About Airport

US Senator Rand Paul on Monday was briefly stopped at an airport for refusing a full pat-down search sparking an angry response from his father, Republican White House hopeful Ron Paul.

Rand Paul told journalists he had been stopped at Nashville airport in Tennessee when he set off the body-imaging machine and officials from the Transport Security Administration (TSA) demanded he submit to a full pat-down.

“Today, I went through the scanner, and it went off, and I just requested that I either show them my leg, which I did, or that I get to go back through the scanner again. But they wouldn’t let me go through the scanner. They insisted on a pat-down search,” the senator told CNN television Monday.

“I just didn’t think that that was appropriate,” he added, explaining his refusal to submit to being frisked.

“They finally let me go through it an hour later, and then the screener doesn’t go off. That’s because I must have been part of a random pat-down, but wasn’t told that initially,” Paul said.

The Kentucky senator later arrived in Washington on a re-booked flight after going through the scanner again.

His father, a champion of libertarian causes and perennial presidential candidate, including in the current 2012 election cycle, angrily denounced the incident, calling it a sign of a burgeoning American “police state.”

“The police state in this country is growing out of control,” Ron Paul said in a statement on his campaign website.

He also decried an airport security agency that “gropes and grabs” passengers “while doing nothing to keep us safe.”

During a Senate hearing with TSA Administrator John Pistole last November, the younger Paul argued that the agency’s policy of letting children go through the full-body scanners twice — rather then be subjected to a pat-down — should apply to adults as well.

“Let us go back through the machine rather than get a pat-down. You’ll get rid of a lot of the anger and animosity towards the TSA,” he said. Under the current policy, “we’re made to feel like criminals.”

He told CNN that he spoke with Pistole after Monday’s incident, renewing that request.

“I’m not asking for special privileges because of the office I hold. I would expect the same thing for any frequent traveler or any regular person,” the Kentucky lawmaker said.

His father meanwhile, issued a clarion call Monday for smaller government, one of his favorite campaign themes.

The Texas representative, who ran for the White House in 1988 and again in 2008 before launching his current bid, has called for a trillion-dollar cut in federal spending and the elimination of the TSA.

“We must restore the freedom and respect for liberty that once made American (sic) the greatest nation in human history. I am deeply committed to doing that as president of the United States,” Ron Paul said.

Meanwhile, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that Rand Paul had never been detained.

“When an irregularity is found during the TSA screening process, it must be resolved prior to allowing a passenger — any passenger — to proceed to the secure area of the airport,” Carney said.

“Passengers who refuse to complete the screening process cannot be granted access to the secure area in order to ensure the safety of others traveling.”

Carney said Paul was escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement officers and defended the role of the TSA, which was created to take over airport and other transportation security after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

“I think it is absolutely essential that we take necessary actions to ensure that air travel is safe, and I believe that’s what TSA is tasked with doing,” he said.