9/11 security holes remain: former U.S. Customs agent Diane Kleiman witnessed corruption and conspiracy in the front lines of our national security.

For Diane Kleiman, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 bit very close to home--both literally and figuratively. Her apartment, just three blocks from Ground Zero, shook violently when the first airplane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Along with other residents and workers in the area who had rushed outside to see what had happened, she stared in horror and disbelief at the flaming inferno. She ran to the building, then watched, stunned and helpless, as the second plane hit the South Tower. She saw the bodies falling, as desperate people trapped by the flames jumped to escape the firestorm. She ran for safety, choking and covered with dust and debris, as the first building collapsed.

One of Kleiman's first thoughts during the terror and tumult of that fateful morning was that her sister Beth may have been on one of the doomed flights. It wasn't until later that afternoon, around 4:00 p.m., that she learned that Beth, who had boarded a flight around 7:30 that morning, was okay.

Competing with the fear, confusion and compassion Diane Kleiman experienced that morning was another emotion: white-hot anger. "I was furious at Customs," she told THE NEW AMERICAN, referring to the U.S. Customs agency, where she had previously worked. "I screamed to myself, 'Why couldn't they have listened? Why did they let this happen?'"

Since June 1999, when she was fired from her Customs job at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, Kleiman had been trying to get federal authorities to act on overwhelming evidence that top Customs officials at JFK had intentionally turned a blind eye to a criminal conspiracy with Latin American drug cartels and airline employees to bring huge amounts of narcotics into the U.S. Her firing, she says, was an act of retaliation lot her efforts to expose official corruption.

"Besides the obvious issues concerned here about the damage that these drugs were causing on the street and the incalculable damage to our law enforcement and justice systems anytime corruption of this kind gets a foothold, there was the huge issue of national security," says Kleiman. "Narco-terrorism is a well-known fact; terrorist groups worldwide are tied into the drug trade. JFK is one of our nation's busiest and most important airports. Allowing this drug trade and corruption to flourish unchecked at JFK is virtually the same thing as inviting terrorists to take advantage of this giant security hole. It is a sure thing that, eventually, that is exactly what will happen."

Although the hijacked flights that were used to attack the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did not originate at JFK, the September 11 attacks and subsequent events have vindicated Diane Kleiman's warnings. The corruption, conspiracy and cover-up she witnessed firsthand is not restricted to JFK or to Customs, but is a systemic problem, infecting and crippling virtually all of federal law enforcement and intelligence. Assurances by federal authorities that these problems are all being dealt with expeditiously now, or that they soon will be fixed by implementing proposals of the 9/11 Commission, are false assurances, she says, aimed at placating public concerns, not fixing a serious crisis.

On September 13, Diane Kleiman joined five other federal whistleblowers in Washington, D.C. for a press conference to challenge the official wisdom on counter-terrorism and post-9/11 security. The 9/11 Commission stated at the end of its report: "We look forward to a national debate on the merits of what we have recommended, and we will participate vigorously in that debate." The whistteblowers responded: "In this spirit, we wish to bring to the attention of the Congress, the press, and the people of the United States what we believe are serious shortcomings in the report and its recommendations."

Speaking at the press conference, in addition to Kleiman, were: Sibel Edmonds, former language specialist, FBI; John M. Cole, former Veteran Intelligence Operations Specialist, FBI; Bogdan Dzakovic, former Special Agent & Red Team Leader, FAA; Raymond McGovern, former analyst, CIA; and Melvin A. Goodman, former Senior Analyst/Division Manager, CIA.

In addition to those who attended the press conference in person, another 20 whistleblowers from various federal agencies have joined as signatories to the effort. (See article on page 22.)

The Kleiman Ordeal

An incredible chain of events led former Special Agent Kleiman to the whistleblower press conference in Washington, D.C. and what has now been a five-year crusade to redeem her honor, restart her life and expose terrible wrongs that threaten our nation's security. Diane Kleiman's career trajectory was not that of your typical Customs agent. She is a lawyer who had served six years as a prosecutor in the Queens District Attorney's Office before joining the Customs unit at JFK airport.

Almost immediately, she knew something was terribly wrong. "The main security problem was not the front end, where regular airline passengers are involved, but the back end, what we call 'the ramps,' where the baggage handlers, mechanics, caterers and cleaning crews have access to the planes," Kleiman told THE NEW AMERICAN. "There is a huge turnover in those jobs, very little security screening of those employees and very lax security concerning access to those premises--even now, post 9/11. When I started at JFK in 1999, we were taking airline employees into custody who were illegal aliens moving money out of the country illegally. Anything over $10,000 you have to declare. And we were catching them bringing out $30,000. And we would seize their money, let them go--and the next day they were back at work! And I said to my bosses, this is insanity. You are letting illegal aliens who should not be on the ramps to begin with have access to the planes. These people should not have been hired to begin with because they are security risks. They could easily hide a gun or a bomb on board a plane, without anyone knowing it."

What was the reaction of her supervisors to these legitimate concerns? Outright hostility, she says. According to Kleiman, her supervisor told her "that I needed to be a team player and keep my mouth shut." "I am a team player," says Kleiman, "but the team I joined was sworn to uphold the law and protect the American people, not enforce a code of silence that protects a 'good old boy' network, especially if it means covering up unethical and illegal activities."

On February 3, 1999, she was involved in a bust of a notorious Haitian drug dealer at JFK that netted approximately $750,000 in cash. She was in the money counting room with her supervisor, who, she says, told her to record the final cash recovery as $452,000--allowing nearly $300,000 to "disappear."

Kleiman was incredulous. "I told him, 'No one is going to believe that kind of a counting discrepancy.'" He told her to shut up and then ordered everyone in her group avoid her. As a rookie, that left her in a very helpless position. Fortunately, she received invaluable tutelage from a very experienced agent of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), who explained, in detail, how the airport drug-smuggling operations worked. An essential component of the criminal enterprise involved airline employees who would help get the illegal drugs onto international flights and then make sure the smugglers would avoid going through U.S. Customs inspection. When passengers come off international flights, they have to go through sealed "sterile corridors" to Customs and Immigration. However, some airline employees can get keys to doors in the sterile corridors and take the smugglers through these exits to evade inspection.

Customs Conspiracy

On March 13, 1999, using information from her DEA source, Agent Kleiman made a major bust of a Haitian drug operation at JFK. The Haitian courier was arrested with 46.2 pounds of cocaine. And, following the scenario outlined by the DEA agent, the courier was being escorted by an American Airlines employee with a key to an exit door. Did Kleiman get a promotion for this outstanding performance? Hardly. The airline employee got off scot-free; he was not even indicted. The Haitian smuggler was arrested, but his statement that he had smuggled drugs into JFK on prior occasions was purged from the file by the same agent in the room with the missing money. And Kleiman was called into the boss' office and told to lie under oath to a grand jury.

According to Kleiman, her supervisor told her to report that the bust had been the result of a random search, rather than her investigation. This falsification would have helped shield exposure of what was obviously a criminal conspiracy involving Customs officials. Kleiman refused. Then, she says, he threatened her.

"He said, 'Your mother lives alone, doesn't she?'" Kleiman recounted to THE NEW AMERICAN. "And I said 'yeah.' Then he said, 'Well, bad things happen to old women who live alone. They die, and no one ever finds out who did it.' I said 'Are you threatening me?' And he said 'No. You read this in the newspapers all the time. You see it all the time. People break into homes and nobody ever finds out who did it.' And at that point, I said 'This is it. Any conversation is over between you and me.'"

Kleiman says that her supervisor then subjected her to verbal harassment, including vulgar sexual and racial abuse. (Kleiman is Jewish). She says he taunted her, saying that no one would believe her word over his. "I knew he was probably right on that score," she says. But it appears that her boss got sloppy. In an effort to undermine Kleiman's credibility, he apparently decided to falsify her employee evaluations, just as he had boldly told her he would. What he didn't know was that she had made photocopies of her earlier evaluations. During her Equal Employment Opportunity hearing, those photocopies proved that her supervisor's later negative evaluations were forgeries, a felony of fence. (THE NEW AMERICAN has obtained copies of the original evaluations, as well as the later forgeries.)

But the harassment got more serious, potentially even deadly. Kleiman says that her government car all of a sudden had two tire blowouts. Then it developed a carbon monoxide leak that made her very sick. She was convinced that it was the result of tampering. Was she becoming paranoid? Apparently not. One of her former colleagues, Special Agent Brian Aryai, a Customs veteran with more than a decade of service, corroborated some of her charges in a sworn EEO deposition. Kleiman had gone to Aryai to request repair work on her government vehicle. Aryai testified in his deposition that Kleiman's boss "asked that no repairs be authorized for her vehicle. Mr. [supervisor's name] stated: 'I want to make that [expletive]'s life miserable. [Expletive] her; let her suffer in that car.'"

Kleiman then went to the overall Superintendent of Customs for JFK. He sided with her boss and fired the "troublesome" rookie. In 2001, Kleiman sought help from the Office of Special Council (OSC), an entity that investigates grievances by federal employees. The OSC agreed to look into her case. She also sought help from members of Congress. The two who have been most responsive, she says, are Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). Thanks to their letters to the OSC and to their monitoring of the investigation, Kleiman's case has not disappeared into the institutional memory hole, as have the cases of many other whistleblowers.

Pre-9/11 Warning

But the wheels of justice have been grinding very slowly. Six months prior to the attacks on September 11, Kleiman had warned the U.S. Attorney's Office that a tragedy would occur because of the lack of security at American Airlines. The U.S. Attorney's Office said they would look into it but never got back to her. To add more insult and injury upon injury, her supervisor was promoted. He is now number two man in Customs at JFK and, in effect, runs security there.

Kleiman was understandably outraged. She decided to get more vocal, to put pressure on the government through media exposure.

"Soon after I went on the Bob Grant Show [WABC radio in New York City] and told the story about Customs and the drug smuggling, the authorities started an investigation," she notes. "During Thanksgiving 2003 they made a high-profile bust at JFK involving 25 airline employees, about 19 of whom were baggage handlers. What did they find? Many of them were illegal aliens and most were felons with outstanding arrest warrants. Obviously, no serious effort had been made to fix one of our country's most obvious security problems. Here it was two years after 9/11, and U.S. citizens flying on airlines are being subjected to ever more intrusive restrictions and surveillance--and yet felons and possible terrorists were still being given untrammeled access to our airports."

To top off the outrage, says Kleiman, the Customs superintendent at JFK "was taking bows and doing photo-ops for these arrests. He should have been hiding under a rock, because if he had done the most routine of background checks these criminals never would have been hired."

The ramps and runways of our airports are still easily accessible to unauthorized personnel. Last year, for example, some teenagers rafting in the bay were buffeted by currents and winds and came ashore at the airport. They wandered around the runways for a couple hours before being taken into custody. Around the same time, at New York's LaGuardia Airport, a naked man was found wandering around the run ways. "If these people could get through airport 'security,'" Kleiman says, "why even call it security?"

To drive home her point, last March Kleiman took a TV crew from FOX News to JFK. The TV station's van, with darkened windows, drove into an area supposedly off-limits to unauthorized personnel. "There was nobody manning the security booth," she says. "We drove right through." They easily went to within 100 feet of passenger planes from major airlines that were in various stages of arrival, loading and departure. "If we were terrorists, it would have been very easy to commandeer a plane, or take several of them out with firearms, missiles or hand-thrown bombs."

The truly maddening thing is that the corruption and conspiracy that Diane Kleiman has exposed are not unique to JFK or U.S. Customs. Many other heroic current and former law enforcement and intelligence officers tell similar stories. As the September 13 whistleblower press conference in Washington, D.C. demonstrated, the security crisis is systemic, affecting virtually all of our security agencies. It is the bitter result of decades of sustained attacks on all internal security measures by subversives disguised as civil libertarians.

So far, our elected officials have chosen to perpetuate this crisis by refusing to root out those who obviously are, at best, negligent, and, at worst, criminally complicit. They use the claim that they do not want to engage in "finger pointing," as an excuse not to hold anyone accountable, allowing the guilty to escape. It is also providing an excuse for proposals to centralize police powers under the authority of a new federal intelligence "czar."

The 9/11 Commission report did not even deal with Customs or Immigration, two of the most important agencies on the front line of our national security. The glaring holes that allowed the 9/11 tragedy to occur will not be plugged by reshuffling agencies, redrawing lines on the federal bureaucracy flow charts and pouring even greater sums of money into an already bloated, unaccountable federal intelligence and law enforcement leviathan.