In 2009, Fred Gevalt, the creator and former publisher of “The Air Charter Guide,” a resource for the on-demand aircraft charter business, was in the middle of a documentary project that explored the reasons as to why airline passengers agree to give up so many of their rights when choosing to fly.
After a year of research, interviews and captured footage, Gevalt realized his focus was too broad. He then approached director Rob DelGaudio of BlackPearl Productions and writer Rocco Giuliano, along with a handful of others, and began to narrow the focus on the flaws of aviation security. His investigation includes a scrutinizing look at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), created after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and those who have tried to fix the system.
Gevalt and his crew documented the findings in a new film called “Please Remove Your Shoes.”
Q. Why did you decide to embark on this project?
A. The Transportation Security Administration is a completely ineffective solution to airport security, a massive expense to the federal budget by itself, and more broadly, a demonstrable symptom of ill-considered government spending.
As an aviation publisher, I watched this agency from its inception right after 9/11: an insecure group of bureaucrats that quickly grew into a disingenuous and abusive organization, vastly more interested in its empire building and the future of its managers than for its lower level employees or the public it is sworn to serve. In that regard it is emblematic of the current attitude in government, which is extremely dangerous to our survival as a democratic republic.
And, unlike most government entities buried in Washington, as a topical choice TSA is a unique example of current government programs: we all get to see it "up close and personal" at the airport.
I sold my business in 2006 and earned the means to do something to try to help us focus on certain national priorities. I cannot think of a more important or pressing topic for our time. We have engaged ourselves in two wars, contributed to the demise of a global economy, polarized the world's largest religions, and threatened the core of our constitutional freedoms, all in the name of "security."
My sincere hope is that by debunking the myth of aviation security I can help precipitate a national debate that allows the populace to take a more sober, quantified look at this subject before the next terrorist event precludes any intelligent discussion and we all wander down the self destructive trail first blazed by the Soviets.
Q. What does the average person give up so that they can fly?
A. Every person, average or otherwise, no longer has his First, Fourth or Fifth Amendment rights at a U.S. airport. While the federal government doesn't advertise this fact, those civil liberties have been trumped by administrative law created by or in association with TSA and capriciously enforced by the local police at over 450 airports around the country.
For those who don't believe me, try telling a screener what you think of their process the next time you fly. Try insisting that they have no right to search you without cause. Or try resisting your right against self-incrimination by refusing to answer their questions. You can call the Supreme Court to protest from your jail cell at the airport. For me and the generation that served with me in (or resisted) the VietNam War, what has already happened after 911 would have been unthinkable.
Q. Your sources throughout the film are well-informed, credible people — some who worked for the federal government and who, after shouting for change, were quieted. How did you get them to talk?
A. They actually weren't "quieted," they just exhausted their available audience. They wanted to talk. They had threatened or forfeited their careers years ago to warn the public of the lies and ineptness of their managers. And when the internal complaint mechanisms failed them, they went to higher echelon government watchdogs. When the government watchdogs failed, they went to Congress. When Congress brushed them off, they went to the media. While the media aired their discoveries, the media didn't follow up. We are all counting now on the public.
“Please Remove Your Shoes” is a movie about this entire story — the dedicated efforts of U.S. public servants who were actually trying to serve our interests despite the deliberate interference of their own management.
So the opportunity we presented them was greeted with enormous enthusiasm, and the scope and length of the film (as opposed to a three minute news segment) allowed them to disclose events and moments of introspection that are as poignant as they are unassailable.
Q. I was particularly drawn to the Ron Paul campaign worker who was detained for carrying a large sum of cash in his carry on. It turned out to be campaign donations, but the recorded conversation between the TSA workers and the passenger documented a use of what I would call bullying. Why did you decide to include this clip in your film? What do you think it says about the TSA in general?
A. The gratuitous harassment of this passenger, whose only "crime" was the transportation of a small box of campaign cash, is typical of TSA behavior. We included the story in the film to display that side of an agency, which has overstepped its charter and is too arrogant to acknowledge it. The incident, which allowed us to digress briefly to the audience's point of view, is instructive of the hazards of conferring power to agencies without first structuring them so that efforts are focused on a goal and staffing them with employees who respect and understand the law.
What it says about TSA in general is that this super-agency is itself un-policed, and is running amok. In the film, both senior congressmen interviewed essentially corroborate this situation in various ways, despite the fact that they helped create TSA in the first place. More significantly, and presumably for political reasons, they aren't doing much about it.
Q. Your film provides reasons for passengers to really be afraid of flying. How do you see what you're doing as being different from what you might see as scare tactics used by the government?
A. Fear is an associative part of the whole topic of security, whether aviation related or not. To a certain extent I could frighten some people by just uttering the words "aviation security." Very few politicians can avoid the attention-getting advantages of presentations of threat, which most of the time are as unprovable as they are frightening.
Additionally, with respect to aviation-security discussions of any kind, it is important to remember that according to years of well corroborated surveys, 50 percent of the flying public is already nervous about flying on a sunny day, in a brand new airplane, without any introduction of terrorism at all. This psychological fact, of course, is why aviation will forever remain a terrorist target.
While it is true that many people who have seen the film come away more afraid of flying, many more come away enraged at government agencies like TSA, which is a necessary goal of the film project. We cannot create an intelligent solution to our perceived security needs without first recognizing that what's currently in place doesn't work.
That we occasionally engage in "emotional manipulation" is largely a function of the usual problems of story telling. Show me a 94-minute film about a scary subject without some dramatic tension (fear), and I guarantee you I can find an audience that's fallen sound asleep.
On the other hand, we were careful not to show images of pre-programmed, predictable terror like the twin towers with planes flying through them. I think for the most part, we were able to keep the associative anxiety of the subject sufficiently at bay that most people who have screened this film had plenty to talk about afterwards in the Q&A and weren't so rattled that they had to go out for a stiff drink.
At the end of the day we have not duplicated the demagogic tactics of the politician because we do not aspire to the demagogic strategy of the politician: to use crises and fear to perpetuate careers, terms in office, and in the furtherance of legislative agendas. I do not expect, given my cost at financing this project, to ever see a profit. I am trying to make a point about our situation, which hopefully will help. And that is a key difference from what many in government, sadly, are trying to do.
Q. What can we do to fix the problem you’ve outlined in “Please Remove Your Shoes?”
A. In the close of the film, we list several ways that airport security could be improved as a summation of points made by our cast. The main issue is that we have to improve and use our intelligence to anticipate events before they arrive at the airport. We could install the entire First Air Cavalry at an airport to no effect if a bomb was smuggled in with airfreight.
But to really get somewhere we have to define the "problem," as you put it, which was never really done by Congress. On September 12, 2001 "security" meant relative peace of mind that a terrorist wouldn't hijack another airplane. But as we should have learned by today, despite our worst fears, airplanes aren't dropping out of the skies. For many today, security is their ability to pay the bills.
As a nation these two are related. There has to be a balance between our collective economic health and a responsible level of physical protection. We need less cost, and brighter, more capable people. Right now the problem is an $8 billion/annum 60,000 employee jobs program called the TSA. We cannot afford to fix any problem by squandering our economy, our civil liberties and the futures of our children.
