Targeting Dissent, Surveillance Overreach and Secret Political Retaliation

Air Marshal National Council warned by TSA whistleblowers of flagrant misuse of Quiet Skies surveillance, noted the surveillance operation appears to be targeting dissent.

The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it. George Orwell

A story broke over the weekend before last that according to TSA whistleblowers former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard had landed on the TSA terror watch list as part of its Quiet Skies program, which is, purportedly, aimed at protecting American air travelers from domestic terrorists. Stranger still was the timing of Gabbard’s addition to that list. Incredible, but there’s more.

Interurban hiking trail - Bellingham

Before this stunning revelation, my dog Cleo was taking me for our daily drag on an interurban trail when I met another hiker named Brigitte, about my age. She was walking her blind Border Collie, Buster, which was enough of an icebreaker to talk “dog.” I did notice the remnants of a German accent while we exchanged introductions, and abruptly my surname - Marx - moved our chat in more ancestry dot com direction, including her not so fond remembrances of a childhood in East Berlin. Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, our conversation took an off-ramp toward her current observations of the similarities now in the US with Soviet East Germany.

Stasi’s "‘no touch torture’…secret police’s most terrifying weapon yourdestinationnow.com

As Cleo and Buster settled in, Brigitte recounted growing up under Stasi Zersetzung repression, an East German psychological warfare technique used by state security functionaries to undermine perceived threats to the state. She remembers the harassment and worsening oppression and so many citizens risking being shot by border guards attempting to leave. Fast forward another lifetime, Bridgette is now noticing similarities with US government intrusions and asked if I was scared, because she was. Like a lot of Americans my age I said I was more angry than scared, pissed at the constant political gaslighting, censorship, rigged elections and more, but mostly just incredibly sad for my country.

I could have gone on, with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation keeping me up at nights, but Brigitte’s fear was as tangible as my animosity and we were both navigating the same undercurrent of apprehension.

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After a couple of alternative news cycles, as if on cue, I ran across Matt Taibbi’s American Stasi Substack piece, describing in detail Tulsi Gabbard being surveilled and tracked by government agents on a flight from Rome to Dallas, with additional stops in the US, tailed by teams of Air Marshals and bomb dogs on every leg.

Before I finished my second cup of coffee, I found Fox News’ coverage of the same Quiet Skies harassment event, apparently kick-started after her recent comments on podcasts and Twitter X, but especially her last straw remarks on The Ingraham Angle on July 23.

Gabbard, in a statement to the Honolulu Star-­Advertiser, said that her inclusion on the watch list “is clearly an act of political retaliation.”

“It’s no accident that I was placed on the Quiet Skies list the day after I did a prime-time interview warning the American people about … why Kamala Harris would be bad for our country if elected as President and Commander in Chief. What hurts me the most is the fact that like so many Americans I enlisted because of the terrorist attack on 9/11, deployed to war zones to go after those terrorists, still serve in the US Army for over 21 years, and now my government is surveilling me as a potential domestic terrorist,” Gabbard said. “The real pain this has caused is the stress of forever looking over my shoulder, wondering if and how I am being watched, what secret terror watch list I’m on, and having no transparency or due process.”

And no, nothing showed up on other corporate news sites, then and now, regarding this egregious act of political harassment and intimidation. And straight away I too thought of government retaliation…and Brigitte.

To say that such intimidation piqued my interest is a major understatement, having worked alongside TSA during my last few years in Washington DC.

Passengers on airplane | Image by Space_Cat/Shutterstock

The majority of my daily routine as a Watch Supervisor in the FAA Washington Operations Center involved responding to notifications from Homeland Security or other intel sources, even NORAD, of flights with flight risk passengers. Aircraft with passengers on a terrorist watch list were almost always diverted, even when many of these “flagged” individuals were guilty of nothing more than “flying while Muslim.” Our branch laughingly (laughingly, now) diverted Yusuf Islam - Cat Stevens - to Bangor, Maine, where he was promptly deported to London. Other TSA flagged false positives included Ted Kennedy, Alaskan Congressman Don Young and numerous children.

Good times. Shoe and underwear bombers, hijacks, DC snipers, color-coded threat levels. In a weird way it was exhilarating. But today, we live in a surveillance state on steroids. GDR level? More so actually, but East Germany’s Ministry for State Security did set the bar for destabilizing and demoralizing surveilled targets, particularly activists and academics. Even ordinary citizens found themselves caught in the insidious web of Zersetzung, designed to neutralize anyone the state determined to be a threat. East German smear tactics, mail tampering and phone taps, group infiltration, and disappearances spread paranoia and mistrust for more than 40 years. They also set the table for today’s propaganda storms and surveillance malfeasance.

Brigitte still remembers the trauma, the stifling of dissent, and senses a 21st century remix. Under the Biden/Harris administration, mass surveillance has been finely tuned and unleashed. Cyberspace espionage tactics to control and manipulate alleged and actual dissidents have been used by our security state since before Obama. George Bush’s infamous domestic spying program was implemented shortly after the 9/11 attacks that brought me to Washington DC. So, if you feel like you’re being stalked, you clearly have a firm grasp of the obvious.

While National Guard lieutenant colonel and former congressperson Tulsi Gabbard is a high-profile example, anyone engaged in dissent or “anti-government” activities, such as “hateful anti-patriotic” speech in opposition to the National Security State narrative, is going to be targeted. Pro-Palestinian and anti-Ukrainian proxy war dissidents are especially fair game, with Congressional legislation meant to stifle free speech in the works.

You would think I rate at least another Quad-S secondary screening for not only a lifetime membership in Veterans For Peace, but now for regular posts like this on Substack.