News that the Biden administration put the husband of U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen on a TSA watchlist for traveling with a “known or suspected terrorist” continued to make news Thursday when his daughter took to the airwaves to defend him.
“I know the Senate office has answered questions that have come up over the last day or two. I can tell you that there clearly had to be a misunderstanding,” Stefany Shaheen told WGIR radio regarding her father, longtime Democratic operative William Shaheen.
“My father is a patriot. Everybody who knows him knows how patriotic he is. He is a former Army captain. He was a U.S. Attorney, and he’s been a judge for 17 years. So, there was clearly a misunderstanding here.”
The “misunderstanding,” according to the Biden administration TSA, was William Shaheen’s multiple trips in 2023 with someone they identified as a “Known or Suspected Terrorist (KST).” As a result, he received additional scrutiny at airports under the TSA’s “Quiet Skies” program until his wife, Sen. Shaheen, intervened.
According to the DHS, in October 2023, Sen. Shaheen met with the head of the TSA, after which her husband was removed from the “Quiet Skies” surveillance program and added to the Secure Flight Exclusion List instead.
“This means that (William) Shaheen was excluded from any future TSA Random Selectee designation, and Rules-based Selectee designation, such as Quiet Skies, Association Based Rule Selectee designation, or Silent Partner Selectee designation,” the DHS reported Wednesday.
Stefany Shaheen, a Democratic candidate for Congress, brushed off questions about whether her father received special treatment as the spouse of a powerful U.S. senator.
“I don’t think there was anything inappropriate here,” she insisted. “There was just an attempt to get to the bottom of where this misunderstanding started. And the fact that you have somebody in my father, who is a veteran, who is a longstanding lawyer. There was some misunderstanding, and they just wanted to understand where it was coming from.”
On Thursday, SeacoastOnline reported the KST in question had come forward and identified herself.
Immigration attorney Celine Atallah said she was the person who traveled with Shaheen, telling the paper, “Let me be crystal clear: I am a U.S. citizen, a licensed attorney, a law-abiding American, and Billy Shaheen’s legal co-counsel.”
And, she added, she had been pulled out of airport lines more than 40 times for invasive searches.
Atallah says she has no idea why the DHS identified her as suspicious. Current DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin declined to say what the agency saw in 2023 that raised concerns.
“We are confident in our law enforcement’s intelligence, and we aren’t going to share intelligence reports and undermine national security,” McLaughlin told SeacoastOnline in a statement.
And, she noted, Atallah was never publicly identified by DHS but rather chose to out herself.
The Trump administration announced Thursday it is eliminating the Obama-era “Quiet Skies” program, claiming it has “failed to stop a single terrorist attack while costing U.S. taxpayers $200 million a year.”
Meanwhile, questions continue to swirl regarding Sen. Shaheen’s decision to intervene on behalf of a family member. The allegations of special treatment highlight one of the criticisms made against Stefany Shaheen, namely that she’s a “nepo baby” candidate for Congress who’s riding on her family name.
“I stand on my experience, my credentials, and my background,” Stefany Shaheen said Thursday.
