Politico ran an article last week profiling the key players behind Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign. Right at the top of the list was Chad Sweet, the campaign chairman.
Sweet has a long and diverse career in security and investment banking. He was the Director of Operations for the CIA from 1990 – 1993. He then moved on to Wall Street where he was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley from 1994-1996 and a Vice President at Goldman Sachs from 1996 – 2006. Sweet then returned to government work serving as the Chief of Staff of the Department of Homeland Security from 2007 to 2009. During his time at DHS Mr. Sweet helped Department Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff manage one of the largest federal agencies.
Sweet’s name might not be recognizable, but he has ties to some serious cronies in the investment banking and security sector. Sweet’s most controversial dealings occurred during his time at The Chertoff Group, a group co-founded by Sweet and Chertoff.
You might remember back in 2010 Chertoff was exposed for calling for body scanners in airports while neglecting to reveal he stood to profit from the sale of the back scatter scanners. The company who manufactured the scanners, Rapiscan, was a client of The Chertoff Group. At the time The Huffington Post reported on Chertoff’s crony behaviors:
One example involves the company at the heart of the recent uproar over intrusive airport security procedures – Rapiscan, which makes the so-called body scanners. Back in 2005, Chertoff was promoting the technology and Homeland Security placed the government’s first order, buying five Rapiscan scanners.
After the arrest of the underwear bomber last Christmas, Chertoff hit the airwaves and wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post advocating the full-body scanning systems without disclosing that Rapiscan Systems was a client of his firm. The aborted terror plot prompted the Transportation Security Agency to order 300 machines from Rapiscan. Yet last spring, the Government Accountability Office reported that, “It remains unclear whether [the scanners] would have been able to detect the weapon” used in the aborted bombing attempt. And according to a recent report by DHS’s Inspector General, the training of airport screeners is rushed and poorly supervised.
The Rapiscan “nudie scanners” were removed from airports in 2013 and replaced with another type of scanner that uses radio waves. The new scanners show hidden objects on an avatar image on a screen, so the TSA agents no longer get to ogle the naked images of Americans.
The controversial scanners might be gone, but they are not forgotten. So why would Ted Cruz affiliate with someone responsible for bringing TSA nude body scanners to airports across the country? After all, Cruz railed against the privacy infringing tactics utilized by the TSA during his campaign for the Senate in 2012.
This appears to be another instance where Cruz’s stance on policy does not align with the reality of his actions. I wrote about this behavior in the candidate profile I penned earlier this month, Ted Cruz Presidential Profile: The Good, The Bad, and The Liberty.
Cruz claims to oppose TSA tactics that infringe upon the privacy of citizens, but he hired a guy who co-founded the group that was instrumental in placing nude body scanners in every airport. Cruz talks a good game most of the time, but his actions tell a very different story. Cruz claims that he wants to reduce the size and scope of the federal government, but he’s chosen to surround himself with people who have made a living profiting off crony tactics that directly increased government power.
Listen to our podcast breaking down Ted Cruz’ liberty positions and his many drawbacks:
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