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Posted on 02/14/2017 8:20:33 AM PST by SeekAndFind
A dozen current and former Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and airport employees are facing charges related to an alleged cocaine-smuggling operation going back almost two decades. A federal grand jury in Puerto Rico indicted the defendants on February 8, and the U.S. Department of Justice announced the news on Monday.
The defendants allegedly transported cocaine-filled suitcases through security at the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Between 1998 and 2016, approximately 20 tons of cocaine made it through as part of the racket, according to the announcement. Drug mules would drop off the cocaine-filled suitcases at the airline check-in counter, the Justice Department said. Then one of the defendants would allegedly pick up the suitcases from the counter and put them into X-ray machines.
Another participant in the smuggling operation is believed to have monitored those machines, allowing the suitcases to pass through. A defendant would then allegedly take the suitcases to the airplanes, making sure they continued to avoid detection.
That announcement comes a week after a congressional subcommittee released a report about vulnerabilities in airport security. “At a time when we face increased threats from homegrown radicalization and lone-wolf terrorism, we must ensure that our airport access controls are strong and that we are doing all we can to mitigate the insider threat to aviation security,” Transportation and Protective Security Subcommittee Chairman John Katko said in a statement accompanying the report.
The report found that there are inconsistencies in how airport security officials educate employees and also that a majority of airports lack full employee screening at secure access points.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
While I agree that TSA is the most freedom-stealing, privacy abusing government agency ever created (from evil cloth), it was not in existence in 1998 to my recollection
The FBI and Coast Guard in the Miami / Tampa district interdicted 50 tons, that’s TONs in 2015.
And the price continues to drop...
5.56mm
DHS - Human smuggling bus service
TSA - Cocaine smuggling logistics
TSA began in 2001.
Those dozen employees and their 20 tons of coke is the tip if the iceberg.
Life sentences should be levied for these killers.
And I WELL understood that. The article starts off with the date 1998. I read it.
What good has the TSA done?
Searching 90 year old grandma’s while giving a nod to Abdule, because they don’t want to be profiling.
Shut down the TSA.
It seems really weird that all of these “investigations” that had supposedly been ongoing for several years suddenly had the triggers pulled once Obama left office (the other is the big MS-13 gang bust a couple of days ago in Santa Cruz).
It really makes one wonder if the same rogue Obama appointees who’re currently trying to nuke President Trump by illegally releasing classified information to WaPo and others, were rogue under Obama as well, but were then focused on collecting bribes of various kinds for themselves as quid pro quo for impeding these kinds of law enforcement operations.
It makes some sense because I suspect that Obama, like Ulysses Grant, didn’t pay much attention to the actual workings of government beyond the top layer, and the miscreants are petrified because they know their misdeeds will eventually come to light under a Trump administration, so they’re essentially engaged in mortal combat with President Trump, trying to bring him down before he brings them down.
It’s starting to look like the swamp may be much, much dirtier than anyone expected.
Have those responsible for oversight never heard the term “inside job”? Duh!
And who here says that government employees don’t do anything.
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