The TSA’s controversial “Quiet Skies” surveillance program is under renewed fire after new whistleblower allegations surfaced on May 31 via the Air Marshal National Council (AMNC). According to two separate federal air marshals, the program may be dangerously misdirecting national security resources — targeting pilots and DHS agents. I have reported on Quiet Skies (Q.S.) since Fall 2023 and AMNC’s continued efforts to expose the troubling surveillance program.
I spoke with AMNC president Dave Londo and AMNC executive director Sonya LaBosco over the weekend about their newsworthy X post referencing claims reported in May by two separate Federal Air Marshals (FAM) whistleblowers. Londo frequently receives reports from concerned air marshals about the Quiet Skies program.
Londo shared that a longtime FAM reported in early May that he had been assigned to follow a pilot allegedly on the Q.S. watchlist. The FAM stated that his team was assigned to a commercial flight of a U.S. carrier with the Q.S.-watchlisted pilot riding in the jump seat on the outbound flight and occupying the pilot’s seat on the return flight.
Concerned about the pilot’s control of the aircraft on the return leg, the FAM said he contacted Incident Coordination Section (ICS) to ask whether he and his team should continue the mission with the pilot now flying the plane. They were instructed to continue the mission without reservation.
At the end of May, another federal air marshal reported that his team had been assigned to surveil and follow a Q.S. watchlisted DHS agent. The DHS ERO employee was deporting an illegal alien on a commercial passenger flight run by a U.S. carrier, a common practice for deportation. Londo commented that TSA seemed to be more preoccupied with the agent’s Q.S. status than the deportation operation itself.
I asked LaBosco what she would do if she were asked to continue the mission to follow a pilot on a commercial plane. Without hesitation, she stated:
As a retired Supervisory Federal Air Marshal, I can say without hesitation: I would have never allowed that plane to take off. It is unconscionable that an airline pilot flagged on TSA’s Quiet Skies watchlist, a designation for individuals deemed potential threats, would be allowed to enter the cockpit, lock the door, and take full control of a commercial aircraft. This defies operational logic and undermines the core principles of aviation security.
At best, this is gross incompetence. At worst, it raises an even more disturbing question: does TSA know Quiet Skies is an absolute fraud, or are they hiding something truly dangerous from the public, something that could harm American citizens? Either way, this is not risk-based security. It’s reckless, performative theater.
Passengers deserve transparency, not secret watchlists that result in nonsensical decisions. They deserve accountability, not bureaucratic silence.
We are approaching the 24th anniversary of 9/11, a tragedy that changed aviation forever. TSA must be held accountable before it’s too late.
These new whistleblower concerns follow earlier revelations involving high-profile figures such as the Quiet Skies story involving Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard was confirmed to have been placed on the Q.S. watchlist in August 2024. She was allegedly surveilled as if she had been assigned the 102/DT (domestic terrorist) status.
The 102/DT designation triggers expanded surveillance. According to Londo, “a 102 is not supposed to be assigned unless the target has done something to warrant it.” Shockingly, Londo says Gabbard had no such official designation but was being surveilled as if she did.
This was the interesting part of the Tulsi Gabbard Quiet Skies debacle. ... When I say full surveillance, that means our FAMS watch the QS person as soon as they get to the airport, follow them and then see how they are getting out of the airport and maybe even beyond.
FAMs are required to document everything for the FBI or whoever else is asking for it. ... This was confirmed when Sen. Rand Paul exposed it in a hearing, saying he had seen the reports on her surveillance. They were noting her electronics and monitoring her conversations. There should never have been extensive surveillance on Gabbard.
Quiet Skies is the same program that was weaponized against innocent Americans following the Capitol protests on January 6.
Londo says all J6 defendants were assigned both Q.S. and 102 status. LaBosco exposed the fact that not only was the wife of an active federal air marshal being surveilled in the Quiet Skies program, but her Q.S. paperwork stated that she had been given the 102 designation just because she had been in D.C. She never went to the Capitol on January 6.
In my September 27, 2024 article on the 2018 Quiet Skies program, I exposed the arguable unconstitutionality of the Q.S. program using the government’s own Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA):
Thousands of innocent Americans are placed on the Quiet Skies watchlist. Quiet Skies is an illegal, unconstitutional surveillance program that captures personal identifying information and stores that information in the TSA’s Transportation Information Sharing System (TISS) for 25 years, according to a 2008 Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) of TISS.
The Quiet Skies list is not a “No Fly” watch list. The No Fly list is allegedly reserved for “known or suspected terrorists” who are ideally not allowed to board planes. Passengers in the Quiet Skies program are allowed to fly. Nevertheless, [some] passengers in the Quiet Skies programs are often still described as “102 suspect DTs” or suspected Domestic Terrorists. The designation begs a rational question–why are these people being allowed on planes in the government is so worried about them?
Quiet Skies has materially changed the role of FAM, according to Londo:
We used to cover high-risk flights, not high-risk passengers. That was our original concept of operations (ConOps) because we were only tracking individuals under investigation for terrorism and related offenses. So, we would identify high risk flights, the ones that known terrorists would be on. This ConOps would produce lower special mission numbers than those produced by QS surveillance.
After 9/11, we would look at terrorist incidents around the globe to determine the flights they would target and target the same. Quiet Skies turned that around and tripled the number as a result. That is why Quiet Skies has so many fake numbers.
Londo confirms that the Quiet Skies program follows individuals including “children, CEOs of prominent American companies, and congressional staffers.” FAM are allegedly being assigned to the wrong targets at the expense of keeping Americans safe. To support their claim, Londo and LaBosco cite a 2020 Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report exposing the Q.S. program’s failure to ever thwart a terrorist threat. Both believe that critical resources are being squandered on the Q.S. program to impress Congress with elevated “fake” surveillance numbers as a way to justify funding.
To Londo’s point, a May 22, 2025 letter from from AMNC to Secretary Noem and acting TSA administrator McNeil highlights the dangers of diverting FAM resources.
The three-page letter (pictured below) identifies two major security incidents on recent U.S. commercial flights, where, in one case, a passenger made a bomb threat, and in another, a passenger had a “makeshift weapon, stabbing a member of the flight crew and threatened to hijack the plane.” Londo shared that had FAM been assigned to those flights, they “would have been heroes because those are the flights we used to track.”
Tristan Leavitt, the lead attorney representing FAM whistleblowers for Empower Oversight, also addressed Noem in a May 29, 2025 letter. Leavitt expressed continued frustration that DHS seems to be more focused on retaliating against FAM whistleblowers than addressing the ineffective and unconstitutional surveillance of innocent Americans.
Image: Fletcher via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
