The Most Mismanaged Agency Or Department In The United States
Government Has Done It Again
By ANN Correspondent Kevin O'Brien
Maybe you've never heard
of W. Stephen Thayer III. But prosecutors and criminal defense
attorneys in his home state of New Hampshire have. In the
topsy-turvy world of inverted ethics that is the TSA, this
qualifies him for his position: Deputy Chief of the TSA's Office of
National Risk Assessment. In this position, he has run the
beleaguered CAPPS II air passenger data mining project. This
project has been under fire for, among other things, reckless and
irresponsible treatment of passengers' sensitive personal data.
Just where you want someone with Thayer's record -- not.
Before we get into the sordid history of personal misconduct and
moral turpitude that makes Thayer a natural for the TSA, let's take
a look at the pattern of behavior we see with them.
First, there's the crook angle -- we keep hearing about
organized gangs of TSA screeners ripping people off, not to mention
the singletons.
Then, there's the incompetent/unqualified personnel angle --
exemplified by the continuing hiring of people "proven" in the old,
failed system that gave us 9/11 (they hired another airport Fed
Security Director with this kind of non-confidence-inspiring record
this week), and the dogged insistence that groups of young Arabs
traveling on illegal travel documents is no big deal, but granny
needs to be proctoscoped because her ticket was bought by a
business, or because she rents instead of owns (two actual CAPPS
flagging factors).
Finally, there is the denial factor and fear of transparency. In
TSA HQ all is rosy. All is fine. In the press area you can find
examples of real letters (except for the spelling. And the grammar.
And...?) that "just plain people" wrote to praise the TSA. Do they
address the theft ring in Ft Lauderdale this month, the four execs
sacked in Seattle in May? Nope -- on the TSA website, everybody
loves Big Brother.
Thayer is a pluperfect
illustration of all three: dishonesty, incompetence, and denial. An
ambitious lawyer (what else?), he rose dramatically in political
ranks, and, still young, was named a state Supreme Court justice.
But he quickly proved that he's one of those people who can't be
trusted with the heady power of judges. He tried to use his
position on the bench to meddle in his own divorce case, and not to
put too fine a point on it, rip off his ex-wife. Regular mortals
get thrown in jail for this, but not Thayer; he got off with having
to resign from the bench. Still, he's got the dishonesty meter
pegged.
The TSA, seldom surpassed in any measure of ineptitude, picked
Thayer off the waiver wire; it seems even the local LAW firms
wouldn't touch him with a barge pole, and the best he could do is a
gig with a political pressure group, thanks to the same connections
that got him his short-lived judgeship.
Denial? Well, he worked a deal that was available at his
political level, but not to ordinary criminals facing similar
charges. As a result he can now say, hey, his record's clean. He
said it in so many words: "I committed no criminal act." I don't
know about you, but for me, merely having successfully dodged
felony charges on a technicality, or through some
smoke-filled-backroom deal, is not proof of innocence. It works for
the TSA though. As Michael Sniffen and Leslie Miller wrote for the
AP:
"[TSA Spokesman Mark] Hatfield said the New Hampshire
controversy was reviewed by those who appointed Thayer and posed no
bar to his hiring because no charges were filed and no action was
taken against him by the state judicial conduct committee or the
bar association."
Clinton's been out of
office for a while, so perhaps you have gotten out of the habit of
parsing mendacious sentences (which the above shows, are a skill
not unique to either party). Translated into plain English: "He
beat the rap, so he's good to go, by our low standards."
If you're used to dealing with the TSA, you might wonder by now
what Hatfield's qualifications for HIS job are, and how he landed
his gig. Well, I don't know Hatfield from a hole in the wall, but
his full name is Mark O. Hatfield, Jr. Which raises the question:
who's "senior"? Turns out Hatfield's pater was the ultimate insider
in Washington (the city), a long-serving Senator from Oregon.
Maybe that had absolutely nothing to do with Hatfield's name
being the one that a nationwide search turned up. Maybe he got the
job entirely on his merits. Maybe he's the exception that proves
the rule: the only one in TSA who knows what he's doing.
It's hard to be sure about Hatfield, but any organization that
valued integrity, competence and truth-telling would have shown
Thayer the door by now (if they hired him at all). At this writing,
Thayer remains securely employed as Deputy Chief of the TSA's
Office of National Risk Assessment, with access to and decision
power over every point of data on you ever collected by government
or business.
Draw your own conclusions.