Part IV: Terror in the Skies, Again?

The 14 Syrians on Northwest Airlines flight 327...To the dismay of many, it's the story that won't go away. The fact that a group of Syrian men acted in a way that terrified some passengers and caused a squad of federal officials to be called out to meet the plane upon landing is of interest to anyone who flies the friendly skies. And that is why this story won't just go away.

I've learned a lot since my first article was published three weeks ago. I've heard from other passengers on the flight and learned more about what they saw. I've talked to promoters about the band and its travels. And I've learned more about the federal investigation. I wish I could tell you the pieces fit together into a tidy explanation, but I can't. There is still a lot that doesn't add up and doesn't make sense. But in this article I'll share with you bit by bit what I've learned.

On Monday night I appeared on MSNBC's Scarborough Country, discussing flight 327 alongside Bob Flamm, Executive Director of the Federal Air Marshals Association (FAMA), and Steven Emerson, who is considered one of America's leading authorities on terrorism. Here's what Emerson had to say to host Joe Scarborough about the flight and the ensuing investigation:

"Look, Joe, the fact of the matter is that this is a major embarrassment. These are Syrian nationals, who are on a country, one of the seven countries that officially supports terrorism. They were out of status.

"And then when they landed at the airport in Los Angeles, nobody interrogated them. They were allowed to leave as if they were just American citizens or they were foreigners coming from Europe. The reality is, this is a scandal that really needs to be investigated. And I can tell you, having spoken to FBI agents in the field, they are telling me, go get them. Because, Joe, this needs to be exposed. Because headquarters is trying to basically pretend it wasn't a scandal." (Clarification: Emerson uses the word "interrogated." Keep in mind there's a difference between being questioned and being interrogated. The men were stopped and they were questioned, but they were not interrogated).

Emerson may in part be referring to the fact that last week, during a House Judiciary Committee briefing by the FBI and other officials, the government agencies involved in the case tried to undercut my version of events. Rather than attempting to discredit the details of my account, I can't help wondering why these agencies haven't talked to other passengers on the flight. I have. Why don't they?

Since my first article was published, I have heard from several additional passengers on flight 327. Every one of the passengers I have spoken to agree that something disturbing happened during our flight. One has said that during the flight she thought she was going to die. Another has said he will no longer fly. And another is considering canceling or changing flight reservations because of the "unsettling feeling" he now has. Let me share some additional information from these passengers.

In my previous article I shared emails from two people who stepped forward with information about flight 327. One email was from Heather, a businesswoman from Detroit. Although she prefers not to reveal her identity, Heather has spoken on the record to National Public Radio (NPR) and The Washington Times. Heather and I have also spoken at length, on the record, about what she saw.

Heather explained to me that she noticed suspicious activity from the men in the airport waiting area. She said that some of the men appeared to know each other, while others acted as if they didn't know each other. She also noticed some of the men exchanging glances and changing seats frequently (in the waiting area). She said she boarded the plane and took her seat in first class feeling uneasy.

Heather described how at one point during the flight, a passenger from first class got out of his seat and began to walk toward the lavatory at the front of the first class cabin. One of the Syrian men (the man wearing the track suit) rushed in from coach class and literally pushed the first class passenger out of the way to get into the lavatory before him. The man wearing the track suit stayed in the lavatory a long time. Right after he left the lavatory, a man who Heather thought was an air marshal went into the lavatory.

Heather also said that the constant foot traffic and strange behavior she witnessed in the front cabin frightened her. "I thought I was going to die," is how she described her entire experience to The Washington Times.

I have also spoken at length with the man whose wife originally sent us an email about her husband and daughter's experience on flight 327. This man, a 48-year-old resident of Southern California, was traveling home from Detroit with his 14-year old daughter. He stated that he, too, became uncomfortable even before the flight left the ground due to the behavior of the men:

"Early on I didn't like what I saw... It was strange that at first they acted like they didn't know each other, and then they acted like they did," he said. "I thought they were a group of about eight. I was surprised to learn later that there were 14 of them."

The man and his daughter were seated in coach class over the plane's wing. He noted the many trips the men took to the bathroom, as well as how they congregated in the aisles. But it was the plane's approach to Los Angeles that stood out for him.

"What bothered me the most was when we were coming in [to Los Angeles Airport], that last half-hour. My daughter was very upset. I think they should have told those men to sit down. My daughter kept asking me 'why aren't they sitting down?' I was just trying to keep her calm. I was wondering, 'what is going on? The seat belt light is on, get in your seats.' That's when I thought there was really something going on. I figured at that point, even if they weren't armed, there were enough of them standing that they could break through the cockpit door."

As I was waiting to tape Scarborough Country on Monday night, I received a call from yet another passenger, a man named Mark. A high school football coach also from California, Mark was seated in coach (32C) --- right next to three of the Syrian men. He was seated in the back of the plane, whereas my family was seated at the front, so Mark saw some things I didn't see. I asked him if he thought the behavior was suspicious. Here's what he told me:

"Suspicious?! Absolutely I thought it was suspicious. I fly a lot. I've never seen a flight with so much suspicious activity. A couple of these guys stood up talking to their buddies almost the whole flight. The flight attendant kept telling them to sit down. At one point right before landing -- they had already made the announcement we'd been cleared for landing -- she yelled, 'Sir, you need to sit down, now!' She actually was yelling at him. I've never seen that happen before. When I got off the plane, the first thing I did was call my wife and my parents. I said, turn on the TV, this is going to be big news."

I never felt like you did, like I was going to die on the plane, but I was concerned," Mark explained.

And just yesterday, I heard from another passenger, who described what she and her husband saw:

"My husband and I were making a business trip to Santa Monica/LA and departed from Detroit and flew on Northwest Flight #327 on June 29. Normally we are upgraded to first class but the flight was so full that day, we were in economy near the front of the cabin. My husband has a long career of traveling via planes for his work (overseas and in the USA). He immediately sensed there was an eerie feeling of something 'not quite right,' and even though we don't believe in any racial profiling, we had to be blind not to notice the interesting seating arrangement of the passengers and the corresponding ethnicities. They were seated in an almost 'Z' format and constantly checking watches, getting up and crossing the aisles to speak in hushed tones with very obvious Arabic passports (thick ones) in hand. My husband spent a good part of this very long flight standing in the galley (in fact, he could have been mistaken for an Air Marshal), and I have flown enough with him to know we were thinking alike."

So far, eight passengers have thought something suspicious and disturbing occurred on flight 327.

In an article that appeared July 21 on the National Review Online, writer Clinton Taylor identified the men on flight 327 as Nour Mehana and his back-up band. He confirmed with promoter James Cullen that Mehana's large band did arrive on Northwest flight 327 and that the band was scheduled to play at Sycuan Casino outside San Diego. In his article Taylor states, "And if Jacobsen was wondering why one man in a dark suit and sunglasses sat in first class while everyone else flew coach, well, it seems pretty clear that this was the Big Mehana himself."

I think it's important to say that neither my husband nor I can identify Nour Mehana as one of the men on Northwest flight 327. We looked at publicity photos, and from what we can tell Mehana was not the man in first class (as some have speculated) - unless, according to my husband, he has lost a lot of weight, looks 20 years younger than in his photos, and shaved his signature moustache for the flight.

In addition, I have spoken with two of Nour Mehana's U.S. promoters. Both stated that Mehana was not a passenger on flight 327. In fact it seems he was in Las Vegas at the time. This does not mean that the backup band wasn't on my flight. I have looked at a video of them playing in an attempt to determine if these are the same men, but the video is far too grainy and shot from too far away for me to know.

There are a few other things from Taylor's article that I find odd. Taylor reported the following:

"I talked to James Cullen of Anthem Artists who confirms that Nour Mehana's large band did arrive on Northwest Flight #327. Some of them came in from Detroit, and some from Lebanon. Cullen says they never said anything about a disturbance on the flight to him, 'even though I stayed in the same hotel, they were nice, they stayed right above me'."

Does anyone else find it odd that these musicians didn't mention to Cullen, their promoter, that they'd been stopped by federal authorities and questioned at length? They all stayed in the same hotel, yet the visiting musicians never once mentioned they'd been detained at the airport by a squad of U.S. officials -- including the FBI, the LAPD and the Joint Terrorism Task Force -- and questioned for hours?

I also found it odd that Cullen said some of these men arrived from Lebanon. So I went back to my promoter contact who confirmed that, yes, some of the men reside in Lebanon, but they carry Syrian passports.

I tried several times to reach the one man who might have some clear answers -- James Cullen himself. Unfortunately, Cullen won't talk. He won't answer any questions on the subject because the Department of Homeland Security has instructed him not to. So I decided to take a little field trip to check things out myself.

On July 22, I went to the Sycuan Casino outside San Diego. I spoke with a woman who works there and who attended the show. She said that Nour Mehana and his back-up band played for a crowd of about 400 people. (Another employee at the casino said it was a small crowd, about 200 people.) She said Mehana sang for two hours and his back-up band played for about half of it. Tickets to the show cost $24-$30 each.

I also learned from one of Mehana's U.S. promoters (not Cullen, but a different promoter who books the band) that the cost to book Mehana for one night is $32,000. (I don't know if this includes travel, room and board for 15 men.) If we go middle of the road and assume $27 per ticket for 350 people, the take at the door for the Sycuan show was about $9,450. That puts someone in the hole for $22,550, plus possibly travel, room and board. Even if we assume the casino made some money on gambling, food and alcohol, that's a big negative outlay for a night of Syrian music. Admittedly, I'm new to this area. So perhaps some of you who follow world music can explain the cost-effectiveness of 15 men flying around for a money-losing proposition.

One of the promoters I have been speaking to booked Nour Mehana and his band for an event at the Bay Area Lebanese Club in Foster City, California, on June 18.
(She has asked to remain anonymous.)

When we spoke, I said, "June 18? So the men were in Northern California 11 days prior to being on my flight from Detroit to Los Angeles?"

The woman confirmed that this was the case. She was sure because she "hosted" the group while they were in the Bay area for their event. She explained that after their Northern California gig on June 18, the musicians flew back to Detroit for "some parties" and then flew back again to Los Angeles to perform in Southern California.

Now keep in mind that during questioning, the Syrian musicians told Dave Adams, the Federal Air Marshal Services (FAM) Head of Public Affairs, that they flew to Los Angeles to play a two-night gig in the area and then they were flying back to Syria via New York. Apparently they neglected to tell Adams -- or he neglected to tell us -- that they had in fact taken at least two previous flights on visas with an expiration date of June 10.

One other item of note came from my conversations with the Bay area promoter. Remember, I mentioned that one of the 14 Syrian musicians on my flight wore an orthopedic shoe and walked with a very noticeable limp. So I asked the Bay area promoter to tell me about the man with the orthopedic shoe and the limp. She seemed confused. I explained that one of the men had an orthopedic shoe and an obvious limp. She said she didn't remember a man with a limp or an orthopedic shoe, but "I wouldn't notice something like that anyway," she added. During a second phone conversation I again asked about the man with the limp. She gave me the same answer. Why is this important? Because according to the TSA website, during the airport security screening process of removing your shoes (we can all thank the shoe-bomber for this), a person wearing an orthopedic shoe does not have to remove it.

In an effort to get to the bottom of this, I asked the Bay area promoter if she had photographs of the men, and she said yes. She mentioned that she might be coming to Los Angeles sometime in the near future, so I asked if we could meet at a coffee shop so I could look at the photos. She said she'd think about it.

Let me circle back to an important issue. After my flight and before my first article was posted at www.WomensWallStreet.com, I received a phone call from Adams, who called me after a reporter from The Washington Post called him regarding my experience on flight 327

During our conversation, Adams told me the 14 Syrians had been hired as musicians to play at a casino in the desert. None had arrest records and none showed up on the FBI's no-fly list or the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists List. The men checked out and were let go. According to Adams, the 14 men traveled on Northwest Airlines flight 327 using one-way tickets. Two days later they were scheduled to fly back on JetBlue from Long Beach, California, to New York -- also on one-way tickets.

During my initial conversation with Adams, I told him I was writing a story. He never asked me not to write the story. Maybe he assumed I would no longer pursue the story once I heard the men were a band. Or maybe Adams underestimated the power of the Internet to get the story out. Or maybe he genuinely believed that because these men checked out as a band, there was nothing more to discuss. This last explanation is to me by far the most disturbing explanation of all.

For the past three weeks I've listened intently to what Adams and other officials have had to say on this matter. I've watched their television appearances. I've read their statements in the newspapers. And I've listened to the statements several officials made during an interview with National Public Radio.

Over and over again, Adams and other officials have explained that 14 Syrian men were checked against the terrorist watch lists and nothing came up. He has said they were questioned and their stories were consistent -- they were a Syrian band playing at a casino outside of Los Angeles. Adams says authorities called the promoter and went out to the casino to make sure they were playing. They went to the hotel where they were staying and verified they had reservations. They then followed them to make sure they flew back on the flight they had booked, a JetBlue flight from Long Beach to New York.

To all of these officials I must repeat the question I've been asking all along: How do our government agencies define "thorough"?

The FBI has maintained from the get-go that they did a "thorough" investigation of these men. Is their definition of "thorough" the fact that these men played instruments, had a gig booked at a casino, had reservations at a hotel, and didn't have an immediate match against any current terrorist watch list? If the answer is yes, shouldn't we be scratching more than the just the surface?

According to the 9/11 Commission Report, "the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities and management." The report added, "the most important failure was one of imagination." The use of the word "imagination" can be a bit misleading, because for some it might insinuate "fantasy." Perhaps what the 9/11 Commission Report meant by "imagination" is the ability for federal officials to think outside the box. Based on flight 327's purported "thorough" investigation, it seems these agencies might be still thinking very much inside the box. "Imagination is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies," reads the report. Isn't it time to change that?

I've learned that the FBI is knocking on doors and looking into Nour Mehana and the musicians a bit more.

Maybe they hear the public outcry to get to the bottom of what happened on flight 327.

Maybe they realize it's important to find these men so as to fill in the blanks in their story.

Or maybe they are now listening to what hundreds of pilots, flight attendants and air marshals across the country have been trying to tell them for months: that dry-runs or probes, or intelligence gathering missions, are being conducted on commercial aircraft in the United States. Maybe the FBI, the TSA, the JTTF and ICE have read the chapter in the recently released 9/11 Commission Report entitled, The System Was Blinking Red. Maybe now they recognize that same system is in fact blinking red again.

As I was making the final edits to this article, I received the following email from writer Clinton Taylor:

My article will run tonight at spectator.org, I am told. I've interviewed the promoter, Elie Harfouche, in Lebanon, and also the tour manager, Atef Kamel, in New Jersey.

Elie, who was on the plane, disputes everything about your story except the McDonalds bag and the guy with the limp. According to him, the band was tired and slept most of the flight. He says he's going to take legal action against you when he comes back to the States in a month. He doesn't remember the guy in the suit--neither does Atef Kamel, who met the plane at LAX.

As I say in the article, the balance of evidence rests with your version of what happened on the plane. But I find it less and less likely that this was a terrorist dry run and more likely a bunch of guys acting like jerks.

According to the 9/11 Commission Report, "the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities and management." The report added, "the most important failure was one of imagination." The use of the word "imagination" can be a bit misleading, because for some it might insinuate "fantasy." Perhaps what the 9/11 Commission Report meant by "imagination" is the ability for federal officials to think outside the box. Based on flight 327's purported "thorough" investigation, it seems these agencies might be still thinking very much inside the box. "Imagination is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies," reads the report. Isn't it time to change that?

I've been saying this a lot lately, especially with the news that the evidence that the last warning was based on was three years old.

Instead of "imagining" that this was sign of an abandoned plan, I would want my security people "imagining" that this was evidence of a preliminary plan that was being detailed elsewhere.

It's okay to lie to infidels.

-PJ

(1) I note that even now, the passengers did not rise up in a solid phalanx and stomp the clearly disobedient and disrespectful Islamic cockroaches into a bloody mass on the floor of the aircraft,

(2) The publicity from this incident should *greatly* concern Bush and his minions. If now, in the aftermath of this demonstration of meekness and placidity on the part of not only the passengers but the fabled, legendary, and rumored sky marshals who were fabled/rumored/legended to be on this flight, we get another hijacking between now and the election, Bush probably WILL get thrown out of office. That sort of an attack, proving that the Administration can't even guard us against a threat identical to 9/11, is probably al-Quaida's *best* bet for turning the election - and they know it.

So why are Bush's security forces acting so stupid, against his interest?

Additionally, if they let the Islamic rodents get away with it again, they can *count* on anyone flying (a) "Taking The Law Into Their Own Hands" from then onward, against ANY perceived threat (as they should have this time, IMO) and (b) refusing to believe ANY Government assurances of safety from this point forward - no matter how much President Kerry pontificates.

You better fix this, Dubya... I love you, guy, but you *better* fix this... and there's a real simple solution, as implemented by the Chinese immediately after 9/11: No one with a passport from a Middle Eastern country flies on an American airline - period. No racial profiling, no ethnic profiling, and no exceptions.

(And if they don't like it, they can "help" themselves by weeding the scum out *from among themselves* and handing them over to us...)

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