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By Brendan Keefe, WANF

How do you find government agents in the world’s busiest airport when they’re disguised just like the passengers they target? That was the challenge I faced when trying to track Drug Enforcement Agency task force officers who were searching innocent travelers for cash at boarding gates.

The story would end with the DEA shutting down its nationwide Operation Jetway program—a direct result of our investigation. But it all began with a press release.

It landed in my inbox like a hundred other press releases that week. The Institute for Justice was sharing the case of an airline passenger who was suing the U.S. Department of Justice for attorneys’ fees after the DEA returned the cash it had seized from him at Atlanta’s airport.

I had followed reports before of plainclothes agents stopping travelers on the jet bridge for supposedly random drug searches. General assignment reporters had covered complaints from passengers who said they were forced into ‘consensual’ searches while trying to board flights. A few recorded themselves interacting with drug agents, posting clips to YouTube that showed agents seizing their money even when no drugs were found.

I interviewed the passenger from the press release, but it never aired. Shortly after we spoke, the man was arrested for marijuana possession by the Georgia State Patrol. There was no way to include the story of his interaction with drug agents at the airport while he was defending himself from a ‘Possession With Intent to Deliver’ charge.

DEA agents weren’t exactly undercover, but they were hiding in plain sight throughout Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. They would dress and act like passengers, blending in with the crowd at boarding gates. 

Drug agents generally didn’t arrest departing passengers because the DEA rarely found drugs in carry-on bags. They did find a lot of cash, however, and would seize anything over $5,000, claiming it was drug money because the passenger couldn’t prove otherwise on the spot.

In short, the agents would arrest the money, not the passengers.

Cases on PACER would be styled United States v. $38,242 in Currency. Sometimes it was USA v. $51,789 in Currency.

Since I knew all cash seizures that ended up as forfeiture cases in federal court started with a U and ended with ‘currency,’ I was able to develop a simple technique for finding all the forfeiture cases in Atlanta using asterisks, denoting a wildcard, a technique I learned at IRE conferences

U* v. * Currency

The drug agents and the DEA knew that it was unlikely anyone but a judge or a defendant would ever see each filing, so they shared extraordinarily detailed descriptions of their methods. For example, the filings showed that task force officers assigned to the Atlanta High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area would target flights to Los Angeles.

The task force officers also used their real names. Because most of them were  also sworn with the DEA from municipal police departments or sheriff’s offices, I was able to use a public records login with the Georgia Peace Officers & Training Council to look up their training files and photographs.

So I knew who they were and what they looked like.

The ‘factual background’ narratives in the court filings showed the agents would work in pairs. One would look for targets, even though they called the searches ‘random consensual encounters.’ The other agent would position themselves next to the boarding door to stop the target right before they boarded.

In the filings, the task force officers would assign nefarious intent to otherwise innocent behaviors, like running up to the gate just as the boarding door was closing, or seeming generally nervous about flying.

The drug agents also repeatedly described Black men carrying designer bags as inherently suspicious.

Getting the story 

My news director, Kim Saxon, and my executive producer, Lindsey Basye, authorized the purchase of several inexpensive tickets to Orlando. Working alone, I would buy seats on Frontier or Spirit Airlines for as little as $35 just to get through TSA security. I would never board the flights.

In my roller bag, I packed several changes of clothes, different ball caps, a COVID mask, and small cameras. I also traveled repeatedly with about $30,000 in movie prop money. The cash never triggered a search.

It’s important to point out that as investigative journalists we have strong ethical guidelines: we don’t commit a crime to expose a crime, and we don’t lie to expose the truth. Without misrepresenting myself, I followed all the rules to access the airport’s airside. When I finally approached the DEA agents, I wore my WANF ID around my neck and told them I was “with the news” before asking any questions.

I started early in the morning each day, walking to gates with flights departing Atlanta for Los Angeles. I knew from the court filings that the agents specifically targeted passengers on those flights.

Eventually, I spotted four agents working in two pairs. I knew from the YouTube videos that they didn’t seem to care if passengers recorded them, so I pulled out my iPhone.

I followed the plainclothes DEA task force officers through the airport undetected, essentially using their own tactics: blending in with passengers. When they noticed me, I’d slip into the airport bathroom to change clothes.

I recorded and watched as one agent picked out targets and the second stopped them at the door right after the passenger scanned their boarding pass.

The searches I watched came up empty.

After I recorded a few searches and got closer each time, the agents began to show signs they suspected I was more than just another curious passenger. That’s when I realized this might be my only opportunity to get some answers.

The four agents were talking in an empty gate area after one of their searched flights had just departed. This could be my only chance to ask them questions. The DEA never gives interviews about its civil asset forfeiture programs.

With my WANF ID on a lanyard, I walked up to one of the agents I knew by name from public records. Passengers I had interviewed had complained specifically about this officer and his heavy-handed tactics.

“You’re Sgt. Fikes, aren’t you?” I asked. As he looked at my ID, I said, “I’m with the news.” He said, “So?” I then asked, “How many innocent people do you have to search before you find what you’re looking for?”

My 360 camera captured another agent over my shoulder giving hand signals to Fikes, indicating he should not answer.

Fikes said, “Sir, I’ve got nothing to say to you,” before getting up and walking into a secure gate area where I could not follow.

Missing Footage

I immediately took a series of time-sensitive actions: I changed clothes again in the men’s room; sat in a gate area with my laptop and uploaded my recordings to the cloud in case the agents decided to seize my cameras; took photos of every surveillance camera on the concourse, noting its context with a gate number in view; and filed a records request for 15-minute windows around the time the agents would have been recorded by the airport’s cameras.

Atlanta’s airport is a city department, but officials claimed most of the cameras were not functioning that day. They gave us only two recordings in response to the records request. One was pointed away from the area where the agents were working; the other captured a low-resolution shot of them walking by, with me following at a standoff distance.

The Fallout

Our initial investigative series drew millions of views on YouTube alone. One viewer saw our extended report, which included legal advice on how to handle an encounter with drug agents.

That viewer was one of the first to say no to a ‘consensual’ search. The drug agents at Cincinnati’s airport seized his bag off the plane anyway, without probable cause or a warrant. He recorded most of the interaction, with agents saying, “We wouldn’t be doing this all over the country if it wasn’t legal,” and “I don’t care about your consent…I’m the government.”

The Institute for Justice alerted me to the video after they agreed to represent the passenger for free.

The Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice reopened his office’s investigation of the DEA’s program because of the video recorded by our viewer. The Inspector General discovered the DEA had not only failed to keep records of fruitless searches, but also that agents in Cincinnati created records after the fact when the IG asked for the documents.

The IG also uncovered a kickback scheme where DEA agents would give airline employees a cut of the money seized for alerting them to last-minute ticket purchases or travelers suspected of carrying large amounts of cash.

The U.S. Department of Justice temporarily suspended the entire program in late 2024, and the DEA launched its own investigation.

In January 2025, the DEA announced it was shutting down Operation Jetway completely, reassigning agents to international drug smuggling investigations. Only searches predicated on an existing drug trafficking investigation would be authorized.

What I Learned

Big investigations don’t always start with a big idea. I did not set out to dismantle a national DEA program targeting innocent passengers. I followed the facts—and followed the money—showing how the DOJ seizes well over a billion dollars a year, often without making arrests.

The PACER search techniques I learned from fellow IRE members and panels made the biggest difference. Without those, I likely would never have found the agents or uncovered their methods.

Working alone can be as much a benefit as a handicap in reporting. I had a smaller footprint, could buy more tickets on the same budget, and was able to hide in plain sight.

Bottom line: the story is never over until the underlying systemic failure is uncovered and fixed.

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