human resources office manager. Mouton was immediately informed that he could not return to the airport or any other TSA offices or facilities, according to an affidavit.

But he didn't listen:

Then on Jan. 29, a TSA worker reported that she saw Mouton on the secure side of the Bush Airport terminal in plain clothes.

Mouton's supervisors said they were concerned that Mouton posed a threat because he came back to the airport after being warned to stay away, and noted that he has a current Texas concealed handgun license.

Now, the agent is facing felony terrorism charges. He was jailed on a $5,000 bond and has been scheduled to appear in court March 7.

In a recent tell-all, one former TSA agent admitted that his agency was essentially a waste of taxpayer money, and that the intrusive scanners at most major airports were not only ineffective but sources of amusement for scores of agents.

Feel safe, America

In a Politico piece, former agent Jason Edward Harrington writes, "Dear America, I saw you naked, and yes, we were laughing."

Further, he observed:

-- I quickly discovered I was working for an agency whose morale was among the lowest in the U.S. government. In private, most TSA officers I talked to told me they felt the agency's day-to-day operations represented an abuse of public trust and funds.

-- Each day I had to look into the eyes of passengers in niqabs and thawbs undergoing full-body pat-downs, having been guilty of nothing besides holding passports from the wrong nations. As the son of a German-American mother and an African-American father who was born in the Jim Crow South, I can pass for Middle Eastern, so the glares directed at me felt particularly accusatory. The thought nagged at me that I was enabling the same government-sanctioned bigotry my father had fought so hard to escape.

-- We knew the full-body scanners didn't work before they were even installed. Not long after the Underwear Bomber incident, all TSA officers at O'Hare were informed that training for the Rapiscan Systems full-body scanners would soon begin. The machines cost about $150,000 a pop.

Our instructor was a balding middle-aged man who shrugged his shoulders after everything he said, as though in apology. At the conclusion of our crash course, one of the officers in our class asked him to tell us, off the record, what he really thought about the machines.

"They're shit," he said, shrugging.

Feel safe, America. The TSA is on the job.

Sources:

http://www.khou.com

www.change.org

http://www.politico.com

http://gmancasefile.blogspot.com