Terror in the Skies Again (Absolutely Positive MUST-READ)

Womens' Wall Street.com ^ | July 2004 | Annie Jacobsen

[Rutles4Ever]

A WWS Exclusive Article

Note from the Editors: You are about to read an account of what happened during a domestic flight that one of our writers, Annie Jacobsen, took from Detroit to Los Angeles. The WWS Editorial Team debated long and hard about how to handle this information and ultimately we decided it was something that should be shared. What does it have to do with finances? Nothing, and everything. Here is Annie's story.

On June 29, 2004, at 12:28 p.m., I flew on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles with my husband and our young son. Also on our flight were 14 Middle Eastern men between the ages of approximately 20 and 50 years old. What I experienced during that flight has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats.

On that Tuesday, our journey began uneventfully. Starting out that morning in Providence, Rhode Island, we went through security screening, flew to Detroit, and passed the time waiting for our connecting flight to Los Angeles by shopping at the airport stores and eating lunch at an airport diner. With no second security check required in Detroit we headed to our gate and waited for the pre-boarding announcement. Standing near us, also waiting to pre-board, was a group of six Middle Eastern men. They were carrying blue passports with Arabic writing. Two men wore tracksuits with Arabic writing across the back. Two carried musical instrument cases – thin, flat, 18" long. One wore a yellow T-shirt and held a McDonald's bag. And the sixth man had a bad leg -- he wore an orthopedic shoe and limped. When the pre-boarding announcement was made, we handed our tickets to the Northwest Airlines agent, and walked down the jetway with the group of men directly behind us.

My four-year-old son was determined to wheel his carry-on bag himself, so I turned to the men behind me and said, "You go ahead, this could be awhile." "No, you go ahead," one of the men replied. He smiled pleasantly and extended his arm for me to pass. He was young, maybe late 20's and had a goatee. I thanked him and we boarded the plan.

Once on the plane, we took our seats in coach (seats 17A, 17B and 17C). The man with the yellow shirt and the McDonald's bag sat across the aisle from us (in seat 17E). The pleasant man with the goatee sat a few rows back and across the aisle from us (in seat 21E). The rest of the men were seated throughout the plane, and several made their way to the back.

[HairOfTheDog]

This article is long, but I think it is a fascinating account of a flight.

Whole story: Terror in the Skies, Again? - WomensWallStreet

[thoughtomator]

Sobering. Good thing I don't fly.

[daybreakcoming]

My mother was flying home after a round of chemo in my city's cancer center which made her flight arrangements for her as they can get a discount for the patients. She was very weak, nauseated, and in a wheelchair - determined to get to her home tho. Don't you know they made her stand up, take off her shoes, etc.? If you can imagine how I felt - watching her trembling and shaking - do as they requested? One of the screeners did sort of apologize with a shrug saying that her "number"(?) indicated this was necessary. And did I mention she is 83 years old? ARRRRRRRRGH

[Petronski]

I burried it in LA. At a cost to me of around four hundred dollars. I had no alternative.

I bet you could have shipped 'it' back to yourself via UPS.

[daybreakcoming]

Fourteen people equals Training Mission equals Dry Run

[.38sw]

I saw this happen to a petite elderly woman last spring. They made her take off her shoes, stand up, and toddle through the metal detector. It was painful to watch. She just shuffled along. At the same time, another woman who was apparently a paraplegic, was being manhandled by TSA with wands. They were lifting up her arms and legs, wanding her, and calling for more help. Appalling. Gee, I was feeling really safe after witnessing how we are being protected from elderly ladies who could barely walk and middle-aged wheelchair bound paraplegic women.

[Free Trapper]

They also might tell a passenger so as to have him drafted as more help in case of trouble.

Those few words would prepare the passenger to "wait" for a Marshal to make the first move,then back him all the way.

[Dog Gone]

But "Syrian Musicians"??? 14 of them?? Possible, I guess--just doesn't seem to pass the proverbial smell test.

What Syrian band is so good that you'll fly them into this country, but only on a one-way ticket? How does a casino even know of their existence?

You have to think that LEOs verified their gig and actually witnessed a performance, but this is just too odd. A casino would have booked round trip tickets at a minimum.

[Jim Noble]

What do you think about this Syrian who flew into Minneapolis a week after her flight?

Hopefully he is being cooperative, or being tortured, even as we speak.

There is no benefit that I can even fathom to continuing the issuance of visas to Syrians.

Zero.

We should have cancelled all ME visas on 9/12/01 and finished expelling all enemy aliens by 11/12/01.

Life would be much less complicated.

[pete anderson]

I think flight paths can be altered at different times due to wind direction and other factors.

All three of LAX's runways are East-West with and usually east to west take off and landing. Of 50 or 60 times I have flown in LAX I only landed west to east once. And if you are landing west to east you would only see ocean out of either side of the plane.

[badbass]

Some lessons to be learned from this:

1) Norm Mineta should have gone a long time ago. The saddest part of this is, Pres. Bush isn't doing enough to stop terrorists (Mineta, open borders, "Islam is peace", etc.), and half the stupid sheeple in this country think he's doing too much.

2)The reaction by FAM and government agents is going to be reactive, not proactive. Why this is, I don't know; maybe the government wants a reason to attack Syria. As insane and paranoid as that sounds, the government agent's reactions on this flight seem like sheer lunacy otherwise.

3)To fly nowadays is really putting your life at risk. To be on the ground in a major city isn't much better.

4) Political Correctness is going to get a lot more people killed. At some point, people are going to have to wake up. You'd think 3,000 dead in New York would have been enough, but look at New Yorkers to this day. The vast majority seem to think Bush attacked the towers himself. How can you save people who won't learn lessons, even deadly lessons? They only draw the wrong conclusions and make stupider decisions. It's really infuriating. The idiocy level of at least half the people in this country today is almost beyond belief.

[JTHomes]

They would have to get the explosives on board. There in lies their problem.

Yes, and the solution apparently is to have 14 terrorists each bring 1 or 2 of the 5 of so ingredients required to make a small bomb. If one or two get searched or have to ditch their contraband, others have redundant supplies. It wouldn't take much to build something as strong as a stick of dynamite, which placed in the right spot could have that plane headed down.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

I was horrified and still to this day get weak in the knees when I think of what would have happened to me had it been found.

"Clinton for President '92" button?

[JimRed]

Getting a "page cannot be displayed" warning. Have you posted the text?

[Don Joe]

If the passengers were concerned that something was going on in the lavatory, why didn't one of them go into the lavatory to check it out? Can't imagine that the hijackers could prevent anyone from entering the lavatory without tipping their hand and allowing the air marshals to act.

Why didn't the passengers do anything?

In a word, intimidation.

The hijackers learned that by having a very large number of operatives onboard, acting 1) boldly, 2) well choreographed, 2) in a very aggressive manner, they would be able to intimidate everyone: Passengers, crew, and Air Marshalls combined.

This is not a good indicator.

Now, before you start quoting me chapter and verse from the Gospel According to Flight 93, remember that even with that flight -- which was followed a very different model, i.e., much smaller number of hijackers, all congregated around a single focus of attack (the cockpit), and, they'd actually taken over the plane, the passengers remained passive, UNTIL they learned of the WTC horrors.

It was then, and only then, that their adrenaline kicked in, and they went for broke.

The enemy is not stupid.

He is evil, evil beyond comprehension -- but he is not stupid.

The enemy has learned some lessons in the years since the last major attacks. And, it is obvious that this flight -- and several others like it -- using various probing tactics -- were a learning tool.

And it is equally obvious that they have learned that a certain combination of factors will allow them to gain "total air supremacy" over the plane. This is obvious, because they did gain total air supremacy over the plane discussed in the article.

They held everyone in check. No one would make a move on them, even though they were all scared $#!+less by them.

If it had not been a probe -- a test -- it would have been a nightmare. She said that there were people on board "higher up than you and me watching the men."

Oh?

Watching, were they?

A fat lot of good that will do in a real attack.

And remember, the ONLY thing that diffentiated this hijacking (and make no mistake -- that's exactly what it was, albeit of a transient nature) from an attack was the fact that the hijackers were "firing blanks."

If they'd been assembling actual explosives, it would have been a horror beyond description. And NO ONE would have stopped them. And that was the lesson they learned in the probe. They learned that with sufficient numbers, with sufficient aggression ("power stares" etc.), and with sufficient choreography, they will succeed in intimidating everyone on board, from the meekest passenger, to the crew, all the way up to the FAM pair.

Like I said, be afraid. I certainly am, and I don't scare easy.

Be afraid.

[JTHomes]

Right on. Your frustration level is about where mine is.

[petitfour]

I would not be happy to witness such an event.

[gitmo]

How to de-queue a line of terrorists using the lav to create a bomb - have the pilot make an announcement about "turbulence" and put the seatbelt sign on. Back in your seats everyone. If they don't be a gettin' back in their seats, we got an official air marshall event.

According to the article, a lot of the suspicious activities took place with the seatbelt sign on.

Finally, the captain announced that the plane was cleared for landing. It had been four hours since we left Detroit. The fasten seat belt light came on and I could see downtown Los Angeles. The flight attendants made one final sweep of the cabin and strapped themselves in for landing. I began to relax. Home was in sight.

Suddenly, seven of the men stood up -- in unison -- and walked to the front and back lavatories. One by one, they went into the two lavatories, each spending about four minutes inside. Right in front of us, two men stood up against the emergency exit door, waiting for the lavatory to become available. The men spoke in Arabic among themselves and to the man in the yellow shirt sitting nearby. One of the men took his camera into the lavatory. Another took his cell phone. Again, no one approached the men. Not one of the flight attendants asked them to sit down. I watched as the man in the yellow shirt, still in his seat, reached inside his shirt and pulled out a small red book. He read a few pages, then put the book back inside his shirt. He pulled the book out again, read a page or two more, and put it back. He continued to do this several more times.

[philosofy123]

I have no reason to doubt your number, I stand corrected.