funny you should mention that:
Exhibit A is a former TSA employee known as Robert Joe Harrison Jr. who was a TSA security screener in Ketchum, Idaho.
In April 2006, Harrison was arrested by the local police after he had brought home a 10-year-old boy whom he had enticed into his pickup truck. After they arrived at Harrison's home, the adult put in a movie and left the room. The youngster quite sensibly bolted the premises, fled to his home and and described the incident to his mother, who called the police.
When police searched Harrison's apartment, they found (in the words of an MSNBC report) found "four additional Social Security numbers and documents showing four other dates of birth." The TSA hired Harrison without even establishing his actual name and identity.
“Harrison” -- who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jim Bonnick, a small-time con-man from the TV series “Magnum, PI” -- was one of several suspected pederasts discovered within the span of a few weeks in 2006. It makes me wonder how many of the Department's officials belong to the department's “Aqualung Club.”
Harrison's arrest -- and the presence of other degenerates on the TSA's payroll -- shouldn't lead people to make unfortunate generalizations about the agency, insisted Dough Melvin, Federal Security Director for Idaho.
“TSA is a large organization with a large workforce, [and] unfortunately we have an individual who does things that are truly inappropriate, things that are intolerable for TSA,” insisted Melvin, who assured the public that the agency had a “zero tolerance” policy for behavior of this type. He didn't explain how a suspected pederast with five aliases and sets of personal ID could pass a federal background check. We simply had to take his word on the matter. After all, he was a clean-cut, respectable sort.
As it happens, less than a year after Harrison's arrest, Mr. Melvin was forced to resign as a result of his own public sexual misconduct.
“The now former Director of the Transportation Security Administration in Boise was arrested last week at an Idaho Falls hotel,” reported Boise's CBS affiliate KBCI on February 27, 2007. “Doug Melvin was busted after staff and hotel guests say they saw him walking around naked.”
The police report on the incident recorded that “Melvin entered the swimming area and removed his clothing before walking around, exposing himself.... Melvin was also reportedly masturbating while in front of the windows directly in view of the main elevator.”
Frank Figueroa, the former head of a federal anti-molester initiative called “Operation Predator,” was arrested at an Orlando shopping mall on October 25, 2005. He was charged with exposing himself to a 16-year-old girl while, ah, manipulating himself.
Confronted by mall security as he tried to flee the scene, Figueroa whipped out something else he was unduly proud of: The badge identifying him as the special agent in charge of the Tampa office of the Department of Immigration and Customs enforcement – one of the main appendages, as it were, of the DHS.
Figueroa was a repeat offender: He was hired by the DHS and given specific responsibility to deal with child sexual predators despite a 1977 arrest on a charge of public sexual misconduct in Buffalo. Thanks to an incredibly generous deal struck with an inexplicably lenient judge, Figueroa was given a year's probation and a withheld judgment -- meaning that there is no record of his conviction.
It's worthy of mention that Figueroa's "punishment" for preying on an underage girl was less severe than that inflicted on Phyllis Dintenfass for reciprocating the supposedly innocuous behavior of the TSA agent who felt her up.
Given Figueroa's area of responsibility in the federal hierarchy, and his private inclination toward the very behavior he was assigned to investigate, I find myself wondering if he had any personal or professional dealings with former Homeland Security honcho J. Brian Doyle.
The same week that "Robert J. Harrison" was arrested in Idaho, Doyle was arrested in Silver Spring, Maryland. For several weeks Doyle had been conversing by way of an internet a chatroom with someone he believed to be a cancer-stricken pre-adolescent girl. Eventually he tried to arrange a sexual liaison with his correspondent, unaware that he was being set up by a detective from the Polk County, Florida Sheriff's Office.
At the time, Doyle was the second-highest ranking official in the Homeland Security Department's propaganda directorate. He did nothing to disguise his identity while making overtures to what he believed was a potential victim; in fact, he even used his position at Homeland Security as a come-on.
