    [Senate Hearing 119-215]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                            S. Hrg. 119-215

                       EXAMINING THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE
                              QUIET SKIES PROGRAM

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   before the

                                  COMMITTEE ON
                   HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                        ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                               SEPTEMBER 30, 2025

                                   __________

            Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov

                           Printed for the use of the
            Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

            [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                     U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

    62-163 PDF                   WASHINGTON : 2026

            COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

                         RAND PAUL, Kentucky, Chairman
    RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin               GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
    JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma             MAGGIE WOOD HASSAN, New Hampshire
    RICK SCOTT, Florida                  RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
    JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri                JOHN FETTERMAN, Pennsylvania
    BERNIE MORENO, Ohio                  ANDY KIM, New Jersey
    JONI ERNST, Iowa                     RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona
    ASHLEY MOODY, Florida                ELISSA SLOTKIN, Michigan

                    William E. Henderson III, Staff Director
         Christina N. Salazar, Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel
                           Andrew J. Hopkins, Counsel
                   J. Ryan Arient, Professional Staff Member
                   David M. Weinberg, Minority Staff Director
         Christopher J. Mulkins, Minority Director of Homeland Security
             Moran Banai, Minority Senior Professional Staff Member
                         Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
                       Ashley A. Gonzalez, Records Clerk

                                C O N T E N T S

                                     ------
    Opening statements:
                                                                       Page
        Senator Paul.................................................     1
        Senator Peters...............................................     3
        Senator Ernst................................................    15
        Senator Moreno...............................................    19
        Senator Lankford.............................................    21
    Prepared statements:
        Senator Paul.................................................    35
        Senator Peters...............................................    38

                                   WITNESSES
                          TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2025

    Mark Crowder, Senior Federal Air Marshal, U.S. Transportation
      Security Administration........................................     6
    Hon. Tristan Leavitt, President, Empower Oversight...............     8
    Matt Taibbi, Editor, Racket News.................................    10
    Jim Harper, Senior Nonresident Fellow, American Enterprise
      Institute......................................................    12
    Abed Ayoub, National Executive Director, American-Arab Anti-
      Discrimination Committee.......................................    14

                         ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

    Ayoub, Abed:
        Testimony....................................................    14
        Prepared statement...........................................    68
    Crowder, Mark:
        Testimony....................................................     6
    Harper, Jim:
        Testimony....................................................    12
        Prepared statement...........................................    48
    Taibbi, Matt:
        Testimony....................................................    10
        Prepared statement...........................................    46
    Leavitt, Hon. Tristan:
        Testimony....................................................     8
        Prepared statement...........................................    40

                                    APPENDIX

    Senator Paul's flash report......................................    71
    Minority response to flash report................................    80
    Committee Report.................................................    83
    Redacted documents...............................................   126
    Statements from Air Marshall National Council....................   238
    Statement from Council on American-Islamic Relations.............   243

                          EXAMINING THE WEAPONIZATION
                           OF THE QUIET SKIES PROGRAM

                                  ----------

                          TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2025

                                         U.S. Senate,
                               Committee on Homeland Security
                                      and Governmental Affairs,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
    342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Rand Paul, Chair of
    the Committee, presiding.
        Present: Senators Paul [presiding], Johnson, Lankford,
    Hawley, Moreno, Ernst, Peters, Hassan, and Blumenthal.

                  OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PAUL\1\

        Chairman Paul. Welcome. Thanks, everybody, for coming
    today.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Paul appears in the Appendix
    on page 35.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        In mid-2024, as she grew increasingly critical of the Biden
    administration and increasingly involved with the Trump
    campaign, Tulsi Gabbard noticed changes as she went to the
    airport. She had more screening, Federal agents with dogs
    showing up for her flights. Other Federal agents followed her
    on the plane and reported back on her activity.
        When I learned of this, I launched an investigation into
    the Transportation Security Administration (TSAs) Quiet Skies
    Program and the Biden administration's weaponization of the
    watch list against everyday Americans. Under public scrutiny
    the Biden administration removed now Director of National
    Intelligence (DNI) Gabbard from the program, but they spent the
    remainder of their time in office stonewalling any
    investigation.
        Thankfully, that era is over. President Trump, himself a
    victim of government weaponization, set out to reverse the
    previous administration's targeting of the very citizens it has
    sworn to protect.
        Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has taken
    decisive action to eliminate bureaucratic obstacles resisting
    transparency. We are finally getting answers, and now we know
    exactly why the previous administration fought so hard to keep
    us in the dark.
        Director Gabbard was surveilled on at least five domestic
    flights by Federal Air Marshals (FAM) under Quiet Skies.
    Internal records for her targeting show her congressional
    portrait and that she was a former Congresswoman from Hawaii.
    There was no doubt they knew who they were monitoring.
        Multiple concerns were raised internally, and one air
    marshal asked a colleague, why the heck is she a Quiet Skies
    suspect? If this can happen to a combat veteran, a Lieutenant
    Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, and now Director of National
    Intelligence, it can happen to anyone. And it did.
        Today, for the first time, you will hear directly from a
    Federal Air Marshal whose wife was labeled a domestic terrorist
    simply for engaging in protected First Amendment activity.
    Records show the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) labeled
    her as a domestic terrorist for unlawful entry into the Capitol
    on January 6th.
        But she did not enter the Capitol. She came for public
    support of the President, and they knew it. Her phone location
    data did not put her inside the Capitol. Facial recognition did
    not identify her inside. She had no criminal record and no
    history of extremist views.
        What they did know is that this Catholic schoolteacher from
    Texas supported President Trump and went to Washington to
    attend his rally at the Ellipse. That was not enough for the
    government. That was not enough to label her a suspected
    domestic terrorist. For two years, her family was surveilled
    when they flew.
        This was not an isolated case. It happened to hundreds of
    Americans. It happened because the TSA used First Amendment-
    protected activity as a predicate for watchlisting Americans.
    That is unconstitutional, of course. First Amendment activity
    cannot be the sole basis for watchlisting someone, but sole
    basis is an important caveat and it is an opening the TSA
    exploited.
        Today we will release internal TSA records that reveal how
    the agency authorized First Amendment activity to be used to
    justify the surveillance of Americans with no evidence and no
    recourse. Using broad and vague authorities, TSA deemed
    hundreds of Americans as threats to national security simply
    for holding opposing political views. The Federal Government
    used its investigative authorities, anonymous tips, and
    university research institutions to build a flimsy case to put
    them on the watch list.
        They did not just coincidentally watchlist hundreds of
    people who attended the same Trump rally. They did it
    intentionally, and obscured the process to create plausible
    deniability. For example, documents obtained in my
    investigation reveal that TSA relied on data collected by the
    George Washington University (GWU) Project on Extremism.
        Consider this. First, Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
    funds the Project on Extremism, an external partner not bound
    by the same laws and regulations as Federal agencies. Then, the
    Project on Extremism identifies supposed domestic threats by
    meticulously tracking January 6th defendants. DHS then uses the
    Project on Extremism reporting as evidence, sometimes the only
    evidence for putting someone on a watch list.
        But the abuses were not limited to January 6th. TSA also
    viewed skeptics of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) mandates
    as threats. Simply removing a mask on an aircraft got 12
    Americans watchlisted. Records also show three current Members
    of Congress, all Republicans, were included in the companion
    Silent Partner Program, either as a sitting member or while
    seeking elected office.
        A cursory review would have revealed them to be either a
    Member of Congress or decorated active or former U.S. military
    members. In fact, they were surveilled, likely for activities
    that were official duties during their time in the military or
    in Congress.
        All of this was wrong, and I am glad that these abuses are
    beginning to be exposed.
        I commend Secretary Noem for ending Quiet Skies, but our
    work is not done. We must make sure that this program does not
    come back under another name. Every official who directed or
    approved surveillance of Americans for protected speech must be
    removed from office.
        Full transparency must become the rule rather than
    requiring a year of investigation. The result will be a process
    that respects the Constitution, ends real-life shadow bans
    against Americans, and gives all of us the assurance that our
    government is focused on protecting us, not on chasing
    political ghosts.
        I now recognize the Ranking Member for his opening
    statement.

                 OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PETERS\1\

        Senator Peters. Thank you, Chair Paul.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appears in the
    Appendix on page 38.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Throughout my time in Congress, I have heard repeatedly
    from my constituents, particularly from members of Michigan's
    Arab and Muslim American community, about serious issues with
    the government's watchlisting and travel screening practices.
        While I appreciate the opportunity to discuss that today, I
    first want to raise some concerns about some of the other
    critical national security work this Committee is responsible
    for, but unfortunately, the Chair of this Committee has not
    prioritized.
        In a matter of hours, two critical homeland security
    authorities are set to expire: cybersecurity information-
    sharing protections that protect our economy against
    cyberattacks, and authorities that allow Federal law
    enforcement to detect and mitigate threats posed by drones.
        We were scheduled to discuss these two bills to renew and
    improve these authorities two weeks ago, but unfortunately the
    Chair abruptly canceled the meeting with absolutely no
    explanation.
        While there is a two-month extension for both authorities
    included in the continuing resolution (CR), that is only meant
    to be a stopgap. The Committee needs to do its work to
    reauthorize both of these pieces of legislation.
        But even though bipartisan leaders in the House, as well as
    the Trump administration and a bipartisan coalition in the
    Senate, all support extending this legislation for 10 years,
    Mr. Chair, you have not held a single hearing on these issues,
    and you canceled the only meeting where the Committee had the
    opportunity to discuss them. These actions risk making our
    Nation less safe.
        This Committee should not simply walk away from its
    responsibility to actually be a leader in critical homeland
    security matters. Similarly, while I share your concerns about
    government being weaponized for political purposes, quite
    frankly I find it odd that you have chosen to look backward now
    that this program has ended, while at the same time President
    Trump is openly directing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to
    prosecute his perceived enemies, by ordering also the closure
    of bribery investigations into a political ally who has been
    investigated for taking bribes. We also recently saw the
    Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) openly
    threaten the licenses of media companies over First Amendment
    protected speech.
        Mr. Chair, I hope you will devote this Committee's
    resources to conducting oversight of the current
    administration, as well.
        Turning to today's topic, in December 2023, I published a
    report that demonstrated how well-intentioned screening
    practices have ballooned into a layered and duplicative system
    that sweeps up travelers who may pose no threat to national
    security, especially among Arab, Muslim, and South Asian
    American travelers. At that time, there were at least 22
    different mechanisms that could lead a traveler to receive
    extra screenings or be denied boarding. Americans must navigate
    this very complex system with no explanation of why their
    travel has been delayed or disrupted, and they have no real
    opportunity to fully redress what prompted additional screening
    in the first place.
        Congress does not even have a complete picture of the full
    scope of this system and the impact that it has had on everyday
    Americans. Almost all of the oversight mechanisms are internal
    to the Executive Branch, such as the Privacy and Civil
    Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) and the Civil Rights and
    Civil Liberties (CRCL) Office at DHS.
        Unfortunately, with the Administration's attacks on
    oversight, those mechanisms have now been gutted, eliminating
    one of the few checks and balances that Americans can use to
    protect their rights in this process.
        That is why, following my report, I introduced, and this
    Committee passed, the Enhanced Oversight and Accountability in
    Screening Act. It was the first real effort to provide more
    transparency and more oversight for this entire system of
    screenings that is the topic today. This legislation requires
    DHS to reform the redress process and provide Congress with
    data on enhanced and secondary screenings by TSA and Customs
    and Border Protection (CBP), including their effectiveness.
        At the time, I asked, Mr. Chair, you to join me in working
    on this legislation, but instead you and the entire Republican
    dais voted against this transparency legislation. I am working
    to update it now, and would certainly love to have folks on
    this Committee join me in re-introducing this updated version
    in a bipartisan way.
        As I have said countless times before, we must be able to
    protect our Nation, but Americans who pose no threat to
    national security should not face a maze of travel screenings
    and a flawed redress process. We must bring transparency and
    accountability to our travel screening practices so we can
    ensure the government is effectively protecting our national
    security, while also protecting the civil rights and civil
    liberties of travelers.
        Mr. Chair, I would like to introduce two things into the
    record. I want to move to introduce a minority response to the
    majority report into the record,\1\ to clarify some of the
    information that the Committee has actually received that
    requires some clarification.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The minority response to the majority report appears in the
    Appendix on page 80.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        I would also like to move to introduce my Committee report
    from December 2023,\2\ identifying significant problems with
    the watch list and screening processes, and calling for
    reforms, that again passed this Committee but unfortunately
    received no Republican support for the reforms that we are
    going to be talking about here today.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \2\ The Committee Report appears in the Appendix on page 83.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Chairman Paul. Without objection.
        You have to love fake outrage. If there was such great
    concern for these Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security
    Agency (CISA) authorities, last week the Ranking Minority
    Member had a chance to vote for the CR which extended these
    authorities, but he voted no. So, you know, fake outrage is
    great, but it is fake.
        As far as the reason why we have not gone forward with the
    CISA reauthorization, it is because CISA has been associated
    with some of the worst and most egregious abuse of First
    Amendment. What we are talking about today, with the Quiet
    Skies, is First Amendment abuses, so we want to make sure that
    no one in government ever uses government again to go to
    Twitter or Facebook and tell them to take down stuff that's
    protected by the First Amendment. So it is integral, and we
    will continue to fight to make sure if CISA is reauthorized, or
    any of CISA's activities are reauthorized, that there are First
    Amendment protections attached.
        Senator Peters. Mr. Chair?
        Chairman Paul. Sure.
        Senator Peters. You are conflating. This is not a
    reauthorization of the CISA as the organization. This is
    liability protections that have been in place for 10 years.
        Chairman Paul. So it is going to be First Amendment
    protections added to that.
        And you have opposed it and that is a problem.
        Senator Peters. Mr. Chair, this has broad bipartisan
    support. The Trump administration supports this
    reauthorization----
        Chairman Paul. And so we can keep fighting about this.
        You had a chance to vote for it.
        Senator Peters [continuing]. They had said that is
    absolutely essential.
        Chairman Paul. So you voted against it.
        Senator Peters. And you voted against the reauthorization
    that I put up. You were the only objector.
        Chairman Paul. You voted against it and now preciously you
    are for it this week. All right.
        Senator Peters. It has the support of 49 members of the
    Senate.
        You will have a chance to vote again in a unanimous consent
    (UC), Mr. Chair.
        Chairman PaulI now recognize the witnesses.
        Senator Peters. You are going to have a chance again.
        Chairman Paul. It is the practice of the Homeland Security
    and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) to swear in its
    witnesses. Will each of the witnesses please rise and raise
    your right hand.
        Do you swear that the testimony you will be giving before
    this Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
    but the truth, so help you, God?
        Mr. Crowder. I do.
        Mr. Leavitt. I do.
        Mr. Taibbi. I do.
        Mr. Harper. I do.
        Mr. Ayoub. I do.
        Chairman Paul. Thank you. Our first witness is Mark
    Crowder. He is a Senior Federal Air Marshal with the U.S.
    Transportation Administration, with over 20 years of
    experience. Before joining the Air Marshals, he served four
    years in the United States Marine Corps (USMC), three years as
    a uniformed police officer with the Central Intelligence Agency
    (CIA), and three years as a Deputy Sheriff in Florida.
        Mr. Crowder, you are recognized for your opening statement.

      TESTIMONY OF MARK CROWDER, SENIOR FEDERAL AIR MARSHAL, U.S.
                 TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

        Mr. Crowder. Good morning, Chair Peters, and distinguished
    Members of the Committee.
        I am going to start by reading a memo that I was advised to
    read by my management.
        The views I express are my own and should be construed as
    not representing the official policy or position of the
    Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security
    Administration, or the United States. I have also been advised
    that whistleblowing is an official duty.
        With that being said, I will go into my testimony.
        Again, my name is Mark Crowder, a Senior Federal Air
    Marshal with over 20 years of service protecting the American
    people. In those two decades I have flown millions of miles to
    safeguard our Nation. Like so many others, I answered the call
    to serve after the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001
    (9/11). Driven by an unshakeable resolve to ensure such a
    tragedy would never happen again, at its peak the Federal Air
    Marshal Service embodied the highest standards of Federal law
    enforcement. We are known for excellence in firearms, tactics,
    and specialized training.
        Today I come before you to report that those standards have
    been eroded. The agency's once clear mission has been distorted
    by career bureaucrats and political appointees who prioritize
    personal advancement over the safety of our citizens. My
    testimony will expose how Federal law enforcement agencies,
    sworn to protect Americans, have been weaponized to target the
    very people it serves.
        On July 15, 2021, while serving in the Houston Field Office
    Operations Unit, I was monitoring special mission coverage
    flights in our area of responsibility. To my shock, I
    discovered my wife, Christine, seated behind me, had been
    flagged in the FAM system as a domestic terrorist, falsely
    accused of entering the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. I was
    horrified. I knew with absolute certainty that Christine was
    nowhere near the Capitol that day. My wife, who has a
    disability that prevents her from walking long distances had
    simply exercised her First Amendment right to attend a rally
    for President Trump before returning to her hotel.
        As a Federal Air Marshal with top secret security clearance
    I immediately reported the alarming designation to my
    supervisors, noting that according to their system I was living
    with a terrorist, a clear insider threat. The Special Agent in
    Charge (SAC), William Aupperlee, instructed me to remain silent
    and let the investigation run its course. Shockingly, no one
    expressed concerns about the potential compromise of classified
    information through my household. SAC Aupperlee was later
    promoted to senior positions within the agency.
        From July 2021 until April 2023, Christine was subjected to
    approximately 13 special mission coverages. Each time she flew,
    teams of Federal Air Marshals surveilled her. She was barred
    from checking in on the airport kiosk, online, and forced to
    endure long waits at ticket counters for TSA's verification of
    her identification and to take control of her luggage. She was
    subjected to invasive secondary screening at TSA security
    checkpoints. After the checkpoint she was then searched again
    at the jetway by TSA's Advanced Threat Local Allocation
    Strategy (ATLAS) teams. This treatment extended to anyone
    traveling with her, including her elderly mother and our
    daughter, causing them both significant distress.
        In one particularly disturbing instance, I was off-duty,
    flying armed, with Christine. The FAM team assigned to surveil
    her that day had to coordinate with me, an armed Federal Air
    Marshal traveling with an alleged terrorist. How could an
    agency allow such a glaring operational and ethnical conflict
    to persist?
        I only learned of my wife's designation because of my
    insider role within the agency. How many other innocent
    Americans have been falsely labeled as terrorists and
    surveilled without their knowledge? How many had their
    conversations, travel companions, and devices unknowingly
    monitored?
        With the assistance of Sonya LaBosco, an Air Marshal
    National Counsel, I exposed this injustice and halted
    surveillance of my family. At the same time, Quiet Skies
    missions and those targeting Americans who attended January 6th
    events, including public figures like Director of National
    Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, dominated FAM's operations. These
    politically motivated priorities diverted critical resources
    and genuine security threats, betraying the solemn promises we
    made after 9/11--never again.
        The events I have described, betrayal of American values,
    the weaponization of Federal law enforcement to arrest and
    intimidate citizens, exercising their constitutional rights is
    unconscionable. Senior officials at the FBI, the Department of
    Homeland Security, TSA, and the FAM service should have
    recognized these actions as beyond the scope of lawful
    authority and intervened.
        Someone fabricated false claims about my wife's actions on
    January 6th to advance a politically motivated agenda. Those
    responsible must be identified, and accountability must be
    enforced to root out the corruption and restore public trust in
    Federal law enforcement.
        Thank you for the opportunity to present my testimony.
        Chairman Paul. Next up we have Tristan Leavitt. Mr. Leavitt
    is the President of Empower Oversight, a nonprofit, nonpartisan
    organization dedicated to strengthening public integrity
    through research, education, and providing pro bono legal
    assistance to whistleblowers. Mr. Leavitt previously served as
    a Principal Deputy Special Counsel at the Office of Special
    Counsel (OSC) and the General Counsel (GC)--that is a lot of
    counsels--at the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB).
        Mr. Leavitt, you are recognized for your opening statement.

       TESTIMONY OF HON. TRISTAN LEAVITT,\1\ PRESIDENT, EMPOWER
                               OVERSIGHT

        Mr. Leavitt. Thank you. Chair Paul, Ranking Member Peters,
    and distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you so much
    for having me to testify today.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Leavitt appears in the Appendix
    on page 40.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Empower Oversight provides legal representation to brave
    whistleblowers across the Federal Government. We are honored to
    represent several air marshals, including Senior Air Marshal
    Mark Crowder here today.
        Mr. Crowder first came to Empower in 2022, through the Air
    Marshal National Counsel's indomitable Executive Director,
    Sonja LaBosco, seated behind me. He raised concerns that his
    wife had been targeted for exercising her First Amendment
    rights alone. If they truly considered her some sort of threat,
    why wasn't he walled off from seeing this information as he
    assigned missions of air marshals around the country?
        Despite his disclosures to the Office of Special Counsel,
    my former agency, and later to the DHS Inspector General (IG),
    no meaningful investigation ever took place. That failure of
    oversight is exactly what allows abuses to fester.
        Ms. LaBosco contacted us at Empower Oversight again in the
    beginning of August 2024, when air marshals wanted to blow the
    whistle on another disturbing case, the political targeting of
    Tulsi Gabbard through TSA's Quiet Skies program. The facts were
    alarming. Ms. Gabbard was added on July 23, 2024, just one day
    after she made statements to Laura Ingram on Fox News critical
    of Vice President Kamala Harris, who had just become the
    presumptive Democratic Party Presidential nominee. Rather than
    using her passport photo as required, TSA officials used her
    official congressional photo, making clear that they knew
    exactly who she was.
        These initial whistleblower disclosures were reported by
    Wendi Strauch Mahoney on UncoverDC and digitally on the Breanna
    Morello show. Despite Empower's experience with the DHS IG
    failing to investigate the Crowder situation, we asked them to
    investigate here and we also submitted disclosures to the
    Congress. Members of this Committee, and others, pressed DHS
    for answers, and your persistence, Chair Paul, helped ensure
    Secretary Noem became aware of the Quiet Skies program and
    ended it.
        Ending Quiet Skies was a very important step and well, well
    overdue. But that alone does not prevent what happened to the
    Crowders. They were not a part of the Quiet Skies program, and
    a program like Quiet Skies could always be revived if we fail
    to learn the lessons.
        The first lesson is very clear--civil liberties cannot
    protect themselves. Independent oversight is essential from
    bodies like this and others. Whenever government cites national
    security to conceal its actions, the risk of abuse rises, and
    only oversight can shine the light needed to stop it. In this
    case, much more light is needed as it relates to Tulsi Gabbard.
        On January 28, 2025, The New York Times published a leak
    from the government attempting to explain away Ms. Gabbard's
    placement on Quiet Skies. The article claimed that her
    placement was related to her attending a conference at the
    Vatican, supposedly because of another attendee on the watch
    list. But the article admitted that she attended alongside
    another former Member of Congress, Mick Mulvaney, who invited
    her. If Ms. Gabbard was truly flagged for that reason, why
    wasn't Mr. Mulvaney also added to Quiet Skies when he flew back
    from the conference at the Vatican?
        The government's story just does not add up, and any
    credible review must answer those questions. Secretary Noem
    announced the review revealed, quote, ``the Quiet Skies program
    was used as a political rolodex of the Biden administration,''
    end quote. However, she provided few details. Reports indicate
    that at least one elected official had her husband removed from
    the Quiet Skies list with a single phone call.
        These issues demand a full accounting. That is why Empower
    Oversight recently called on the DHS Inspector General to
    complete its work and make its report public. Normally,
    inspector general reports with private information are kept
    internal. They have information about personal individuals.
    However, given Ms. Gabbard's prominence, the allegations of
    political targeting, and the large amount of selective
    information the government already leaked, there is a clear
    public interest here in transparency. DHS IG has released
    similar reports before when public figures were involved.
    Accountability cannot be achieved if this is swept under the
    rug in a private report.
        In addition, the investigation must look beyond Ms.
    Gabbard's case. Anyone who abused TSA protocols to target or
    protect individuals for political reasons must be held
    accountable. A thorough report is necessary to propose
    discipline for those who committed misconduct.
        Finally, another of the most important lessons is that none
    of this would have come to light without whistleblowers. Of
    course, it was obvious to Ms. Gabbard that she was subjected to
    extra screening, but what she did not know, and would never
    have known, is that she was formerly targeted through Quiet
    Skies. Only courageous insiders willing to speak up made that
    possible.
        After their disclosures, and when we brought these things
    to the attention of the IG, TSA opened a leak investigation. Of
    course, this was troubling. The legal question of whether
    whistleblowers may disclose so-called sensitive security
    information to the media was resolved over a decade ago in the
    case of Air Marshal Robert MacLean. When his case came to the
    Supreme Court in 2013, I organized, for Senator Grassley, a
    bicameral, bipartisan amicus brief arguing TSA's regulations
    could not trump the statutory guarantees of the Whistleblower
    Protection Act (WPA). A Supreme Court majority agreed with us,
    but TSA still sought to investigate our clients' disclosures as
    though they were unlawful leaks. That kind of retaliation
    chilled whistleblowers across the government.
        TSA backed down when Empower exposed their investigation,
    but those kinds of risks remain. Protecting whistleblowers is
    not optional. They are the first line of defense against waste,
    fraud, abuse, and overreach. If they are silenced, the American
    people lose one of the only tools that can help bring abuses of
    power into light.
        Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and I look
    forward to your questions.
        Chairman Paul. Our next witness is Matt Taibbi. Mr. Taibbi
    is an award-winning investigative reporter and Editor for
    Racket News. Mr. Taibbi was a Contributing Editor at Rolling
    Stone, won a National Magazine Award, authored four New York
    Times best-sellers, and now writes on Substack as one of its
    most popular independent columnists in the country, with tens
    of thousands of subscribers.
        Mr. Taibbi, you are recognized for your opening statement.

            TESTIMONY OF MATT TAIBBI,\1\ EDITOR, RACKET NEWS

        Mr. Taibbi. Thank you and good morning, Chair Paul, Ranking
    Member Peters, distinguished Members of the Committee.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Taibbi appears in the Appendix on
    page 46.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Last year, former Hawaii Congresswoman and Presidential
    candidate Tulsi Gabbard was placed in a surveillance program
    called Quiet Skies by the Transportation and Security
    Administration. She was subject to intrusive searches, followed
    by bomb-sniffing dogs, and trailed by three Federal Air
    Marshals per flight.
        To cover the story I contacted the TSA. They no-commented
    the main question about the truth of the story, but added, as
    if in mitigation, ``Simply matching to a risk-based rule does
    not constitute derogatory information about an individual.''
    That is bureaucrat-ese for, ``We can't say if Ms. Gabbard was
    in the program, but if she was, don't draw any conclusions,
    because we do this even to innocent people.''
        Before Quiet Skies was discontinued by this Administration,
    it was a symbol of the steep decline of Federal enforcement
    since 9/11. The government spent $200 million a year following
    up to 50 people a day for a program that in its history never
    once led to an arrest or thwarted a single criminal act.
    Despite its demonstrated inutility and grave civil liberties
    concerns it was re-funded year after year because this is what
    our government does now--it gathers information on its own
    citizens as an end in itself.
        In a week in which the question of whether Federal security
    officials always tell the truth to Congress is back in the
    news, it is worth noting that it has been 13 years since then
    National Intelligence Director James Clapper answered, ``No,
    sir,'' and ``Not wittingly'' when Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon
    asked, ``Does the National Security Agency (NSA) collect any
    type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of
    Americans?''
        Clapper later explained that he had responded in the,
    quote, ``least most untruthful manner.''
        That episode solidified a principle that holds in America
    today. If you lie about mass surveillance programs, even under
    oath, you not only get to keep your job, you get to be hired as
    a professional truth-teller after retirement as a National
    Security Analyst for CNN. If you try to tell the truth, on the
    other hand, about the same issues, your options are prison or
    leaving the country forever.
        In those 13 years, Americans became numb to surveillance.
    It was once a core principle that government could not or
    should not spy on its citizens without predication. Now much of
    the country accepts as inevitable the idea that every move we
    make is being recorded and analyzed. We know emails and phone
    conversations, at a minimum, are being collected passively, and
    mountains of data we leave behind as our lives move online,
    from geolocations of cellphones to GPS tracking, to travel,
    banking, and medical records, are increasingly fodder for overt
    or covert acquisition by Federal analysts. As Google admitted
    last week, Federal officials partnered with companies not just
    to monitor speech but to suppress it on a grand scale.
        Quiet Skies was the paradigmatic example of a program that
    could take endless liberties with the Constitution because it
    was secret. When you gather information with no intention of
    ever going to court, as the TSA did with Quiet Skies, you never
    have to justify yourself to a judge. This leads to a lot of
    what one court recently called the exact sort of ``exploratory
    rummaging'' that the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent.
        This is a betrayal not just of the public but of people
    like Mr. Crowder, who have been trained for important work but
    have been forced to do intelligence work and gather information
    fellow citizens instead. As former marshal Robert MacLean put
    it to me, ``The air marshal's job is to protect the cockpit and
    the pilots. Let somebody else do the intelligence.'' One FBI
    agent I interviewed said, ``The distinction between people who
    believe bad thoughts and people who do bad things'' has been
    ``completely lost in our government'' since 9/11.
        Once you start down the road of collecting information on
    innocent people, it creates the intellectual justification for
    doing it again and again and again. All this information-
    gathering reverses the natural political order, giving elected
    officials undeserved and unearned power over their bosses--us,
    the voters.
        It is time to stop being numb to this outrage. Let's hope
    the elimination of Quiet Skies is just the beginning. Thank you
    very much.
        Chairman Paul. The Committee now welcome Jim Harper. Mr.
    Harper is a Senior Nonresident Fellow at the American
    Enterprise Institute (AEI). His work there focuses on digital
    privacy, privacy law, and select constitutional issues. He has
    written several amicus briefs in Fourth Amendment cases before
    the U.S. Supreme Court and has published articles in a variety
    of law journals.
        Mr. Harper, welcome to the Committee.

    TESTIMONY OF JIM HARPER,\1\ SENIOR NONRESIDENT FELLOW, AMERICAN
                          ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

        Mr. Harper. Thank you, Chair Paul, Ranking Member Peters,
    and Members of the Committee for the opportunity to testify
    before you today. I am happy to return to a Committee where I
    was a counsel for a short time early in my career, under the
    chairmanship of Senator Ted Stevens.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Harper appears in the Appendix on
    page 48.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Having established that I am old, I also want to confess to
    being slightly embarrassed for all of us that my written
    testimony, submitted to you, spends as much time as it does on
    the problem of counterterrorism security policy, which still
    plagues us nearly 25 years after the attacks of September 11,
    2001. I wish that by now we had better systems in place for
    assessing risk and calibrating our responses.
        I am in the privileged position of working in a think tank
    that encourages me to call it like I see it, without reference
    to orthodoxies or partisan considerations. That is the American
    Enterprise Institute, where I am a nonresident senior fellow.
    This morning the President of AEI asked me a lot of questions
    about my testimony, and I said, ``You can't ask all these
    questions or I am going to have to change my opening
    statement!'' But I will proceed.
        The testimony I have submitted to you is a sincere effort
    to summarize what my study over years has produced in terms of
    strategic counterterrorism and the security systems by which a
    free country should address a particularly difficult challenge.
    Doing security well is an American, nonpartisan interest.
        There are partisan valances to this hearing, of course, but
    there is opportunity here, because communities and people
    sympathetic to both sides of the aisle have now experienced the
    negative consequences of watchlisting, including in the Quiet
    Skies program. In writing my testimony I kept coming back to
    the theme that watchlisting is a security and constitutional
    half-measure. Watchlisting is a system for interdicting people
    whose activities do not raise a sufficient suspicion to merit
    actual interdiction, through full investigation, arrest, and
    the levying of criminal charges.
        By doling out minor punishments and derogations on freedom
    unilaterally, watchlisting defies our constitutional separation
    of powers, in which law enforcement is supposed to bring
    charges to be adjudicated in a separate judicial branch.
    Watchlisting violates due process and derogates from the
    presumption of innocence, treating people as guilty of
    something without providing them an opportunity to challenge
    that assessment.
        In my written testimony I place Quiet Skies in a context as
    a form of overreaction to terrorism, which, as a strategy,
    seeks to trigger victim states into error. The waste of blood
    and treasure is the clearest error and a win for terrorism.
    Here, a program costing hundreds of millions of dollars to
    achieve essentially nothing.
        Terrorism seeks to knock victim states off their
    ideological moorings and to delegitimize them. You do not have
    to believe in a deep state cabal here, but you can recognize
    that Quiet Skies and other watchlisting programs open our
    government up to the charge, which is delegitimizing.
        I also supplied in my written testimony material on
    terrorism risk management that was produced by the Department
    of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory
    Committee in 2006. The DHS Privacy Committee itself was one
    effort to create some balance at DHS. The Privacy Impact
    Assessment process is another. They have a role not to be
    dismissed, but I do not think internal counterweights do enough
    to bring balance to security programs. Our tradition is to use
    tension among branches of government and among agencies to
    bring balance. In the latter part of my testimony I broach a
    few methods for improving the institutional and policymaking
    dynamics so there would be fewer or no more Quiet Skies
    programs.
        First, Congress could de-delegate power from the DHS. We
    can understand the haste and uncertainty that produced broad
    delegation of power in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001,
    attacks, but that era is passed. You could specifically
    authorize programs that you find to be effective, de-authorize
    the ones that you do not see as clearly and cost-effectively
    securing our country.
        Oversight hearings like this are an appropriate response.
    Public and judicial oversight are important checks that help
    produce balance. Here, secrecy is a perennial and confounding
    problem. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's book, Secrecy: The American
    Experience, argued that secrecy leaves policymakers less
    informed, it denies government accountability, and it sharply
    limits public debate about policy and government conduct.
        An additional proposal I offer is to have the Congress
    recognize travel as a right equivalent to other rights in the
    Constitution. Were it recognized clearly as a right, courts
    would be in a better position to help administer the issues
    that come before it and people would be able to challenge
    security programs that threaten their liberties.
        Finally, I argue that privatizing at least some parts of
    travel security would produce good results. Liability rules,
    the insurance system, and competitive pressure are things that
    government programs do not have to help guide them.
        We are in a time of welcome openness to change at the
    Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Noem. Quiet
    Skies is gone. The shoes-off policy at airport checkpoints is a
    thing of the past. There are signals that the liquids rule and
    other overreaction may be reconsidered. Let's see more to
    revamp airline security and counterterrorism policy so that
    threats are in perspective and directly met while Americans
    remain free to travel in possession of all their rights. Thank
    you.
        Senator Peters. Our next witness is Abed Ayoub. Mr. Ayoub
    hails from Dearborn, Michigan, and is a graduate of the
    University of Michigan and the University of Detroit Mercy
    School of Law. He currently serves as the National Executive
    Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
    (ADC), an Arab-American civil rights organization committed to
    defending the civil rights and civil liberties of all
    Americans, including advancing due process and equal
    protection.
        Throughout his career he has worked to address issues
    impacting Arab and Muslim Americans in the United States,
    including matters related to discrimination, surveillance,
    profiling, and most relevant to this hearing, watchlisting and
    screening. Under his leadership, the ADC legal department
    successfully assisted and provided pro bono support to
    thousands of impacted community members across the country.
        You are now recognized for your opening remarks.

       TESTIMONY OF ABED AYOUB,\1\ NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
              AMERICAN-ARAB ANTI-DISCRIMINATION COMMITTEE

        Mr. Ayoub. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Paul and Ranking
    Member Peters for the opportunity to testify. My name is Abed
    Ayoub, National Executive Director of ADC. We were founded over
    45 years ago by former Senator James Abourezk. Throughout that
    time we have worked and assisted countless members of our
    community who have directly impacted by government watch list
    process.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Ayoub appears in the Appendix on
    page 68.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Let me start off by saying something that may surprise some
    people, but I have sympathy and I feel really for MAGA
    supporters, for Republicans, and for anybody that is going
    through and experiencing the fallout of the watch list issues.
    That includes missed flights, repeat screening, frozen bank
    accounts, job consequences, and much more, without notice or a
    fair way to challenge it.
        I do not need to share their politics to understand that
    rights and liberties are not condition on agreement. What they
    are experiencing today mirrors what Arab and Muslim families
    have endured for decades, a secret designation that follows you
    from airport to employer and sometimes to consulate, with no
    clear explanation and no reliable fix. That is not a partisan
    problem. It is a due process problem. When the government can
    quietly tag one group, it can quietly tag any group--left,
    right, neither--just depending on who holds power. The answer
    is the same for all of us--end the watch list, or at minimum,
    implement safeguards that protect our liberties and rights.
        Quiet Skies was a total disaster. ADC welcomes the decision
    by the Secretary of Homeland Security to shut it down. Retiring
    a program that surveilled ordinary travelers without evidence
    of wrongdoing is a meaningful step toward fairness. But Quiet
    Skies captures only part of the story. It was a window into a
    faulty surveillance architecture--secret lists, vague criteria,
    and downstream sharing that harm people who have done nothing
    wrong.
        For decades, the watch list system has too often been a
    shortcut for suspicion, aimed at my community members not
    because of what we have done, but because of who we are and
    what we believe. People get flagged after visiting family
    overseas, donating to lawful charities, attending a protest, or
    simply for praying. That is not security. That is punishment
    for religion and politics.
        More than 98 percent of the names on the FBI's 2019
    Screening Dataset were Arab or Muslim. Placement on these lists
    does not require arrest, charge, or conviction. Instead, it is
    based on vague suspicion, often tied to religious practice or
    again, protected political speech.
        Again, let me be clear. If a tool can quietly target my
    community members today, it can target any community tomorrow--
    journalists, activists, immigrants, gun owners, union
    organizers, pro-life or pro-choice advocates. Once a secret
    label replaces proof, the only limit is who is in power. If you
    won't end the watch list, then at least cage it with real
    notice, evidence, hearings, and strict limits so no American's
    faith or viewpoint becomes a reason to be treated like a
    suspect.
        Placement on the watch list has a direct and dire impact
    that reaches beyond the airport. These harms underscore why
    there must be reform to allow for redress/removal from the
    list, the tracking of screenings, and assurances of appropriate
    oversight, because the human and policy costs are real.
        The task is larger than ending one program. We have to take
    immediate steps to implement due process measures to afford
    those on the list an opportunity to be removed.
        Many expert, and opinions, many of them here today, have
    provided a clear roadmap to fixing these immediate issues, such
    as requiring TSA and CBP to systematically track all screenings
    and outcomes so we can see where the system fails and who is
    being hit the hardest. Second, direct the National Terrorist
    Screening Center (NTSC) to report regularly to Congress on
    nominations, removals, error rates, and recall of bad data,
    with safeguards to protect privacy while exposing patterns of
    bias. Third, pair transparency with teeth. Have mandatory
    timelines and independent review that can order a delisting.
        The most urgent fix is transparency and due process. If the
    government is going to restrict your liberties, you have a
    right to know why. DHS's Traveler Redress Inquiry Program
    (TRIP), provides little information to travelers about why they
    are flagged or whether corrections are applied across the
    system. Without systematic tracking, bias can go unchecked, and
    travelers have no meaningful way to correct errors. Today,
    individuals on watchlists often receive no notice, no
    explanation, and no meaningful way off the list.
        There is room for bipartisanship on this issue, and I am
    confident of that. I will meet anyone halfway on this--left,
    right, it does not matter--because the watch list is not about
    who you voted for. It is about whether the government has to
    prove its case when it takes away your rights and limits your
    life.
        Mr. Chair and Members of the Committee, eliminating Quiet
    Skies was necessary, but it is not sufficient. We need to
    restore transparency, accountability, and due process to
    protect millions of travelers. We stand by and ready to assist
    in that effort. Thank you,
        Chairman Paul. Thank you all for your testimony. We are
    going to start a round of questions, and we will start with
    Senator Ernst.

                   OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ERNST

        Senator Ernst. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for calling today's
    hearing. For years I have been highlighting examples of
    government mismanagement and waste with my monthly Squeal
    Awards, and the TSA's Quiet Skies program, unfortunately, was a
    prime candidate for such an award.
        Two hundred million dollars a year was spent on a program
    that was weaponized by the Biden administration to target
    political opponents, including patriot veterans like former
    Congresswoman, now Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi
    Gabbard. The program covered over 180,000 flights since 2018,
    and did not stop a single terrorist attack, as many of you
    noted.
        I thank Secretary Noem for ending this wasteful boondoggle
    of a program and ensuring that TSA and DHS resources are used
    effectively to focus on keeping air travel safe rather than
    spying on and harassing law-abiding citizens.
        Mr. Crowder, I will start with you. I am so sorry to hear
    about the political targeting by the Biden administration
    against your family, and I thank you for your service to our
    fantastic country. Your testimony highlighting TSA and Federal
    Air Marshal resources being diverted to track and harass the
    families of those sworn to protect Americans and make air
    travel safer, shows what was wrong with the awful Quiet Skies
    program.
        But this program is not the only boondoggle that has
    existed under TSA and DHS in recent years. Since 2017, the DHS
    Inspector General has highlighted unresolved recommendations
    about how Federal Air Marshal Service contributions to aviation
    security are questionable, so questionable, in fact, that as
    much as $394 million is being perpetually misused. Mr. Crowder,
    can you share any suggestions for TSA and DHS safety changes
    you and your colleagues might have?
        Mr. Crowder. You say we have not shown to stop anything.
    Back in the 1980s, there were air marshals. There was a
    significant number of them, trying to stop hijackings. That
    number dwindled down to approximately 33 before 9/11. Had the
    agency stayed the course, maybe that would have been prevented.
    It is not how many air marshals and how many flights we are on
    but the terrorists not knowing which flight we are on.
        I do not want to downplay our role in the security of the
    Nation. But as I testified, a lot of things were abused with
    Quiet Skies. January 6th, things of that nature, need to be
    addressed. Does that answer your question?
        Senator Ernst. It does. What you are saying, basically, is
    follow the guidelines as the Federal Government has laid out
    for air marshals, and not get into the business of
    intelligence, following, surveilling, those passengers that
    might be targeted by the Federal Government. Can that be a
    takeaway?
        Mr. Crowder. Yes. The abuse for political reasons needs to
    be stopped.
        Senator Ernst. OK.
        Mr. Crowder. It needs to be intel driven.
        Senator Ernst. Very good. Thank you. Mr. Leavitt, where are
    the TSA and DHS employees who were working on the Quiet Skies
    program now? Have they moved into other programs? Does the
    agency still employ them?
        Mr. Leavitt. Quiet Skies is just one of several programs
    that fed into creating what is called special mission coverage.
    There are still air marshals being deployed around the country,
    of course. This was just one of their several missions. At TSA
    headquarters, they still have other reasons, other criteria for
    which they are putting people on lists and other things.
        So no, we do not have any reason to believe that any staff
    have been laid off or anything because the Quiet Skies program
    was finished. They just divert in other work, and we hope that
    it is work that actually protects the American homeland.
        Senator Ernst. Wonderful. I want to thank all of our
    witnesses for being here today and sharing those personal
    stories. I think it is very important.
        I want to just take, in the remaining time I have left, to
    once again thank Secretary Noem. Over the weekend, while I was
    at home, in Southwest Iowa, I ran into a U.S. Marshal that had
    been part of the apprehension of an illegal migrant that had
    killed a young Council Bluffs woman nine years ago. He had fled
    to Honduras, back to his home country. Through Secretary Noem,
    DHS, and through Secretary Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State,
    through those two departments they were able to extradite that
    man from Honduras, and he is here, seeing justice, finally,
    after nine years. I want to thank the Administration for doing
    that.
        But when I ran into this U.S. Marshal over the weekend he
    said, ``Rarely do we ever see justice,'' and in this case we
    are seeing justice because of the Administration and their
    follow-through. Thank you for allowing me that, Mr. Chair.
        Chairman Paul. Senator Peters.
        Senator Peters. Mr. Ayoub, one of the issues that I have
    heard again and again from people in the community and others
    is just how broken the redress process is for people who
    believe that they are unjustly or mistakenly caught up in the
    watchlisting system. Mr. Crowder, I understand your wife, my
    understanding is not on Quiet Skies, she was put on the watch
    list, the Terrorist Watch List program. The redress process is
    really important. We still have that program in place, and we
    need to have reforms, which was part of the work I have been
    doing and the legislation that I had that we did pass out of
    Committee to deal with redress.
        But given your experience working with individuals who
    believe that they are on the Terrorist Watch List, what
    recommendations specifically do you have for this community?
    What should we be doing right now so it does not happen to Mr.
    Crowder's wife in the future, it does not happen to the folks
    that you hear from regularly and I hear from regularly back in
    Michigan?
        Mr. Ayoub. Thank you for that. Look, the redress process
    and the DHS TRIP program is flawed. It does not always work, it
    does not give you the reason why you were put on a list, and it
    does not give you a final decision. You fill out your
    information online, and you get a letter back saying some vague
    language, like, ``We received it. We can neither confirm nor
    deny that you are on a list.'' And it is not always effective.
        We need to work to find ways to expand that due process,
    expand the option of being removed from the list, look at what
    existing programs are there that we could take advantage of
    which could review individuals coming in. You want to be
    proactive. If somebody is on the list, again, set up a
    proactive way for them to reach out and be removed.
        My colleague at the end, who is a U.S. Air Marshal, who has
    far more access to being removed, it still took him a couple of
    years to be removed. Imagine a regular individual going through
    the same thing. It is going to take much longer.
        What we have learned through our practice is when we can
    identify that one piece of information or that one agent that
    placed that piece of information in there, and then have a
    conversation with them, and interview the client. Once that
    piece of information is removed, then the issue is gone.
        But it is going to be impossible to do that for two million
    people. There are just not enough agents and resources to go
    around. Finding a streamlined way, a streamlined due process
    measure, maybe building on DHS TRIP, that should be first and
    foremost, in dwindling down the list. Then also possibly maybe
    going through a list to at least purge the names of folks that
    have died, or children that are like four or five years old.
    Remove those names so you are working with a cleaner set of
    data to begin with.
        Senator Peters. Right. I have certainly heard a lot from
    community members about the negative experiences, as you have
    mentioned here, with the screening system. But just like
    today's testimony, which is powerful and I appreciate the
    testimony, these are anecdotal accounts, and we could come up
    with an awful lot of anecdotal accounts. One of the
    recommendations in our report, and a big part of my bill, was
    requiring better and more complete data from CBP and TSA on all
    their screening practices, because there are like 20-plus
    programs. We are talking about one that has gone away. We have
    still a whole lot more of these things that are out there, that
    need to be addressed. This is a big issue.
        My question for you is, do you think having better data,
    exactly what is happening to understand whether these processes
    are effective and whether there is bias, intentional or not,
    political, whatever it may be, we need data. What is your sense
    of that?
        Mr. Ayoub. Absolutely. I think there should be data. We
    should be able to look at that list and determine why this
    person was added. Then at the end of the review you will find
    out, OK, was this group of people, do we have this many
    individuals added because they are Trump supporters, or because
    they are Democratic Party supporters? We need to be able to
    read that. We need to be able to know why they are on there,
    who they are, what trends, and to determine what mistakes are
    being made. Because again, just depending on what
    administration is in office, who is going to be targeted. Our
    community, for the past quarter of a century, for the past
    three decades or so, were thankful enough to be targeted by all
    administrations. We can tell you the experiences through
    Republican and Democrat administrations.
        But the reality is there are trends. There is bias. There
    are folks on that list that need to be removed. Expanding that
    option, expanding the way to do that, and having those data
    points, having that dataset will also help develop policies and
    strategies moving forward to enhance and make the security
    process and the screening process better.
        Senator Peters. Yes, I would just like to followup, because
    this could happen in all administrations, both parties,
    whatever. This is a problem. We have to make sure there is full
    transparency, there is oversight, regardless of who is in
    office.
        Most of the oversight in these systems currently is handled
    by internal DHS offices. The Office of Civil Rights and Civil
    Liberties, Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, as well
    as inspectors general, who oversee this. However,
    unfortunately, this administration has basically gutted all of
    the oversight, so we do not have the oversight anymore. Can you
    describe the consequences of eliminating internal oversight
    will have on American civil rights, and civil liberties with
    regard to screening and watchlisting? So all of the issues that
    are being raised by everybody here today, we have to make sure
    that we are guarding against that.
        Mr. Ayoub. Look, oversight is very important. The issue was
    bad with a functional CRCL office at DHS, and you can imagine
    it would be a lot worse with no oversight. So having that
    office, having some sort of mechanism there is important.
        Chairman Paul. Senator Moreno.

                  OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MORENO

        Senator Moreno. Mr. Chair, as I mentioned to you yesterday,
    I really appreciate you putting on this hearing. I think it is
    really important. I think if the American people read
    everything that was provided for this hearing, their minds
    would be blown. I think some of the stuff that is in here is
    sensitive information, which we should maybe think about maybe
    daylighting that, because I have never read something more
    outrageous than reading that memo. So it is pretty crazy.
        You mentioned just now to my colleague from Michigan that
    the oversight is essential. How did oversight work out in the
    last four years of the Biden administration?
        Mr. Ayoub. It didn't really work out.
        Senator Moreno. So it is not a question of oversight. It is
    a question of intent. Because here is the reality. I think
    Americans would be appalled to know that their government was
    spying on them. Not just spying on them. Paying people like Mr.
    Crowder, who, you did not take the job to go walk around
    airports, monitoring bathroom habits and coffee habits of
    American citizens. Yet your government was paying you to do
    that, to spy on American citizens, violating the Fourth
    Amendment, shredding the Fourth Amendment.
        One of the things that I had to do to become a U.S. citizen
    was learn a lot about Americana history. I had to read the
    Constitution. My mom convinced me that this citizenship test
    was going to be impossible, so I memorized it. Everybody talks
    about what Joe Biden says is the thing. The thing, you know,
    life, liberty, and he couldn't even repeat it so he called it
    ``the thing.'' But after the end of that sentence there's a
    line that says that government is deriving its just powers from
    the consent of the governed--deriving their just powers from
    the consent of the governed.
        Mr. Ayoub, do you think that over the last four years of
    the Biden administration that they derived their just powers
    from the consent of the governed? Do you think Americans knew
    that they had somebody stalking them at airports and bathrooms
    and coffee shops and watching who they were talking to on
    airplanes?
        Mr. Taibbi. Senator Moreno, thank you for the question. No,
    I do not think so. In fact, as a reporter in the last four
    years it has been very frustrating investigating not just
    programs like Quiet Skies but also issues like censorship. It
    seems like there are only three ways that you can get important
    information. One is through whistleblowers like the ones
    represented by Mr. Leavitt. Another is through investigations
    like the ones by this Committee. The third is if an eccentric
    billionaire decides to hand over a ton of material to a
    reporter. It has become almost impossible to get information
    about these abuses.
        I think what I was trying to get at with my opening
    statement is that particularly in the last four years the
    government has taken the position of the citizenry, they are
    all basically suspects until proven innocent. It should be the
    other way around.
        Senator Moreno. That should be the other way around. That
    is the foundational principles of this country. That is not up
    for debate. There is no law that we need to pass. That is in
    our Constitution, in our Bill of Rights.
        Mr. Crowder, I am going to shift to you for a second. I was
    out of the meeting. I had to go to a Banking session so I
    apologize. Could you point out your wife real quick for me? Has
    anybody from the U.S. Government apologized to your wife?
        Mr. Crowder. No, sir.
        Senator Moreno. So they have not even bothered. Nobody in
    the government has bothered to pick up the phone, send a letter
    saying, you know, we are very sorry.
        Mr. Crowder. Nobody.
        Senator Moreno. Let me say that to you on behalf of the
    U.S. Government. We apologize for what happened to you. It
    should never have happened to any American citizens. It is a
    total and complete disgrace, that the previous administration
    weaponized this.
        You mentioned, Mr. Crowder, this is a result of 9/11. How
    many American citizens were involved in the plotting of 9/11?
        Mr. Crowder. Zero, to my knowledge.
        Senator Moreno. So what problem are we trying to solve?
    Meaning, the auspices of this. Look what happened. We can never
    let another 9/11 happen. Why the hell are we having Americans
    surveyed at airports and on airplanes?
        Mr. Taibbi, you mentioned something else. During the COVID
    era, let's not forget how insane that was. Do you remember what
    that was like? Like you get on an airplane, you had the mask
    on. We saw people dragged off airplanes because they were not
    wearing a mask. Dragged. Like humiliated by the police, dragged
    off for the offense of not having a mask on. But when they
    served you, you could take your mask off to eat, because it was
    the most polite virus ever in the history of humanity. It said,
    well, you are eating so I am not going to infect anybody right
    now, but when you are done I am going to go back to the
    infectious part. Those of us who had some level of like, hey,
    this is just stupid, said we are not going to wear a mask, and
    that put you on a No Fly List. That got you banned from flying.
    Could you explain that?
        Mr. Taibbi. Actually, Senator, it is worse than that. My
    understanding is that just for supporting a group that
    protested the wearing of masks on airplanes you could be placed
    on a No Fly List or on a watch list by the TSA. That is in
    addition to the J6 category, which included people who were
    just suspected of traveling to the National Capital region, not
    even of going into the Capitol.
        Senator Moreno. I know I am over time. Let me just make
    this comment. Mr. Chair, you mentioned this to our Ranking
    Member. He is not here to listen to this, but maybe he would
    not want to. He has a choice, right, to extend CISA 2015 by
    voting yes for this continuing resolution today. But it is so
    important to him to hijack Republicans that even he is willing
    to say, ``Well, this is not that actually important to me.'' I
    also find it decently ironic that when they had control of the
    House, the Senate, and the White House that the report that he
    issued, he could have put that on the floor, right? I am not
    wrong there, right? He could have put that on the floor and
    passed that.
        Chairman Paul. That is a good point because this is in
    response to my wanting to put First Amendment protections on
    the CISA extension. CISA was the agency--and this is not the
    authorization for the whole agency but for some of their
    powers, and I said yes, we can let it go through, but let's add
    First Amendment protections to it. Why? Because the First
    Amendment protections were in another department of government,
    some through CISA, DHS, some through the FBI, that Mr. Taibbi
    knows a lot about because they were meeting with Twitter. A lot
    of Americans still do not know this, that the FBI was actually
    sitting in meetings with Twitter officials, that CISA was
    sitting in meetings.
        What I have said is if we are going to reauthorize CISA,
    which a lot of people want to reauthorize this particular
    authority, let's reauthorize it with an amendment that simply
    says government officials are not allowed to meet with them to
    take down constitutionally protected speech. If it is illegal,
    they can meet with them and warn them something illegal is
    happening on their social media. But things that are not
    illegal, that are protected by speech, why not put it on a
    must-pass piece of legislation? That is the only way we are
    ever going to get it beyond the other side is to do it.
        So you are right. It is fake outrage. They are outraged
    about this particular authority expiring, but they have every
    chance to, and they will have another chance today, to vote to
    reauthorize it, and it will be part of the continuing
    resolution to reauthorize this particular facility.
        Senator Moreno. But just super quickly, and I apologize,
    last year, when you were not Chair, the Ranking Member could
    have put that bill on the floor, and chose not to. Is that
    correct?
        Chairman Paul. Yes. Senator Lankford.

                 OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD

        Senator Lankford. To the witnesses, thanks. Thanks for the
    work you are doing to be able to continue to be able to protect
    the civil liberties of all Americans and for your service to
    the country. We are grateful, as a Nation, to be able to have
    folks that are actually engaged in these ideas.
        All of us who flew on a plane during the time of COVID
    remember full well the experience of the mask on, mask off. I
    will never forget a particular flight that I was on, that
    literally the flight attendant patrolled up and down the aisle
    the entire time, like a prison guard, watching for anyone that
    lowered their mask at any point or that got onto children who
    were with a pacifier or with someone who has a crying baby, and
    to try to figure out some way to be able to cover that up. This
    is bizarre, to be able to think about that, but to be able to
    think about our own government at the time was also trying to
    find people that disagreed with policy during that time period,
    and would say, ``We want to try to find some way for you just
    not to fly, because you disagree with us,'' becomes an entirely
    different level.
        For Mr. Crowder, let me ask you a question on this, and Mr.
    Leavitt, if you want to be able to jump in, as well, you can on
    this. How did they make decisions regarding the threat level of
    individuals on the mask mandate issue? Did they have a ranking
    for that? How did they determine what is the level of threat
    for an individual?
        Mr. Crowder. I am going to defer to you.
        Mr. Leavitt. OK. We do not know, and that is the problem,
    because things like this are secret, right. They are not the
    sort of thing that everyday Americans have insight into. They
    are not the sort of thing that air marshals, even flying back
    and forth in these flights, have insight into. They are clearly
    not the sort of things that you have insight into.
        Senator Lankford. Right.
        Mr. Leavitt. So it begs the question then, who was writing
    this stuff and how are we supposed to trust that it has any
    basis? Clearly, people just expressing their concern about
    masks is outrageous for them to be put on a watch list.
        Senator Lankford. Yes. So going back to some of the things
    Mr. Ayoub was saying. Someone who is visiting family in
    Pakistan, someone who was a missionary that was flying back and
    forth to a country that was deemed inappropriate to be able to
    fly back and forth to. Was there a process to be able to
    actually have a human engaged in that decisionmaking to be able
    to say, ``Hey, this person is visiting family members. ``This
    person was a missionary,'' whatever it may be. Was there a
    human involved in that or is it just a trigger, you were in a
    certain city, at a certain place, so you are on the list?
        Mr. Crowder. Again, I can only testify to my wife's
    situation. I had specific knowledge she did not enter the
    Capitol. How she got on that list, who said that she entered
    the Capitol, I do not know. That is well above our access.
        Mr. Leavitt. I will add to that. The TSA has tried to say
    this is just a rule-based program, right, and they give the
    impression almost that like some computer is just assessing
    flight bookings and then spitting these out. But someone made
    the decision to put, for instance, Tulsi Gabbard's
    congressional photo on there, rather than her passport. There
    was an individual involved, and frankly, somebody needs to
    figure out who that is and ask them a lot of questions.
        Senator Lankford. Yes. There are other Members of Congress
    that have also been placed on the list, as well. We do not know
    why or what the reason was. It was just they are a threat, and
    so they have to be able to be on this list.
        TSA has policies that prohibit active collection of
    information about people. TSA is receiver of information, not a
    collector of information. This is clearly TSA trying to be able
    to collect information. Was TSA in violation of the law,
    because they are not managing information given to them, they
    were shifting into the collection mode.
        Mr. Leavitt. I will take a stab there. TSA has broad
    authorities, right, and so they do not treat this as
    intelligence, right. They do not say that it is intelligence,
    as though they observed you doing something. They are just
    deploying the asset. I think back to one of the points that has
    been made here, Congress has given TSA pretty broad authority.
    That might need to be looked at being constrained more further.
        Senator Lankford. Mr. Harper, do you want to be able to add
    to that?
        Mr. Harper. Yes. I will not be able to cite you chapter and
    verse, but the authorities in the Aviation and Transportation
    Security Act are very broad. Your intuition is correct that TSA
    should not be an intelligence collection agency. But if it
    decides it is going to go off in that direction, the language
    is so broad it can go off in that direction. That is why one of
    my recommendations is to bring TSA and other DHS authorities
    within bounds that Congress sets tightly.
        Senator Lankford. Mr. Harper, you had also mentioned
    something about a right to travel and to clarify that. Tell me
    what you mean by that.
        Mr. Harper. I think we intuitively feel we have a right to
    travel, and there are cases from the Supreme Court that say of
    course, you have a right to travel. You can move from one State
    to another and they cannot deny you welfare benefits when you
    get there. There are other cases where a man in San Francisco
    wanted to fly to Washington, D.C., to meet with his
    representative, and in this case the Ninth Circuit Court of
    Appeals found that you do not have a right to travel on your
    preferred mode of transportation. He did not want to go through
    all the security nonsense, and so challenged there. They said,
    no, you can take a train, or you can drive if you want to go to
    Washington, D.C.
        A clear right to travel--Americans believe they have it,
    but the courts have not accorded it to them--would give them a
    position when they went to court where they could do discovery,
    and some of these things could be turned up. We could learn
    more about the programs. I think courts would balance well.
    Obviously, a court is not going to throw out a program that is
    probably cost effective. They will say, ``Yes, no, in this case
    you do have this right, but the right is subject to regulations
    that allow for security.'' But the right does not give way to
    regulations and programs that do not do anything, the
    regulations and programs that do not actually produce cost-
    effective security.
        I am glad you asked about it--I would like you to give it
    more consideration. Congress can weigh in on that and say,
    ``No, this intuition of Americans, that is somewhat backed by
    courts, can be made a full right. We think it is in Congress.
    Let's have the courts treat it as such.''
        Senator Lankford. OK. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Chairman Paul. When I traveled during the pandemic, we all
    travel several times a week, there were many flight attendants
    who were very nice, very pleasant, very sympathetic, and were
    just like me, unhappy with the mandates, and really did not
    want to go overboard. They would pass me notes, sometimes
    secretly, saying they were supportive. They did not want
    anybody to know they might be supportive of things I was for.
        But it also brought out the inner Karen in people. This
    exists in a significant number of people in our society, the
    idea that given a little power, they really like it. I never
    was a policeman, but I wish I were. Just the idea of all of
    this power. I have power over it. If you say a word to me, you
    can be put on the list.
        In fact, I have a TSA document, somewhere here in my
    collection of documents, that says that disobeying a public
    health order is equivalent to, saying I am going to take the
    plane down. I mean, you are a threat to the plane. You have now
    become a threat to the flight attendant. That just brought out
    the inner Karen in a lot of people, and it became really
    unpleasant.
        I hated to fly every week and I am not somebody who is
    really that confrontational. I do not like that. That is why I
    do not like it. I do not like to have a confrontation. But, you
    would have, ``Sir, sir, you are not eating your peanuts fast
    enough. You need to put your mask on in between each peanut.''
    I mean, literally, that was happening on flights.
        The ludicrous nature of there being any science related to
    that, that all of us with our masks off for 20 minutes while we
    are eating is somehow going to protect us from having it on for
    40 minutes when we have it off 20 minutes. It turns out that
    none of these things had any science behind them. None
    whatsoever. Most of the masks they were recommending were masks
    that were ineffective. Cough masks were entirely for show and
    completely ineffective. Yet the head of the National Institutes
    of Health (NIH) was wandering around with Washington Nationals
    cloth mask on, as if it were of any value.
        But I think it is important to know how we got here. So
    Quiet Skies, you are right, Mr. Leavitt, we got rid of Quiet
    Skies, but I am not sure that helps Mr. Crowder or Christine.
    We are still not sure exactly how they got on the list. My
    suspicion is if she just shows up on the list, I am wondering
    if somebody who does not like you saw her social media that she
    was in Washington on January 6th, did not like your politics,
    and says, ``I am going to call the Tip Line.'' You would have
    never known about it until everybody started harassing her. But
    you, to this day, do not know how she got on the list, right?
        Mr. Crowder. That is correct, sir.
        Chairman Paul. So that is a real problem. What we are
    taking is, let's say I am of a different political persuasion.
    I may not know your wife, but I work with you, and I heard you
    say something about your politics, and I am of a different
    political bent. Why don't I just call in the Tip Line and say--
    because I heard you say she was there on January 6th. But she
    was at the White House, not the Capitol. Not as if it is really
    a huge distinction, but there is a distinction. So maybe just
    out of spite somebody does it. Don't we have to have a way to
    fix where someone does not like you and puts you on the list?
    Or maybe somebody has an animus toward Arab Americans and just
    makes his list. I do not think we are nearly done with trying
    to fix this problem yet.
        There is also this silent program, Silent Partner program,
    where one of them was if you are traveling from Greece and you
    do not have a Greek name, and you have been to Turkey, or you
    have been to Syria sometime in the last 10 years, well, what if
    that trip to Syria was because you were part of the armed
    services? Is there not somebody with a brain that is actually
    looking up and saying, ``You were in the armed services while
    you were there,'' or have a relative there, frankly, and have a
    good reason to have gone there. But I do not think anybody has
    taken the time to do it, because there are just so many damn
    people to put on these lists, and then it is so hard. But half
    the time you do not even know if you have been named. I mean,
    you were fortunate. You were in a unique position, and I thank
    you for coming forward, because you were in a unique position
    that you knew this had happened. This had to have happened to
    dozens, if not hundreds, of other people.
        With regard to secrecy, Mr. Harper mentioned this, I want
    to reiterate how much of a problem this is. We cannot analyze
    whether programs work because they simply say, ``It is secret
    and you do not deserve to know.'' I have been asking, as the
    Chair of this Committee, a couple of simple questions. Like I
    say, I travel all the time, so I get the good and the bad, and
    a lot of it the bad of travel. I get stopped once every two to
    three weeks, and I do not think I am being selected. But I get
    selected by the machine for random pat-downs. I have been
    through the magnetometer. If I have made it through that, and I
    do not have any metal on me, I want to know, now that I have
    been selected and I go through the advanced pat-down and the
    whirly-gig machine, how many weapons and knives are you
    finding? They sent me some long answer, but they did not answer
    the question. I want to know how many. I think it is zero.
    Because I have already been through the magnet. I do not have a
    knife or a gun. What are they finding when I go through?
        The other thing is, when you go through the--I call it the
    whirly gig machine--you go through there, it always finds
    something that needs to be patted down, so I get a pat-down
    too. But it never finds anything. It must not be a very good
    machine if I get patted down every time, and there is never
    anything there. I suspect that that machine is actually
    targeting not me personally, but doing a random check to do a
    pat-down on me by indicating that something there is not there.
    They will not admit they are doing that, but I suspect they are
    doing that. But it all goes back to secrecy. They do not want
    to reveal the State secrets, even to the people who are
    supposed to be overseeing the State secrets.
        To give you an example of how bad it is, this is not in
    just this area. I have been wanting to read the Church
    Committee report from 1976. It will be 50 years next year, and
    it will be released to the public, but I am not allowed to read
    it, and some of my colleagues are preventing me on the
    Intelligence Committee. They jealously protect this
    information. Typically the people on that committee, with a few
    exceptions, are in favor of more intelligence power and opposed
    to more scrutiny.
        But there is supposedly a classified annex. I want to read
    it, and I am being prevented from reading it. They have told me
    now I can individually read it, and it is a box. It is a room
    full of boxes. They will not designate exactly what is what,
    and there is no index. But I can go read it. I cannot read the
    whole entire--I would need a whole staff. I would need
    historians and other people interested in the Church Committee.
    But the Church Committee was critical of too much power to the
    intelligence agencies. Now I want to read something and I am
    being stymied 50 years later. So secrecy is a problem.
        To Mr. Ayoub, the whole idea of accountability, of course
    we need to find these things out. Most of the programs in
    government--and it just does not go to this--most programs in
    government that are authorized for a purpose are never
    reviewed. We have legislation that says if it does not get
    reauthorized it goes out of existence. It should disappear.
    Reauthorization, and I know Senator Lankford has been very
    active in this, reauthorization should be about does it work.
    We have like 82 housing programs. Everybody gets this idea, I
    want to help the homeless. We have already done it 82 times.
    Why don't we study the other 82 programs to find out if any of
    them work before we reauthorize a new program?
        With regard to where we go from here, we are not done with
    this. I am still appalled by the idea of outsourcing this to
    universities. So we pay the universities. Universities have no
    scruples whatsoever. George Washington University here in D.C.
    has a project on extremism. Is extremism showing up on January
    6th to support President Trump? I mean, really, we have to be a
    little careful of who we are giving the keys to this. I think
    they did go after those people.
        The evidence is that the people on the mask list--there is
    a terror mask list, apparently, so the people on the terror
    watch list for not wanting to wear masks--I do not think they
    were removing their masks. I think they were talking about it
    online. ``Let's not wear our masks. Let's take our masks off on
    the plane and have civil disobedience.'' But we are still
    trying to get to the bottom of that because we do not actually
    have the names of the people on the list. That is all being
    hidden.
        I suspect there are also hundreds of other people that were
    put on a list because they were resistant to dictate from
    someone on a plane, to a flight attendant saying, ``Wear your
    mask higher. You are showing a nostril. Hike up your mask a
    little higher.'' I think a lot of those people were put down as
    potential disasters for the plane, dangerous people, and not
    necessarily for masks because they didn't want to list them all
    masks.
        But we have to do more. Every one of these programs has to
    be looked at. You have to have recourse. You have to redress. I
    think that we cannot just stop here. We have to look throughout
    government, more transparency, more sunlight.
        I am going to throw it back to Senator Moreno, I think has
    another couple of questions.
        Senator Moreno. Yes. Mr. Taibbi, you have been around the
    block, as they say, around the globe. You have seen
    authoritarian governments. What would be the American foreign
    policy reaction to a country that receives foreign aid, foreign
    assistance from the United States that did this to their own
    citizens?
        Mr. Taibbi. Senator, I would hope that we would look
    negatively on any country that mass-collected information on
    innocent citizens.
        Senator Moreno. Surveilled their citizens?
        Mr. Taibbi. Surveilled their citizens.
        Senator Moreno. Put them on a watch list?
        Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
        Senator Moreno. Prevented them from traveling?
        Mr. Taibbi. Right.
        Senator Moreno. Had a presumption of guilt, not a
    presumption of innocence? We would probably call them in and
    say, ``Hey, we can't continue this relationship because you are
    oppressing U.S. citizens.'' Would that be accurate?
        Mr. Taibbi. Yes, I think that would certainly be accurate.
    I know that we have raised questions about surveillance of
    journalists in other countries in the past.
        Senator Moreno. When that was happening, as the Chair just
    said, literally FBI agents sitting down with private companies,
    saying, ``You must remove this person from social media.''
    ``You must go knock on their door.'' Some of the stuff we are
    seeing in the United Kingdom (UK), which I am very proud of the
    fact that our Vice President is speaking out against what the
    U.K. is doing to their own citizens, like persecuting them for
    social media posts. Yes, that is pretty outrageous, right?
        This was happening over the last four years of the Biden
    administration. You would say in the history of the United
    States of America, we have never seen more of a tilt toward
    authoritarian rule than we did under Joe Biden, between firing
    people who would not get vaccinated, you could not get a job,
    you were somehow a bad person, we were masking two-year-olds,
    we were forcing the injection of an experimental, I will
    generously call it a vaccine. If you did not do that, and if
    you did not carry proof of that with you, then somehow you were
    a bad person. That was a pretty dark four years in the scheme
    of American democracy. Would you agree?
        Mr. Taibbi. I would agree, and there was also a radical
    shift in attitudes in this country toward whether or not we
    should have laws against things like hate speech. There used to
    be a small minority of people who believed that. Now it has
    become almost a majority of people who believe that.
        You mentioned the U.K. I interviewed somebody last week who
    was arrested for speech over there. To the Chair's point, they
    have a system that allows people to make complaints that result
    in criminal arrests of people for social media posts. That
    could have been our future here, so that is deeply concerning
    to me.
        Senator Moreno. I will jump to you, Mr. Harper, and I will
    let you answer this one. Do you think, in the scheme of things
    for Americans, I think Americans would think that their
    freedom, their liberty, their constitutional rights given to
    them by our founders is important. Just a quick question if you
    can answer it. Do you think that is important, really important
    to American citizens?
        Mr. Harper. It is.
        Senator Moreno. Do you think that it is ironic that
    Democrats, that chase cameras, saying that President Trump is a
    threat to our democracy, are not even here? I think the record
    should show, Mr. Chair, who attended this hearing and who did
    not attend the hearing. Because you cannot go out there and go
    on camera and say that President Trump, the person who ended
    the Quiet Skies program, the person who is reforming what has
    happened under the Biden era, there is nobody being threatened
    or being fired for not taking a vaccine. In fact, restoring
    individual liberty, and yet do not even bother to show up to a
    hearing, which I think this hearing--and I said this to you
    yesterday, Mr. Chair--is the most outrageous thing I have ever
    seen in Washington, D.C. Yet they cannot even bother.
        I think it is one of those things where you decide what is
    important. Like when you are a United States Senator you can
    decide what is important. I can be in this hearing. I can be in
    another hearing. I can be at a fundraiser. I can be golfing. I
    can do whatever the heck I want, and that is kind of the crazy
    part about being a Senator. You do not actually have to show up
    to win, but you do. The fact that the Democrats basically,
    virtually boycotted this hearing, gives them zero credibility
    when they say that this President is moving this country toward
    an authoritarian. Do you want to comment on that, Mr. Harper?
    Am I wrong?
        Mr. Harper. Your question on the perspective, your question
    gave, if this were happening in another country what would we
    say about it? Very powerful, because Keir Starmer in the U.K.
    is saying everyone is going to have a digital ID, a national ID
    program. In the United States we oppose that. The Real ID Act
    of 2005, continually failed to be implemented, and hoorah for
    us, because it should not be. It should be repealed.
        Financial surveillance is a product of United States law
    that we export around the world. If you took off the label,
    Bank Secrecy Act, and put a Chinese label on it, you would say,
    ``Aha! That is China!'' That is what we do, and it is what the
    United States has in the Bank Secrecy Act, again, that we
    export through the Financial Action Task Force. There are so
    many issues that we could get to, but that insight: We should
    not be doing it here. We should be leading in the United States
    on civil rights and civil liberties. So all of the things we
    have talked about, the transparency, anti-secrecy, no to a
    national ID. The perspective of your question was really
    important and helpful, I think. Thank you.
        Senator Moreno. Mr. Chair, just one request, from my
    perspective. There has been almost no accountability to what
    the government did to the American people during COVID, like
    almost no accountability. People closed schools, who made kids,
    little kids, get vaccinated, masked. Can you imagine what that
    impact is going to be? You have kids, what the impact is going
    to be long term on 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-year-olds that were forced to
    be masked for 5, 6, 7 hours a day? No accountability.
        Look, the most accountability was that the American people
    fired Joe Biden, thank God, and prevented Kamala Harris, which
    would have been even worse.
        But we do have the ability to go into the current
    Administration and say who, within Homeland Security, still has
    a job that perpetuated these policies? Because my mindset is
    anybody, especially the person that wrote that memo, that
    literally made my hair stand up, how is that person still
    employed by the United States government? I think we need to
    ask that question, while we have an administration that
    actually wants to protect civil liberties, that actually wants
    to protect the American people. We cannot just ignore this.
        Again, there are a lot of things that have happened, that
    scene, about eight months here in D.C. But this report was so
    outrageous, and the fact that my Democratic colleagues have no
    interest in listening to this says it all.
        Thank you again, Mr. Chair, for holding this very
    important, and thank you for all the witnesses for being here.
    Again, Mrs. Crowder, truly apologize for what you went through.
    It is completely insane, not just to you but to anybody who had
    something like that happen to you.
        Chairman Paul. Part of oversight is not vendetta or
    revenge. It is removing people who abuse the civil liberties of
    Americans. So far the court has been consistent in upholding
    the President's right to hire and fire people in the Executive
    Branch. I agree with you completely. Because we need to make
    sure that these programs do not come back again.
        The issue of anonymous accusation reminds me of a scene
    that I saw in Venice. There is a lion's mouth, Bocca di Leone,
    and the Doge was like the kind of Venice, and you could
    anonymously just put it in there. But you could lose your head
    or be imprisoned for life by an anonymous tip.
        One of the evolutions beyond that is sort of the idea of
    due process, that you cannot just be secretly accused of
    things. I think there is a real danger to that, and I think
    that is what happened in this case. If this is somebody who
    works still as an air marshal, that person does not need to
    work as an air marshal, if it was a colleague or somebody that
    tried to get your wife in trouble. Somebody did it. I have a
    feeling that it is malicious, actually. I do not have
    information on that, but we want to get to the bottom of that.
    The people who created and ran all these programs, of course we
    do.
        I think your point is well taken on human rights. We have
    all kinds of strings that are supposed to be attached to human
    rights. If you are not a democratically elected government--I
    have tried using that one before, because there are many coups
    that occur around the world. We keep sending them. Egypt still
    lives under a military rule after a coup. Technically, they are
    not supposed to--there was something called the Lahey
    Amendments--they are not supposed to get foreign aid now, but
    we do it anyway. We just exempt them from the Lahey Amendments.
        But things that we enforce in other countries we certainly
    should enforce on others. There are big categories of people--
    Arab Americans, Muslin Americans--who have been abused by this
    stuff. But it really is not always just either the color of
    your skin or the color. It could be the shade of your ideology.
    You could be a home-schooler or Donald Trump supporter. You
    could be all kinds of things that may be outside some sort of
    mainstream. To target those people is anathema to what our
    country stands for.
        I appreciate everything all of you have done in this. I
    appreciate your testimony today. I would like to enter into the
    record\1\ a set of redacted documents produced to the Committee
    as part of this investigation. I would also like to enter the
    statements\2\ for the record from the Air Marshal National
    Council and other stakeholders. Without objection, these
    records will be entered into the record.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The redacted documents entered in the Record appears in the
    Appendix on page 126.
        \2\ The statements submitted for the Record appears in the Appendix
    on page 238.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Chairman Paul. Senator Moreno, do you have any more
    questions? We have one Senator that wants to come and ask a few
    questions, so I am going to wait another minute or two. Do you
    have anything else?
        Senator Moreno. No. Mr. Leavitt, you are an attorney. I am
    not. I will ask you this question. If Congress passed a law,
    called the Quiet Skies law, what would the Supreme Court say?
        Mr. Leavitt. They have the same substance.
        Senator Moreno. Same substance. In other words, if we
    passed a law that said that the U.S. Government can surveil
    American citizens who they suspect, without any evidence, of
    maybe committing a crime, and we passed that law, and we all
    cheered and we passed it, super bipartisan, and we threw a big
    party, and had a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the law, and photo
    op, what would the Supreme Court say?
        Mr. Leavitt. Two thoughts. One, we have seen passed laws
    that are not that different from that maybe, right, and so it
    is hard. There is a balance, a policy balance. It is possible
    the Supreme Court, if it is not nearly tailored enough, would
    invalidate that.
        Senator Moreno. Because it is unconstitutional. Because we
    have a presumption of innocence in this country. Because if I
    decide not to wear a mask on an airplane because the rule is
    insanely stupid, I should not be prohibited from ever flying
    again. If I want to travel to Washington, D.C., and I want to
    do whatever I want to do in Washington, D.C., that is well
    within the bounds of the law, that does not give any
    administrative agency the right to decide I cannot fly
    somewhere else. It does not give the government the right to
    have somebody follow me and creep me out in a bathroom and
    decide whether I am getting too many sugars in my coffee, or if
    I am going to the wrong yogurt place. That report should not be
    published inside some sort of official government document.
        Because, Mr. Chair, there is a difference between somebody
    who has power, because it is given to them, because of some
    administrative thing. There is somebody that has real power,
    somebody who has a badge, who has a gun, who has the ability to
    arrest you, who has the ability to take your civil liberties
    away. That is what happened over the last four years, and
    Americans should be equally outraged about all this. This
    should not be partisan.
        Chairman Paul. But I would interject, and I think it is
    longer than that, and I think one of the witnesses mentioned
    this. This fear really originated after 9/11. When they passed
    the Patriot Act, one of the things in the Patriot Act said that
    the government could go to your local library and give a secret
    warrant--it is not a Fourth Amendment warrant; it would be a
    FISA warrant--and they could get all of the different books
    that I read when I go to the library. All those could be a
    confiscated list. But they went even further. They said that
    the librarian, that you will put the librarian in jail if she
    reveals to me that the government is looking at my reading
    list.
        We did a lot of things out of fear, and that fear from 9/
    11, look, there was anger that was justified. There was a war,
    I think in many ways also justified. But we let down our guard
    on our constitutional liberties, and it is in times of fear you
    have to be most careful about them. We probably have a million
    Arab Americans in Dearborn. We probably have 10 million Arab
    Americans that are part of our country. Many of them are
    citizens. We even have Columbian Americans. They all deserve
    the same protections. That is many of the reasons why they came
    here.
        Senator Moreno. But it is decently ironic that the
    Democrats looked the other way while our border was open to 10
    million illegals cross our border.
        Chairman Paul. I will grant you that.
        Senator Moreno. I will turn things over to my great
    colleague from Missouri.
        Senator Hawley. Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr.
    Chair. Thanks for holding this hearing, No. 1, but thanks for
    waiting for me, as well. Thanks to all the panel for being
    here.
        Mr. Crowder, I want to start with you, and I apologize if
    you already covered this. I have been going back and forth to
    other hearings today. But I just want to ask you, coming back
    to your wife, did you find out, how did she get added to that
    database? Why was she flagged in the first place? Who did it?
    Do you know? I mean, at what level was the decision made?
        Mr. Crowder. That is still something we do not know. It has
    been unanswered after many attempts by several people.
        Senator Hawley. Is it your sense that it was an individual,
    this was a human decision, or is this some kind of an automated
    thing, based on information they collected about her, personal
    information, the fact that she was in D.C. on January 6th, that
    they tagged her? Too bad, she is on the list for years.
        Mr. Crowder. Your guess is as good as mine. She was
    obviously in the area on January 6th. Whether that prompted
    somebody to just put her on the list or something else, we do
    not have the answers.
        Senator Hawley. Yes, it is just unbelievable. It is a
    sickening violation of her First Amendment rights, obviously. I
    want to thank you for your service, and thank your wife for
    what she has endured. You should never have had to go through
    it. To be honest with you, what we saw in the aftermath of
    January 6th, the effort to persecute the President's political
    opponents, President Biden, that is, it is just unbelievable.
        I want to ask you, Mr. Leavitt, if I can, just on that
    subject, tell me a little bit more about how the Biden
    administration used the Quiet Skies program, which had existed,
    obviously, for long before then, but really started using it to
    target political opponents. It seems like they found, in this
    program, a great opportunity to start turning the screws down
    on people that they did not like, including, just ordinary
    folks like Mr. Crowder's wife. She was not running for office,
    I mean, she was not running against Joe Biden. But yet, my
    gosh, she found herself targeted. Is this the United States of
    America or not? Talk to us about your understanding of how this
    happened.
        Mr. Leavitt. After January 6th it is clear, and you see
    this across a lot of agencies. We have seen this from FBI
    whistleblowers we represented. The Federal Government took a
    stance which was that a lot of people with certain political
    views were threats to our Nation. That certainly manifested
    itself in lots of ways, and one of those was these different
    types of travel lists. People who were there on January 6th, as
    has been mentioned, people that maybe were members of a group
    or expressed concern about wearing masks in public because of
    their effectiveness, were all put on lists like these. The most
    still-unanswered example is Tulsi Gabbard being added to a list
    after she criticized Kamala Harris, and again, the TSA's self-
    serving--I can't say TSA--someone in the government's self-
    serving leak to The New York Times said, ``No, no, no, it is
    OK. It was because she was associated with this person at the
    Vatican.'' She went to a conference there. But it clearly says
    Mick Mulvaney went, as well. Many of you know Mick Mulvaney. He
    did not get added to a Quiet Skies list when he flew back to
    the United States. So it just puts the lie to the fact that
    this was the justification.
        Whenever you have secrecy, we are talking about all the
    civil liberties concerns, but whenever you have secrecy there
    is also the additional threat that it will be used in secret
    ways to target people that go above and beyond just, we all
    have to endure it. It is part of being safe in America today.
    That is targeting. That is weaponization.
        Senator Hawley. It is kind of incredible, is it not, that
    after all these years, to come back to Mr. Crowder's wife, we
    still do not have any idea exactly how she got added or who did
    it. There is the evasion of accountability. You cannot go and
    say, ``Well, you are fired. You did that. That is an abuse. You
    are gone.'' It is the classic bureaucratic deep state. ``Oh,
    well, we don't know. We don't know quite how it happened.'' It
    just so happens, though, that everybody who looks like they may
    have been politically of a different mindset than the last
    President gets targeted. Who gets the FBI knocking at their
    door early in the morning? Is it people who are Biden voters?
    No. Amazingly, it is not. It is people who go to school board
    meetings and ask about masking policies. Who gets the FBI's
    SWAT teams at their door? Oh, it just happens to be pro-life
    folks, who had the audacity to exercise their First Amendment
    rights by walking on a sidewalk. It is unlike anything I think
    we have seen in this country's history.
        Mr. Taibbi, if I could just come to you. Will you help
    contextualize this? We saw, and you reported on this, we have
    seen abuse across a range of agencies. It was not just Quiet
    Skies. It was the FBI. It was the Internal Revenue Service
    (IRS). It was agency after agency. It was DHS, right. It was
    agency after agency. Just fill in the blanks here for us. Help
    us understand how this, what we are talking about today, is
    sadly just one piece of a massive, seemingly whole-of-
    government approach to try and delegitimize anybody who
    disagreed with the last administration.
        Mr. Taibbi. Sure, and thank you, Senator Hawley. Just to
    Mr. Leavitt's point, there are a lot of similarities in the
    statements of the FBI whistleblowers that empower or are
    represented in some of the air marshals that I talked to about
    this story. Both complained. For instance, there are FBI agents
    who just sat in vans outside the homes of people who might have
    been at J6, people who were pulled off details, trying to catch
    child pornographers to do that kind of work, who were extremely
    frustrated to be forced to be collecting information on
    innocent people.
        The same thing with Federal Air Marshals who, their job is
    to prevent terrorists from storming cockpit doors on airplanes.
    That is a very important job. But we are putting marshals in
    the backs of airplanes, where they cannot do any good at all,
    and having them listen to conversations of, a former
    Congresswoman from Hawaii, and checking how many times they go
    to the bathroom. It is a total misallocation of resources, and
    it is politicized information gathering.
        Again, I think it is a betrayal of both the people in these
    services and the American citizens.
        Senator Hawley. Yes. Very well said, and I just have to
    say, I appreciate you holding the hearing, Mr. Chair, because I
    think we have to expose this so that it never happens again.
    The nearest thing I can think of in our country's history is we
    briefly, in 1798, toyed with trying to outlaw political
    dissent, the Alien and Sedition Acts. That unhappy episode was
    resoundingly rejected by the American people in the election of
    1800. That was a long time ago now. You would think that we
    were past that. And really, what we have seen in the last four
    years is unlike anything since that period, and much worse
    because the Federal Government is much more powerful than it
    was in 1798--the ability to prevent travel, the ability to
    monitor conversations.
        I can just think, off the top of my head, you had the
    Federal Government telling the big tech companies they have to
    take down and censor normal Americans who comment on COVID, who
    comment on masks, who comment on a CRT in the classroom. You
    have the FBI designating parents who go to school board
    meetings as terrorists. You have the FBI targeting pro-lifers.
    You have the FBI recruiting spies into Catholic parishes. You
    have the Quiet Skies program. I mean, that is just all off the
    top of my head. That is like six things. It is unbelievable.
        We talk about Never Forget. We have to never forget this
    and make sure it never happens again. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Chairman Paul. Thank you. An investigation is not over. We
    are, today, announcing that we will be investigating the
    Project on Extremism at George Washington University. We want
    to know whether or not they were doing research on people not
    wearing masks or against wearing masks, whether they were doing
    research on people who attended January 6th, whether Christine
    Crowder came from George Washington information that was sent
    over, or whether it came from someone specifically making up
    something about her.
        We are going to get to the bottom of it. We are going to
    keep asking questions. We are going to find out who did this
    and who caused such a great disruption to your life for several
    years. You are the one we know about, and we are going to try
    to get to the bottom of who did this.
        But this is the tip of the iceberg. We hope that anyone who
    is interested in this will continue to give us information,
    that more people will step forward. Those of you who are
    interested in reform participate with us in finding legislative
    solutions to try to make sure this never happens again.
        With that I would like to thank our witnesses for joining
    us here today to share their testimony and expertise with the
    Committee. The record for this hearing will remain open until 5
    p.m. on Friday, October 3, 2025, for the submission of
    statements and questions for the record.
        The hearing is now adjourned. Thank you.
        [Whereupon, at 11:38 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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