Cleared For Disaster
At Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, that is, where a string of disturbing incidents has attracted scant attention or appropriate oversight from local officials, elected or otherwise.
First we have 16-year-old Delvonte Tisdale apparently breaching airport security, stowing away inside the wheel well of a US Airways jet and falling to his death from the sky over Boston. Then we have a TSA sting operation that saw agents successfully bribing a JetBlue employee to smuggle a package onto a plane. And now this: a taxicab company run by two men who served federal prison time for buying 40 fake driver’s licenses, likely for illegal immigrants, has been recommended to receive a lucrative contract to provide taxi service at Charlotte-Douglas airport. This from WCNC:
Aviation Director Jerry Orr says he didn’t know about the felony records of Javed and Naheed Kashmary when a selection committee picked their proposal in November. The pair own two-thirds interest in Kashmary Enterprises, the operator of King Cab and Royal Cab.
But Orr says the records do not change his recommendation that the company receive one of three contracts to operate taxicabs at Charlotte/Douglas.
“That the company violated laws and paid the price for that, I don’t think is a security issue,” said Orr.
Javed and Naheed Kashmary pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Charlotte in 2007 to charges stemming from a scheme to buy 40 fake driver’s licenses from a “known person,” according to court records.
….
Charlotte/Douglas did not run criminal background checks as part of the taxicab companies’ request for proposals. That job went to Charlotte’s Passenger Vehicle for Hire manager, Burhan Al-Shaikh. The Passenger Vehicle for Hire office is part of Charlotte-Mecklenburg police.
That would be the same CMPD, of course, tasked with investigating how a teenager apparently breached airport security and hid in plane’s wheel well, only to fall to his death over Boston. To date, police haven’t provided any details on how the Tisdale investigation is proceeding, or if it even is, leaving the public in the dark about potentially serious security issues at Charlotte’s airport.
And the public, apparently, isn’t the only one left clueless. At a congressional hearing this week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was short any relevant specifics surrounding the stowaway case, aside from acknowledging that the TSA was investigating.
When pressed by U.S. Rep. William Keating on how the investigation was proceeding, Napolitano could only reply that, “I can’t, sitting here, tell you what the after-action analysis was, as to how that happened and what corrective action has been taken. But I can share with you that I suspect that that has already occurred and will get that to you.” Video from the hearing is available here, with the Tisdale exchange starting at the 1:40:00 mark.
Keating is the former Norfolk County, Mass., district attorney who last year helped investigate the Tisdale case, which he said “raised enormous concerns about aviation safety.”
“If it wasn’t this young man, who stowed himself for his own reasons,” Keating said, “if that had been a person with more nefarious motivation, think what would have happened to that 737 commercial airliner, or any other airliners that were there at that time.”
Napolitano, though, seemed a wealth of information on the Tisdale case compared to National Counterterrorism Director Michael Leiter.
“Were you aware of the incident?” Keating asked Leiter.
“I was aware,” the national counterterrorism chief replied, “but only through the press reports.”
Leiter expounded that his department will “certainly work with Secretary Napolitano on this case to see whether or not there is a broader perimeter issue.”
It should be noted that is has been nearly four months since the Tisdale incident occurred. And we now are left with what from the head of Homeland Security, the nation’s counterterrorism director, CMPD Chief Rodney Monroe, the Charlotte City Council, Mayor Anthony Foxx, Airport Director Jerry Orr, and City Manager Curt Walton?
Crickets. And a company run by felons convicted of peddling fake driver’s licenses ready to receive a fat contract to provide taxicab service at the airport.
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