Biden political opponents got stuck on TSA’s watchlist, audit finds

The Transportation Security Administration and federal air marshals retaliated against adversaries of President Biden by sticking them on secret scrutiny lists and tracking their air travels, the Homeland Security Department said Tuesday in an acknowledgment of “widespread abuses.”

Several dozen participants of the U.S. Capitol protests on Jan. 6, 2021, were put on the TSA’s watchlist “despite there being no evidence of wrongdoing or illegal behavior,” the department said.

Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, revealed that three current members of Congress were flagged by scrutiny lists, as were at least two dozen Americans deemed threatening because they refused to comply with COVID mask mandates.

Mr. Paul revealed details on TSA’s surveillance of Tulsi Gabbard, which began last summer, a day after she delivered a high-profile critique of Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Ms. Gabbard, now director of national intelligence, was surveilled on at least five trips last year under the Quiet Skies program.

“Quiet Skies was an unconstitutional dystopian nightmare masquerading as a security tool,” Mr. Paul said.

The Trump administration ended Quiet Skies and its $200 million annual budget. Officials said it failed to stop any terrorist attack but became “weaponized” by the Biden administration.

Homeland Security blamed David Pekoske for the program’s excesses. Mr. Biden reappointed him to lead TSA after the first Trump administration.

Mr. Trump fired him in January.

Homeland Security said listing the Jan. 6 protesters with no criminal entanglements was particularly egregious. Some remained on the watchlist through June 2021.

“The Biden-era TSA’s actions demonstrate clear political bias. For example, these officials chose NOT to flag individuals who attacked law enforcement, burned down cities and destroyed property during the widespread and violent George Floyd protests in 2020,” the department said.

Some TSA officials, including the agency’s chief privacy officer, complained about the listings, but “they were ignored.”

Under Quiet Skies, U.S. air marshals were assigned to follow targeted travelers around the airport and track them on their flights.

Ms. Gabbard was tracked on five trips spanning eight flights, including in August 2024, after she was added to the “cleared” list.

Mr. Paul did not reveal the names of the three current members of Congress who were flagged by the Silent Partner Program but said all were Republicans.

Testifying Tuesday was Mark Crowder, a senior air marshal who said he was checking the logs one day in the summer of 2021 when he discovered his wife had been watchlisted as a “domestic terrorist” in the Quiet Skies program.

She allegedly entered the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Crowder said that the information was wrong. He said his wife’s disability alone would have prevented her from walking that distance. To this day, he said, he doesn’t know how she was wrongly identified.

She wasn’t removed from the list until April 2023. During 13 trips, she was surveilled by air marshals, put through extra baggage screening and given a final screening at the jetway.

“Someone fabricated false claims about my wife’s actions on Jan. 6 to advance a politically motivated agenda,” Mr. Crowder said.

He said the TSA viewed him as living with a suspected terrorist. Still, he said, the agency took no action on what should have been considered a major insider threat if it was serious about the designation.

“It’s a sickening violation of her First Amendment rights,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican.

Mr. Paul said TSA documents he obtained showed that the mask resisters were deemed a “threat to recklessly carry out an act that represents a threat of life or serious injury to passengers and crew.”

One of the mask resisters was added to the deny-boarding list as “an imminent threat to transportation security,” even though the file made clear that the person did not have a record in the government’s Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, usually just referred to as the TIDE database.

Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, told senators that the problem runs deeper than Quiet Skies.

He said the government’s no-fly list, which puts people through extra screening or outright denies them boarding, lists people as potential terrorists based on “vague suspicion” sometimes tied to political speech.

Once on a list, people must go through an ordeal to have their names removed.

“This is not an abstract issue,” he said. “It strikes at the heart of due process and equal protection. Secret government lists, shared across agencies and even with private actors, should never have the power to confer or deny a person’s liberty without a meaningful way to challenge errors.”

Mr. Paul said that the agency refused when he tried to prod TSA about its operations.

“Secrecy is a problem,” he said.