The TSA Hoarded 1.3 Million N95 Masks Even Though Airports Are Empty and It Doesn't Need Them
Source: ProPublica
The Transportation Security Administration ignored guidance from the Department of Homeland Security and internal pushback from two agency officials when it stockpiled more than 1.3 million N95 respirator masks instead of donating them to hospitals, internal records and interviews show.
Internal concerns were raised in early April, when COVID-19 cases were growing by the thousands and hospitals in some parts of the country were overrun and desperate for supplies. The agency held on to the cache of life-saving masks even as the number of people coming through U.S. airports dropped by 95% and the TSA instructed many employees to stay home to avoid being infected. Meanwhile, other federal agencies, including the Department of Veterans Affairs’ vast network of hospitals, scrounged for the personal protective equipment that doctors and nurses are dying without.
“We don’t need them. People who are in an infectious environment need them. Nobody is flying,” Charles Kielkopf, a TSA attorney based in Columbus, Ohio, told ProPublica. “You don’t take things for yourself. It’s the wrong thing to do.”
Kielkopf shared a copy of an official whistleblower complaint he filed Monday. In it, he alleges the agency had engaged in gross mismanagement that represented a “substantial and specific danger to public health.”
Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-tsa-hoarded-1-3-million-n95-masks-even-though-airports-are-empty-and-it-doesnt-need-them
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