Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) said he is one of three congressional Republicans surveilled by a government program designed to identify terrorist threats at airports established under the Obama administration.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration launched the Quiet Skies program over two decades ago to monitor suspicious passengers for enhanced screening on flights. Republicans argued that it became weaponized as a surveillance tool against conservatives, leading the Trump administration’s DHS to drop the program in June.
On Thursday, Hamadeh raised concerns that the Biden administration could have abused Quiet Skies to target his candidacy as he ran for office. The freshman lawmaker won his seat in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District by double digits in the 2024 election after losing a 2022 bid to become attorney general in one of the closest elections in state history.
Hamadeh said Friday that he found out he was on the Quiet Skies watchlist earlier this week. The congressman told Fox News Digital in an interview that it was “peculiar” that the program flagged him because he is a former Army Reserve intelligence officer with top-secret clearance.
The Arizona lawmaker also said one of the times he was flagged by Quiet Skies was in December 2022. “What’s interesting” about that timing, he said, was that it was “during the time period that I was challenging the results of my election in 2022 when I was running for attorney general, where that race was decided by 280 votes out of 2.5 million.”
“So you don’t know if that was a factor,” Hamadeh said. “I would assume so, because at the time, it was such a hostile environment with President Biden when he was in power. I mean, my God, they were calling MAGA fascists. They were calling us threats to democracy constantly.”
Hamadeh is one of three Republican lawmakers whom Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-KY) says were probed by Quiet Skies. Paul has led an investigation into the program due to concerns that it violated civil liberties and unfairly singled out conservatives for harassment.
Paul revealed in May that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was one of those monitored by Quiet Skies. The revelations came after reports documented multiple times in 2024 when she was ordered to comply with enhanced screening at airports and travel with air marshals.
Hamadeh weighed in on Gabbard’s case as he expressed unease this week over fears Republicans were targeted by the government.
“It’s odd that there are only three Republican members of Congress who were targeted,” he said. “I mean, I’m assuming, there are Democrats who have a lot of interesting travel here that I serve with as well. I’m sure that there are things that would flag them. So it makes you question what the Biden administration who they were focusing on, who they were targeting specifically. I mean, look at Tulsi Gabbard. I mean, what? What a complete 180 for now to have her running the intelligence agencies as the director of national intelligence. And it goes to show you what we were fighting.”
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The freshman Arizona Republican said he was not surprised to find out he was probed by Quiet Skies during the Biden era.
“At the time, if you remember, I mean, banks were shutting down accounts if they promoted conservative viewpoints, if they were selling ammo or guns, and the banks were being pressured by the Biden administration,” he said. “You had social media companies censoring political voices that they didn’t agree with. So it shows you the depths that the federal government, how much sway they have, not just within the bureaucracy of the government, but also with private organizations and private actors as well.”
