Unplugged Metal Detector Triggers JFK Chaos. These fools are keeping us safe?!?

Gates Of Vienna
VERBATIM POST

Under normal circumstances I would have left this story from The New York Post for the news feed. However, interested readers should take a look at the text and note the name of the TSA employee whose job skills do so much to enrich the security of the American homeland.

JFK is not the only airport on which the benefits of cultural enrichment have been so amply bestowed. Do a little “profiling” of TSA employees the next time you pass through Dulles, Philly, Logan, or any number of other major international airports. And if you think it’s bad here, try flying into Heathrow.

Unplugged Metal Detector Triggers JFK Chaos

These fools are keeping us safe?!?

The TSA’s bungling reached a new low yesterday when a JFK Airport terminal had to be evacuated and hundreds of passengers marched back through security screening all because one dimwitted agent failed to realize his metal detector had been unplugged, sources told The Post.

The stunning error led to hours of delays, two planes called back from the runway and infinite frustration for furious passengers.

“The truth is, this is the failure of the most basic level of diligence,” a law-enforcement source said.

“How can you expect the public to feel confident of the mission of the TSA if they don’t even know if the lights are turned on?”

The chaos at Terminal 7 was caused by screener Alija Abdul Majed, who had manned Lane No. 1 during the morning shift with no idea his metal detector had no juice, sources said.

Amazingly, he failed to realize that alert lights never flashed once as streams of passengers filed through the dead detector, the sources said.

Majed was so clueless that he couldn’t even tell police how long the machine had been shut off or how it happened, the sources said. “It was simply an unplugged machine — the TSA doing its best,” another source said.

Higher-ups at the Transportation Security Administration finally discovered the security boondoggle at 9:44 a.m. — leaving the Port Authority with no choice but to call for a complete evacuation of the international terminal that is home to British Airways, Cathay Pacific, United Airlines and others.

The extraordinary measure meant that two jumbo jets — including a San Francisco-bound United flight — had to return to the gate so passengers could be rescreened at a metal detector that was actually turned on.

The TSA would not confirm or deny that its detector had been unplugged, releasing a statement saying only that a metal detector suffered a “malfunction.”…