Posted on 05/22/2013 2:51:51 PM PDT by KeyLargo
Annals of the Security State: More Airplane Stories
James Fallows May 21 2013
"My dad fought a war so this can never happen in America. I will not dishonor my father's memory by giving up what he fought for. No, sir. With all due respect, I will not consent to a search without a proper warrant."
Over the weekend I related the story of Gabriel Silverstein, a businessman and pilot who for no apparent reason was subjected to a two-hour detention and invasive search by Homeland Security officials as he traveled across the country in his small plane. The picture above is not from that episode; it's an official DHS photo of its emergency-response agents being trained.
Below and after the jump are two additional stories of the same sort. The first is a long account from Larry Gaines, a small-plane pilot from California who had a similar episode last year. The story is long and detailed, and will be riveting for those in the aviation world. The summary for general readers is this....
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
It’s a good thing the pilot didn’t tell DHS he was with a TEA party, or they might have shot him then and there.
Welcome to the DHS/USA comrade.
Gosh, folks, get a grip!
The stories reported here are of small airplanes, flying without providing a flight plan, and traveling from west to east with a departure point in California. Could be about smuggling drugs, you know, marijuana. Or, could be about smuggling terrorists who cross over the Mexican border. Anyway, the authorities are within their ‘job descriptions’ to check any such flight out.
So what if they’re older white men. There’s big bucks to be made smuggling drugs or people.
The Chicago Regime behind BHO2 and Valerie Jarrett make their cash in cahoots with the Roja drug family of Chicago. I’m sure they are never treated this way.
You’re sick!!!
There is never a requirement to file a flight plan to make a VFR flight below 18,000’!
When you are standing naked outside your home every night stripped searched and your basement ransacked for ‘contraband’, maybe you’ll appreciate what liberty and freedom actually is.
Um, no. They are not.
Would you like to try again?
I’m sick? You’re seriously in denial.
“There is never a requirement to file a flight plan to make a VFR flight below 18,000’!”
Okay, there is no requirement...does that mean it is forbidden? Or perhaps common sense to go ahead and file a flight plan though it isn’t required.
There is a massive difference between flying an aircraft and enduring an illegal search.
Liberty and freedom to deal drugs and smuggle people IS NOT a guaranteed right.
“Um, no. They are not...” what? Having problems articulating your frustrations with such events?
The 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Towers in New York changed everything. Our Congress traded liberty for security, and now we have neither.
Now we have got to be smarter, more savvy, at looking how to go about doing what we want to do while avoiding attention. Even if you’re not doing anything illegal, you still have to stop for those damned security roadblocks OR deal with the FAA
Yes, we now have a less free nation. Learn to out-think the bastards.
Not at all.
“Anyway, the authorities are within their ‘job descriptions’ to check any such flight out.”
Your statement is false.
“Gosh, folks, get a grip!”
I’m with the others. If they want to call the FAA & ask them to check out the flight, that’s one thing. But calling out a team of 20 from various agencies is overkill. And deliberately LYING to an American citizen is absolutely unforgiveable. These people should be terminated. They are not fit to be in positions of power over the rest of us!
get a pilots license and learn the rules or shut your pie hole!
Oh, you’re clever.
Two pilots have experienced the same overreaction from government agencies. Do you think it has happened to others, and we just haven’t heard about it yet?
You shut up. Me, I would be warning everyone I know who is a private plane owner. Get people talking to one another to put together a way to meet this head on.
You are correct. This morning I will take off from the private airpark I live on and fly to Venice, Florida for breakfast with my wife and then fly home.
NO flight plan, just radio communications via Unicom when I’m about to land and or take off.
“Liberty and freedom to deal drugs and smuggle people IS NOT a guaranteed right.”
I hardly know where to start, except there is a fourth amendment to the Constitution, and DHS, and DEA are unconstitutional agencies looking for work. Such usually find it and in many cases, at the expense of Liberty and Freedom.
I believe innocent until PROVEN guilty is the word of the day. IOW, arrest me or don’t bother me. Then when you can’t prove your case and I sue your ass into the next county, you might reassess your actions.
What I hear from your response is whatever government does in the pursuit of the bad guys is good for everyone. Even if it involves intimidation tactics, use of profiling, massive expenditures of public funds, use of unconstitutional methods means or agencies. Our forefathers through generations, fought and died to not have a police state. To honor that sacrifice, means something.
SatinDoll, sadly has a typical jealous view of General Aviation pilots and sportsman that have worked to better themselves.
SatinDoll would do better to post on Dummy Underground where those are the views of the Obama voters and Democrats that consider all GA pilots to be ‘rich fat-cats’, which we all know is the typical socialist mantra of ‘Tax the Rich’.
And never mind about the violations of the Fourth Amendment in the world that SatinDoll resides in apparently.
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