I’d like to be charitable, but more than a week after we highlighted an outrageous TSA action, the TSA finally decided to respond. It did so by flat out lying.The TSA’s response is to this post about my friend the soldier who experienced one of the most egregious bits of bureaucratic stupidity at the hands of the TSA to ever be documented.How does the TSA respond?

At Indianapolis International Airport, military charters arrive at the remote transit terminal, exclusive for these types of flights. TSA staff does not have access to this facility and, we do not conduct any screening operations there. Also, nail clippers have never been prohibited by TSA.

I emailed my friend who sent me the original and this is his response:

Wow. Holy sh*t. That’s just an outright lie. What a bunch of do****bags. See, this is why I want to remain anonymous. More bulls**t than I have time to deal with. The funny thing is, almost everything blogger bob said mirrors exactly what I said–that we were taken to a separate part of the airport, etc–up until he said TSA has no access to the facility. Now that is a lie. I can tell you for a fact that they were there, we were screened by them, and they took nail clippers and a multi-tool. Notice, he doesn’t even deny that nail clippers are confiscated. He just says “they’re not on the list of prohibited items”. Doesn’t mean a rogue agent couldn’t confiscate them anyway.

By the way, I have had nail clippers confiscated by a TSA agent before and I know many others who have had the same thing happen.Likewise, since posting that story, which has received more than 500,000 unique page views, I’ve heard from other soldiers with similar experiences. I think I’ll believe the soldiers over Blogger Bob of the TSA.