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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, says he feels vindicated by surveillance video of a Sept. 21 run-in between him and security at Salt Lake City International Airport.
The video, released Friday night to the news media by the Transportation Security Administration, shows Chaffetz getting an extensive pat down by security and then waiting.
But the edited video cuts out at the point Chaffetz returns to two TSA officers and it's unclear what happened after that point.
"I don't think there should be any remaining questions," Chaffetz told the Deseret News. "It shows things were very benign."
Chaffetz has contended the TSA harassed him because he had just voted against letting TSA officers unionize, and he has been fighting the use of so-called whole body imaging scanners.
Phone calls to the TSA went unanswered Saturday.
Chaffetz said he was singled out for extra screening after refusing to enter a body-scanning machine.
TSA officials have said travelers who decline those machines, which can peer through passengers' clothes, must then enter a metal detector and undergo a pat down as Chaffetz did.
Chaffetz said he wishes more of the video had been released.
"(But) it's time to move on to something more important," he told the Salt Lake Tribune.
Watch the surveillance video here.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
