DHS accuses Democratic senator of ‘corruption’ for helping husband get off TSA watchlist

The Homeland Security Department acknowledged Wednesday that one of its airport screening programs had been corrupted by political influence, after accusing a Democratic senator of using her influence to get her husband off a watch list.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s husband, William Shaheen, was placed on the Transportation Security Administration’s Quiet Skies list in 2023 after traveling with someone the government deemed suspicious.

The department said Mr. Shaheen was removed from the list after Mrs. Shaheen, New Hampshire Democrat, met with TSA’s chief, David Pekoske.

Months later, TSA and federal air marshals started targeting former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a vocal Trump supporter, after she made disparaging comments about President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revealed the disparate treatment Wednesday. She said the agency she oversees had become a political tool for her predecessors in the Biden administration.

“It is clear that this program was used as a political rolodex of the Biden administration — weaponized against its political foes and to benefit their well-heeled friends,” Ms. Noem said. “This program should have been about the equal application of security, instead it was corrupted to be about political targeting.”

Homeland Security said others, including athletes, journalists, foreign royal family members and “political elites,” also received special treatment.

The department said Mr. Shaheen’s blanket exclusion from TSA’s lists had been revoked.

Homeland Security has just emerged from the worst border crisis in U.S. history. It sustained another black eye under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who tried to have the department play a role in policing “disinformation.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, part of DHS, faced embarrassment after a supervisor directed workers to bypass houses that displayed Trump campaign signs as they sought to offer assistance during hurricane season in Florida last year.

Ms. Noem has said she was working to end those sorts of activities and return the department to a narrow focus on security.

Mrs. Shaheen’s office on Wednesday denied claims that she sought special treatment for her husband, who faced “extensive, invasive and degrading searches” before several flights in 2023.

“Senator Shaheen sought to understand the nature and cause of these searches. Any suggestion that the Senator’s husband was supposedly included on a Quiet Skies list is news to her and had never been raised before today. Nor was she aware of any action taken following her call to remove him from such a list,” the senator’s office said.

Homeland Security said TSA first flagged Mr. Shaheen in July 2023 as a “co-traveler with a known or suspected terrorist” during flights from Boston to the Washington area and back.

Mrs. Shaheen, a three-term senator, asked TSA about the advanced screening. When her husband was screened again in October, she met with Mr. Pekoske, who then ordered that Mr. Shaheen be added to the “exclusion list,” an exception to the Quiet Skies program and other special screening.

Homeland Security didn’t identify Mr. Shaheen’s travel companion who earned his listing. Mrs. Shaheen’s office declined to identify the person but said it was an Arab American lawyer.

The office said the matter arose in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. Homeland Security’s timeline includes a second flight in mid-October but shows the first flight Mrs. Shaheen cited was in July, months earlier.

Mr. Shaheen, who served as a U.S. attorney in New Hampshire in the Carter administration, is Lebanese American.

Quiet Skies is an attempt by TSA and federal air marshals to pay extra attention to airplane passengers who don’t appear on other regular watch lists.

It made news last year when whistleblowers revealed that Ms. Gabbard was added to the list after her political comments. Ms. Gabbard is now the director of national intelligence.

Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican and chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said last month that he had obtained air marshals’ documents detailing the surveillance of Ms. Gabbard, which included notations of her appearance and what sorts of electronics she was carrying.

“This is not an isolated case,” Mr. Paul said.

He praised Ms. Noem for moving to end those activities.

In 2021, some members of Congress demanded that the names of those involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol be listed.

Sonya LaBosco, a retired air marshal with the Air Marshal National Council, said TSA has also listed airline pilots and a Homeland Security deportation officer who was on the job deporting an illegal immigrant.

“Quiet Skies must end,” she said on social media Wednesday.