Book

The Book

Please Remove Your Shoes is a case study in bad government. It’s about one of the worst agencies in the history of the United States, the Transportation Security Administration: its birth, evolution, and unsupervised growth into areas where it has absolutely no business going. TSA is so professional at misleading the public that its PR department is actually divided into “strategic” and “tactical”  units. It pursues counterfeit “security” with visible zeal, ignoring invisible threats that it hides under questionable security classifications. Together with the partnership of federal, state and municipal government it has quietly banished the first, fourth, and fifth amendments to the US Constitution from all US airports, and any who challenge this on airport soil may find themselves incarcerated without representation - felons, for “irritating” a TSA screener. It is so brazenly “anti American” that it had the insolence to label its Herndon, VA surveillance post “The Freedom Center.”  It is a distressing example of big government that two million people have to meet “up close and personal” every day at America’s airports. And it infuriates Fred Gevalt.

Like the President, Congress, civil servants, and millions of troops in other conflicts, as an Army officer bound for Vietnam he took an oath in 1966 to defend the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” He considers that responsibility still in effect. No matter that he was discharged from the service in 1969, he “didn’t surrender (his) oath, and he wasn’t discharged from his duty to it.” Such is the plight of every citizen soldier. In his words: “And like thousands of others before me, it is now my turn to “put my money where my mouth is. I consider it a privilege.”

Gevalt fought the FAA for years on different issues, and began to see a pattern of behavior that pervades other government agencies and even congress: arrogance, narcissism, Olympic presumptions, contempt for law and the US Constitution.  A universal deference to the demands of career and to the politics of cronyism have become prerequisites for “successful” public service at the upper levels of government.

Why, he asks?  “Because we’ve permitted it. No democratic republic can honestly argue otherwise when it finds itself in a place it doesn’t wish to be. We have convinced ourselves that we can delegate governance to a group of ambitious plutocrats upon whom we impose fewer restrictions each year.  And we’ve relegated ‘our relationship’ with them to newsclips from an alternatingly furious or fawning mainstream media. We have grown bored, and convinced ourselves that we don’t have the time, or the “expertise” to follow our congressmen and the issues of our country, simultaneously chasing the mundane about our friends or even total strangers in email, facebook or twitter.”

Please Remove Your Shoes is an historical analysis of both government and the public psyche as it relates to our unquestioning acceptance of airport and national security. It poses some of the questions that should have been asked by Congress before creation of the TSA, like “what is security, and can we attain it?” It is uncomfortably straightforward about whether it’s appropriate for a government to put a dollar value on the head of a civilian that is hundreds or even thousands of times higher than on one of its own soldiers. In short, it asks two big questions: Almost a decade after 9/11, and almost half a trillion dollars later, have we really learned anything about terrorism, security, government, or ourselves? And have we really prevented anything other than taking  an honest look at the tough questions of life?

Please Remove Your Shoes is also appearing in 2010 as a full feature film, following the experiences of a half dozen civil servants in the trenches and one improbable but determined reporter, who asked the same questions and were punished by the US Government for their efforts.

Chapter One - D.B. Cooper: The End of Airline Service as We Knew It

                            And the beginning of airport “security,” as we’ve come to call it

Chapter Two - The Cultural “Back Story:” Fear & Anxiety in an Information Age

                           Or how Radon gas, Pedophilia, and “Homeland Security” are all related

Chapter Three - September 11th: A National Epiphany

                            The day America lost its innocence and got attacked at home

Chapter Four -  How Mainstream Media Turned the WTC into a Rorschach Test

                             And saved our lives from terrorists with plastic and duct tape

Chapter Five - Reinventing Security in a Moment of Panic

                         How Congress ensured that the process would be broken, right out of the box

Chapter Six - What Is Security, Anyhow..... Reality or Perception?

                        And what famous thinkers thought of it - from Cicero to Franklin                   

Chapter Seven - Who Do They Think They’re Kidding?

                             “Security Theater” and government’s real agenda

Chapter Eight - The Financial Costs: A Bottomless Pit

                            Direct costs, hidden costs, and the costs of unintended consequences

Chapter Nine - The Legal Bill: Civil Liberties? Who Needs ‘em?

                            Administrative law, secrecy, and the return of the Gestapo

Chapter Ten - The “Danger Industry” Another Version of the Military/Industrial Complex

                            Eisenhower warned us. We should have listened.

Chapter Eleven -  July 2004: Northwest Flight 327: Haven’t We Been Here Before?

                             And maybe that explains why the U.S. government pretended not to notice

 Chapter Twelve - Where is the Media Now That We Really Need It?

                              Theories from experts as to why the networks all chickened out

Chapter Thirteen: Where the Hell Do We Go from Here?

                               How we can at least retrieve our lives from government