TSA Spying on E-mails of Suspected Whistle Blowers: CNN Transcript

This disturbing story is from CNN. Read the entire transcript:

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SR. INVESTIGATIONS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The story stunned the Air Marshal program and the Transportation Security Administration. Federal air marshals telling CNN, the Air Marshal Service is so thin, only 1 percent of domestic flights have agents on board.

Kip Hallie, the head of the Transportation Security Administration, quickly went to Congress and said CNN was wrong.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That number is absolutely wrong.

GRIFFIN: And behind the scenes, the TSA launched an investigation to find out where our information was coming from. The TSA went so far as to track down a soldier in Iraq, peer into his personal e-mail, then call him just days after he returned from duty.

(on camera): Who was it that was calling and asking this?

JEFF DENNING, FORMER AIR MARSHAL: It was a special agent Greg Needer (ph) his name. With the TSA Office of Investigations or something.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Jeff Denning is hardly a terrorist. He's a father of four, soon to be five children. He's a former decorated Dallas cop, a member of the Dallas S.W.A.T. team. And from 2004 through 2007, a Federal Air Marshal.

DENNING: And I joined the Air Marshals because I wanted to help in the global war on terror.

GRIFFIN: He spent three years in the service, leaving the agency on good terms but disgusted with how it was run. And last year, just as he was getting his own security business started, his country called him again.

DENNING: I got involuntarily mobilized with the Army Reserves.

GRIFFIN: While serving in Iraq, clearing bombs from road sides, he got an e-mail from an old friend in the Air Marshal service. This e-mail, asking anyone with information about troubles in the Federal Air Marshal program to contact CNN. Jeff Denning never talked to CNN for that first report, but he did forward the e-mail. Little did he know that TSA was watching.

DENNING: In Iraq there were a lot of uncomfortable circumstances, and dangerous things. And never, Drew, have I ever been so scared of when the federal government called me on my home phone and said, I want to know about your personal e-mail accounts and what you have been sending.

GRIFFIN: Don't think it could happen? The Transportation Security Administration just confirmed to CNN that it is true. According to this statement, the TSA is investigating possible unauthorized release of sensitive and classified information to the news media.

DENNING: They're contacting me on my personal -- about my personal e-mail that I apparently forwarded an e-mail to other people's personal e-mail accounts? It's outlandish.