Posted on 07/22/2004 10:46:10 PM PDT by dixie sass
Last week NewsMax linked for several days to journalist Annie Jacobsen's widely reported eyewitness account of suspicious behavior by Arab men on a flight from the Muslim haven of Detroit to L.A. But her report is just the beginning.
"Flight crews and air marshals say Middle Eastern men are staking out airports, probing security measures and conducting test runs aboard airplanes for a terrorist attack," the Washington Times revealed today.
Story Continues Below
The article singles out the flight Jacobsen took on June 29, Northwest Airlines Flight 327, as well as American Airlines Flight 1732 from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New York's JFK Airport on Feb. 15.
"No doubt these are dry runs for a terrorist attack," the Times quoted an anonymous air marshal as saying.
"It's happening, and it's a sad state of affairs," the paper quoted an anonymous pilot as saying.
Jacobsen, a business writer for the online Women's Wall Street, described how 14 Middle Eastern men alarmed and "terrified" her and other passengers as well as the crew. Seated throughout the plane, the men at first pretended to be strangers but then exchanged "unusual glances," gathered in small groups, stood throughout most of the flight, filed in and out of the lavatories and even brought a camera into one.
"One man took a McDonald's bag into the bathroom, then passed it off to another passenger upon returning to his seat. When the pilot announced the plane was cleared for landing and to fasten seat belts, seven men jumped up in unison and went to different bathrooms."
David Adams, a spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service, confirmed Jacobsen's account. He said officers who were on board checked the restrooms several times but found nothing.
"Given the facts, they had no legal basis to take an enforcement action. But there was enough of a suspicious nature for the FAMS, passengers and crew to take notice," Adams said.
Federal officials and L.A. police detained the Syrian men upon arrival, fingerprinted them and released them after checking their story that they were musicians hired to play at a casino.
Bombs in the Bathrooms
The Times noted: "A January FBI memo says suicide terrorists are plotting to hijack trans-Atlantic planes by smuggling 'ready-to-build' bomb kits past airport security, and later assembling the explosives in aircraft bathrooms."
The incident on the flight from San Juan was similar. Six Middle Eastern men pretended at first to be strangers, but it became clear they knew each other, observant stewardesses said.
The Arabs tried to videotape the takeoff, made multiple trips to the restroom and congregated in the area until crew members intervened.
A pilot reported another flight in which an air marshal broke into a lavatory that an Arab had locked himself into for a long time. The man had removed the mirror and was trying to break through the wall, on the other side of which was the cockpit, the pilot said.
Terrorists "absolutely" are testing security, he told the Times. "There is a great degree of concern in the airline industry that not only are these dry runs for a terrorist attack, but that there is absolutely no defense capabilities on a vast majority of airlines."
But Profiling Terrorists Isn't P.C.
Then why is so little being done? Political correctness and fear of pressure groups.
Only yesterday, Council on American-Islamic Relations raged that the FBI was daring to interview Muslims and Arabs in states including California, New York, Virginia and Florida "as part of an attempt to root out a possible terror attacks in the United States."
CAIR director Nihad Awad complained: "The way it's being done stigmatizes the entire community and makes Muslims objects of suspicion to their neighbors and co-workers. This is not right. This is more politics than security."
As NewsMax noted last week, an anti-terror program in Florida had to be emasculated because of grumbling from American Civil Liberties Union and Muslim groups.
The Citizen Awareness Program, proposed by a domestic security task force in Orlando, had planned to ask firemen, utility workers and other workers who go into homes to report any suspected terrorist activity. One possible sign, the program had planned to note, would be "multiple adult males living together, usually of Middle Eastern appearance and between the ages of 18 and 45, with little or no furnishings."
Scott Rost of ACLU's Orlando office claimed the program would "encourage racial profiling with little reason to believe it will make us safer."
How shocking. What in the world do groups of young Middle Eastern men have to do with terrorism? Everyone knows that 80-year-old American church ladies carried out 9/11. They're the ones who should be profiled!
We've said it before, and we'll say it again: Most Muslims are not terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslim. Anyone who ignores this reality is abetting the next 9/11.
Does anyone know what became of the Muslim Secret Service agent who filed a complaint that he had been profiled by airport security?
Bump for later, a personal reminder. I didn't have time to read over the posting the first time I brought it up so I posted a bfl so I will be reminded to go back the next time. (Sometimes called a "bump to the top)".Texas Freepers usually know this. Cheers!
Perhaps. If the terrorists do it the exact same way as on 9/11. But suppose they fill the cabin with a debilitating gas? Suppose their plan is to draw out the Air Marshall with deliberate provocations and then quickly overwhelm him with numbers and grab his weapon? And remember, with the reinforced cockpit doors, all the terrorists need to do now is take control of the cockpit and the passengers can fight all they want out in the cabin.
There is no reason to think that a terrorist can't also play a musical instrument. Might even play it well. Atta was an architect; others in his crew were engineers. They don't all live in a cave before hijacking a plane.
I didn't hear about anyone with "balls" standing up on Anne Jacobson's flight...to tell the 14 syrian rag heads to sit their asses down.
True. If that's all they wanted. And if they do it from the ground, they leave behind a live perp. Hard to get into the heads of these guys. I'm not a suicidal Islamic fascist. But just shooting down the plane doesn't have enough drama.
I wonder if they could transmit video of the passengers pleading for their lives? That would rile everybody.
It's always been my thought that September 11 was chosen because that's when the terrorists were ready. It is we, after the fact, trying to make sense of the inconceivable, who try to assign deeper meaning to the date.
You make a good point. I find it VERY hard to believe that they would try similar tactics, but the TARGETS do appear to remain the same year after year, and since they didn't get the Sears Tower, the White House, Congress, some big skyscrapers in LA, and DisneyWorld last time, I'd suggest those are the prime targets for the next attempt.
So much for preemption. Why do we even bother anymore.
The national review article didn't mention that these "musicians" were traveling on expired visas and never should have been allowed to board a USA-bound flight from Damascus. They also should have been denied entry when they arrived in Detroit. And they should have been deported when they were questioned by the FBI at LAX, but the FBI neglected to inspect their visa expiration dates. The national review didn't seem to do a good job on digging into the story. It was a pretty sloppy report.
Our society's suicidal tendencies (aka modern liberalism) will be the death of us.
The first time this story was brought to our attention, it served the stated purpose of bringing the actions of the airlines to light.
The second time this story was brought to our attention, it was a rehashing of the first thread.
At this point, the ongoing stories about the story about the story aspect tells me its POLITICAL.
The only thing left for the Democrats to do is undermine the concept "We are safer today then we were on September 11th, 2001".
This multiple posting of the exact same story day after day or a story talking about THE story, one out of 40,000 flights that day....is not trying to convey anything beyond "Bush hasn't made us safer".
Just my opinion.
A talk show host this morning was talking about this incident and then went to another article (out of London I believe) that said that the new modus operendi is to assemble bombs in flight and detonate them. This incident sounds like a dry run for just such a thing.
Except it could be a clue to 'a next time'.
Now theres a man that's coming up the asile with me.
If you had read the whole article, it cited other articles with links to those articles that contained the information on expired visas, including the Michelle Malkin article. I disagree, it was not a sloppy article, or even a news article in and of itself.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.