Rail Security Teams Compromised by Unions

Obama's reach is getting longer and longer - his buddies in the unions of kinds are stepping up the pressure to get control of everything they can before the general public finds out just how corrupt they really are and how they are jeopardizing our national security.

Malkin points out only one of the many cases where the unions are the problem and not the cure. Case in point is the automakers and how unions now own them. Disaster in the making.

Raiding rail security
By MICHELLE MALKIN NY Post/Last Updated:/ 3:51 AM, September 12, 2009/Posted:/ 1:12 AM, September 12, 2009New Delhi. Mumbai. Chechnya. Madrid. London.

The question isn't whether America will suffer a jihadi attack on our passenger rail lines, but when. So why has President Obama neutered the nation's most highly trained post-9/11 counterterrorism rail-security team? All signs point to cronyism and pandering to union bosses.

Amtrak's Office of Security Strategy and Special Operations -- OSSSO -- grew out of a counterterrorism and intelligence unit developed by the Bush administration in the wake of global jihadi attacks on mass-transit systems. The office was staffed with Special Forces veterans, law-enforcement officers, railroad specialists, other military personnel and experts who collectively possessed hundreds of years of experience fighting on the front lines against terrorism.

Each member underwent at least 800 hours of rail-security-related training, including advanced marksmanship, close-quarters combat and protective-security exercises. OSSSO's mobile-prevention teams acted as "force multipliers" working with local, state and federal authorities across the country to detect, deter and defend against criminal and terrorist attacks on mass transit. They conducted hundreds of show-of-force, uniformed and rail-marshal rides. OSSSO also provided security services for President Bush, the pope, the 2008 Democratic and GOP conventions, -Obama's campaign events and Joe Biden's Amtrak whistle-stop tours.

The unit's push to conduct random passenger and baggage screening won bipartisan praise on Capitol Hill. Even Democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who chairs the House homeland-security subcommittee on transportation security, hailed the rail-security team's work last year. "Let me congratulate them for being aware" of the threat to rail passengers, she told USA Today in July 2008. "[But] this has to be the new standard for Amtrak."

How will Congress react to the news that this high standard has been obliterated? Multiple government sources (who declined to be identified for fear of retribution) say OSSSO's East Coast and West Coast teams haven't worked in a counterterrorism capacity since the summer. Their long arms were put under lock and key after the abrupt departures of Amtrak Vice President for Security Strategy and Special Operations Bill Rooney and Amtrak Inspector General Fred Weiderhold.

Weiderhold played an instrumental role in creating OSSSO's predecessor at Amtrak, the Counter-Terrorism Unit. He tapped Rooney to oversee the office. But Rooney was quietly given the heave-ho in May, and Weiderhold was unexpectedly "retired" a few weeks later -- just as Amtrak faced mounting complaints about its meddling in financial audits and probes. Weiderhold had blown the whistle on intrusion of Amtrak's Law Department into his financial audits and probes. A damning report from an outside legal firm concluded that the "independence and effectiveness" of the Amtrak inspector general's office were "being substantially impaired" by the Law Department -- which happens to be headed by Eleanor Acheson, a close pal of Vice President Biden.

Biden himself is tight with the Fraternal Order of Police, the powerful union that represents the Amtrak Police Department. OSSSO sources say the APD brass have been aggrieved from the start over the nonunionized counterterrorism unit's existence. A West Coast OSSSO team member told me that union leaders blocked police credentialing efforts by his office for more than a year. An East Coast member told me that the union recently filed a grievance against one of its counterterrorism officers for assisting a train conductor who asked for help in ejecting a ticketless passenger.

Unlike OSSSO's specialized personnel, APD officers have minimal counterterrorism training. Past studies show alarmingly low pass rates among APD patrolmen who'd attended basic special-operations classes, government sources say. The Amtrak Fraternal Order of Police continues to squabble over turf with the rival Teamsters union -- its leaders can't even agree on minimal physical fitness standards for its members.

Nevertheless, OSSSO is now under the command and control of the APD -- and federal stimulus funding earmarked for the counterterrorism unit has now been absorbed by the police department. Amtrak didn't respond to my questions about OSSSO by my column deadline.

Al Qaeda operatives have repeatedly plotted to wreak havoc on our mass-transit systems. They'll try, try again. American jihadi Bryant Neal Vinas recently gave the feds details about a plot to blow up a Long Island Rail Road commuter train in New York's Penn Station.

As America marks the 9/11 anniversary and the "never forget" mantra echoes, an OSSSO team member told me, "There is no room for internal protectionism, vested interests of unions or asset-manipulating bureaucracies where the safety of our national passenger railroad is concerned."Does anyone else in Washington agree?/malkinblog@gmail.com/