Trump Administration Shuts Down ‘Quiet Skies’ Passenger Surveillance Program
The Trump administration closed a controversial program that used undercover U.S. air marshals on flights to surveil passengers, and removed a government official who took responsibility for putting Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in it.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called for an investigation into the program as she announced its closure on Thursday. DHS said the program cost taxpayers $200 million a year and “failed to stop a single terrorist attack.”
In a recent meeting, administration officials confronted leadership at the Transportation Security Administration over what they said was politically motivated use of the Quiet Skies program under the Biden administration, according to people familiar with the matter.
Corey Lewandowski, who has been serving as a special government employee at DHS, asked TSA staff who had been responsible for putting Gabbard in the program, some of the people said. Stacey Fitzmaurice, the executive assistant administrator for operations at TSA, took responsibility, some of the people said.
Fitzmaurice was subsequently put on leave and escorted out of the building, the people said.
“Any notion that Corey Lewandowski fired these individuals is categorically false. Stacey Fitzmaurice was placed on administrative leave for mismanagement of the Quiet Skies program,” a DHS spokeswoman said Friday: “The program, under the guise of ‘national security,’ was used to target political opponents and benefit political allies of the Biden Administration. The Trump Administration is returning TSA to its true mission of being laser-focused on the safety and security of the traveling public,” she said, adding: “We will continue to actively identify individuals who do not fulfill TSA’s core mission.”
The clash over Quiet Skies, a program that has long been a cause for concern for civil liberties advocates, is the latest example of the Trump administration accusing career officials of political weaponization.
The program was launched in 2010, and its existence was first uncovered by the Boston Globe in 2018. Undercover U.S. air marshals travel on flights with individuals included in the program.
Fitzmaurice, whose bio has been taken down on the TSA’s website, didn’t respond to a request for comment. Days before the department ended the program and made public accusations of inconsistency in its use, Lewandowksi said on a conservative show on YouTube that he had seen “stunning information” about how TSA watchlists had been administered by DHS under the previous administration.
The Quiet Skies program was brought up in a Senate hearing late last month. Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said he had received documents from DHS that showed Gabbard was placed in the Quiet Skies program in 2024 and pushed Noem to take action.
“I want repercussions to come from this,” Paul said, asking Noem “how the destruction of civil liberties can be minimized.”
“I frankly probably have a problem with the whole program,” he said.
Gabbard said on Fox News last month that she believes she was surveilled because she criticized former Vice President Kamala Harris. The former congresswoman was placed in the program after she attended an event at the Vatican that was organized by a European businessman who was on an F.B.I. watchlist, the New York Times reported in January.
In an earlier statement this week, DHS said there was corruption in the program. It also disclosed that after being flagged in late 2023 as a co-traveler with a known or suspected terrorist, Billy Shaheen, husband of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.), was added to an exclusion list that kept him from additional screenings. The senator had made inquiries about her husband, a Lebanese-American attorney, being on a watchlist before he was put on the exclusion list, according to DHS.
A representative for the senator said she contacted TSA “after her husband was subjected to several extensive, invasive and degrading searches at airport checkpoints,” and “sought to understand the nature and cause of these searches.”
“Any suggestion that the senator’s husband was supposedly included on a Quiet Skies list is news to her and had never been raised before yesterday. Nor was she aware of any action taken following her call to remove him from such a list,” the representative said.
In a guest column for USA Today , Celine Atallah, an immigration attorney, revealed she had been Billy Shaheen’s co-traveler when he was flagged by TSA in 2023. Atallah said she had no idea she was on a watchlist, and that she is a U.S. citizen and law-abiding citizen.
Robert MacLean, a former U.S. air marshal and a whistleblower who warned TSA of risks in its surveillance programs, said Quiet Skies was rife with problems, including lack of training for marshals for such work and clarity on how targets were selected. But administrations from both parties have been aware of the problems for years, he said. A 2020 DHS inspector general report found that TSA didn’t “properly plan, implement, and manage” Quiet Skies.
“They were randomly picking people to justify the existence of this program,” MacLean said.
Write to Tarini Parti at tarini.parti@wsj.com , Scott Patterson at scott.patterson@wsj.com and Siobhan Hughes at Siobhan.hughes@wsj.com
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