The Watch List That Never Caught a Terrorist | Sonya LaBosco & David Londo | Ep. 481

Sonya LaBosco is a former Virginia state trooper who became a federal air marshal in 2002, one of the last classes required to pass the old tactical pistol course. She was medically retired in 2014 and now runs the Air Marshal National Council as its executive director. David Londo joined the service in 2006 and spent 20 years on aircraft, including time as a recruiter, before retiring. He is the council's president. Together they spent years working with the Boston Globe, Judicial Watch, and congressional oversight committees to expose the Quiet Skies program, and they are now producing a documentary called Watchlisted in America.

This conversation covers how a program meant to find threats to aviation turned into undercover surveillance of citizens who were never suspected of anything. A computer flagged travel habits, a team of three marshals was dispatched to shadow the person, and after-action reports came back saying the same thing every time: not a threat. They walk through how it expanded after January 6, how an air marshal ended up assigning his own wife's surveillance detail, and why a Senate investigation and an inspector general audit found zero threats ever caught.

We also get into the pre-9/11 standards that got thrown out, why they want the program pulled out of TSA and rebuilt as a small specialized unit, the holes in private aviation and the northern border, and a geotracking contract they say has quietly replaced Quiet Skies.

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