A former Transportation Security Administration agent offered a confession of sorts in Politico Magazine on Thursday, called “Dear America, I Saw You Naked.”

“In private, most TSA officers I talked to told me they felt the agency’s day-to-day operations represented an abuse of public trust and funds,” Jason Edward Harrington writes, before detailing how TSA screeners routinely made jokes about passenger appearances, and even set up a system of code words such as “Alfalfa” to warn others when attractive female passengers were passing through $150,000 full-body scanners they all knew wouldn’t stop a determined terrorist.