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.
I agree they should have been deported after questioning, but they weren't. Who's fault is it? I think we know the answer to that one. The National Review article wasn't sloppily done, the sloppiness lies in the government's FBI, and while I'm at it, I'll lay blame at the feet of the air marshalls who are on these damn planes looking out for these characters, and the INS who can't read a damn date on a visa. This is why President Bush formed the HSA, so each of these agencies aren't sitting behind walls from one another, rather, they're working together to snuff out trouble.
To me, it conveys the frustration of people bound hand and foot by the policitical correctness from years of democrat "leadership".
Yeah, and what's worse, they keep running to the U.S. Government to bail them out when they go bankrupt, as if they're the aviation equivalent of AMTRAK.
I wish everyone involved in airport security would just screw the political correctness garbage that hinders them and concentrate on what they were specifically and explicitly hired to do.
If I am told I have to show up at the gate to allow myself plenty of time to catch my plane, and the security guards plenty of time to search me, I don't see what the problem is.
The government is asking so little of the people to do their part, I'm asking so little of the government to do their damn job.
One thing that I have noticed is there are a lot of people who talk big, but when it comes right down to the nitty-gritty don't do anything but bite their nails waiting for someone to do something.
Like I said there were most probably people on that plane who said the same thing you did and then did nothing.
Yeah, they do - to them it is a holy war against the "Great Satan". They aren't fighting for the same reasons that we are and we had better realize that.
I know it's hard to believe that people can or will die for their religion blindly without giving it a second thought, but they do.
Remember the Crusades? Have you heard of the missionaries that have died for their beliefs? These people have said it is a Holy War. They have stated that it is retribution for the Crusades.
The municipalities where airports are located are responsible for the security, whether it is baggage handling or vetting passengers. Until they are trained and trained well, we are going to have these problems.
The hardest thing for us to realize is that although we know that further attacks are planned, there is nothing we can do because we don't have the necessary information to abort them.
All we have is a lot of "If's, ands and maybe's". Intelligence is not a precise "science" because it is based on rumour and innuendo. We put unnecessary burdens on the law enforcement personnel in this country simply by expecting them to know who, what, where, when and how. We have got to stop that and let them do there jobs the best way that they can.
They hearings that have been going on are nothing but "Dog and Pony" shows to appease the constituency of the senators and representatives in Congress. The only thing we needed to know was that the government was aware that something was going to happen, which they did, but as we have found out a great expense they didn't when or where.
Intelligence is based on gossip and rumour and you have to sift through the chaff to find the truth and when you are dealing with people - particulary a culture that is so totally different from yours - it is difficult to say the least.
What are you talking about? Have you seen the snippets from the airport security on 9/11? They let those creeps through although they all pinged for metal.
Lol, thanks. I gave up on acroynms when I stopped working for the Navy. And besides, I'm one of those laid back South Carolinians!
I would think with the reinforced doors and the probablity that the Pilots are carrying, there would be little chance of them taking the cockpit.
AV, he is like a certain person that I have known recently -little man - all mouth and not action.
Jimbo, where did you get your information?
I expect the Airports and the Airlines to make it safe for us to fly. I don't think we should be relying on the Feds for every D%$#$% thing.
After all the Airports are run by the municipalities where they are located and it is their responsibility to make sure that we are safe and after that it is the airlines responsibility. If they are unable to do that, then stockholders in both should sell out and air travel be halted.
I am tired of being held hostage by the aviation industry. I don't feel safe in an airport because the security is 99% rent-a-cop and they have no real training or authority. I definitely don't feel safe on planes anymore.
Doesn't surprise me, does it you?
"...assemble bombs in flight and detonate them."
One plane blowing up isn't enough flash for them. It'd have to be a half-dozen or more simultaneously to out-do their last big event.
Which of course, is well within the realm of possibility.
"I think these actions are meant to distract us from the the _real_ next threat....which we do not now know. But I'll bet it doesn't involve hijacking airplanes."
Now thats "imagination". I hope the feds monitor these threads.
Alright already i'm just a big talking pu$$y that will just sit there and do nothing. sorry I responded to your thread. go away already.
It would be an interesting psychological study to see how one makes another being believe that they should do that. Do you think lower IQ or brainwashing? Even dogs have a sense of survival.
What are *YOU* talking about? If they would have given those creeps the attention they should have gotten since they fit the profile of terrorists, they probably would have caught them. Of course, box cutters (razors) were perfectly ok then so who knows what good it would have done. I'm not saying focus on the arabs and don't check anybody else. I'm just saying don't pass them by so they can feel up a cute girl, or deal with a grandma who won't be difficult. They ought to go to prison if they do that and a plane gets hijacked.
"I expect the Airports and the Airlines to make it safe for us to fly. I don't think we should be relying on the Feds for every D%$#$% thing. "
While I agree with the aversion to Fed involvement, the simple fact is there isn't a security company in this country that can do the job required. Because I know this, I took the initial view the President was wrong to resist Federalizing the airport security.
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