Posted on 01/05/2002 1:56:21 AM PST by ImphClinton
N E W Y O R K, Jan. 4 — An American Airlines passenger says he believes an Arab-American Secret Service agent who was kicked off a Christmas Day flight was targeted because of his ethnicity.
"I feel he was most likely removed from the plane — obviously I wasn't privy to the paperwork or that he was a Secret Service [agent] or such — but I think he fit a profile," the passenger, Mark Pueschel, said today on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America.
Pueschel had been seated next to the agent as the American Airlines flight prepared to take off from Baltimore to Dallas. The agent, who was armed, was on his way to work at President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. He was removed from the flight after the captain questioned the validity of his credentials.
Pueschel contacted the Council of Arab-American Relations after seeing a press release on the incident.
Bush 'Madder Than Heck' If Discrimination Seen
Bush told reporters last week he would be "madder than heck" if a government inquiry into the incident found that one of his Secret Service protectors was the victim of discrimination.
The agent demanded an apology from the airline through his attorneys at a news conference Thursday. The agent, whose identity has not been released, did not attend because he was on a security detail and not available for comment in person, his attorneys said. They read a statement in which he said he did not have a vendetta against American Airlines.
"It has never been my desire to make this incident personal," the statement said. "This case is only about the facts. I love my job, and I want to thank my fellow agents for all their support. God bless America."
American Airlines officials have said the agent was removed at the pilot's request because of "inconsistencies" in the paperwork he filed that is required of all federal agents flying on commercial airlines. Religion and ethnicity, American Airlines said, had nothing to do with his removal.
The pilot also released a statement saying the agent was "confrontational" and "abusive."
Christy Lopez, an attorney for the agent, said the agent was a victim of discrimination: "We believe the captain is using that as an excuse for taking him off the plane, but it is quite clear he took him off the plane for other reasons."
The agent has not ruled out filing a lawsuit against American Airlines, Lopez said. He still seeks an amicable resolution of the incident, but he wants airline officials to review their practices so no one else is victimized, she said.
Airline Calls Accusation 'Frivolous'
In a statement, American Airlines called the agent's claims "frivolous" and supported the pilot's actions, saying they were based on concerns for the security and safety of the passengers and crew.
"American carries out its security obligations according to the guidelines provided by the federal government," the airline's statement said. "Those guidelines are applied equally among all passengers, and the company vigorously resents any suggestion of racial discrimination."
the agent DOES fit a profile: a STATISTICAL profile, not a RACIAL profile.
i think bush should stay out of it. this thing has to run its course, with SAFETY of the passengers a priority. i hate the fact that they have made this political fodder.
All I want is an apology from the Pilot. He should have called the Whitehouse. He had 90 minutes to do so and only one "problem" passenger. He called other people. The White House Phone number is no secret. He was either too lazy to bother or had alterior motives.
Also I note that you wonder if I was there to witness this, and then proceed to say that the airline personnel were out of line making claims about the agents rudeness. I wasn't there to see it, were you? Note that in this statement from the agent, an allusion is being cast as the pilot being "too lazy". Surely these words were meant to clear up a misunderstanding in the public eye.
Another item is that the agent claims the White House number is no secret, he does not say that he provided the number to the pilot in anyway.
As to your next post, yes the pilot does have the right and the authority to prevent any passenger from boarding his aircraft. Would you want it any other way?
Me, I would get off the plane with the pilot, how about you?
My only hope is that in doing what he did, we will not all be once again put at risk because the airlines are afraid to profile arabs.Remember it was arabs that caused 911 and all subsequent terror attempts since then.And I personally will never, ever completly trust another arab, say what you will about my stance but I would be willing to bet I am in the majority not the minority.
God Bless America
$100 says that if the agent were white, all the other facts were the same, and the press had covered this from a "gun control" angle, the USSS agent would have had unanimous support on FreeRepublic.
Given all that happened on 911, and all we have learned since then, would you have automatically assumed the number he gave you to be genuine? Since we know the terrorists are capable of forging most documents, should the pilot have just taken this mans word that it was genuine?
The one question that I have heard asked but not answered many times on this forum is was the SS man a Christan arab or a Muslim one? Amazing how little we know.
God Bless America
And they could have avoided it all with a simple phonbe call. Unfortunately, American Airlines apparently has lots of sympathisers here, no doubt because of the wave of anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment which is intense amongst the posters here, but fortunately not in the American public as a whole. The American public as a whole gets the concept that a small minority of Muslims are radical terrorists, not the entire Arab/Muslim world.
. . .his first observation 'he wasn't privy to the paperwork', renders this pasengers conclusion of 'ethnic profiling', null and void.
But that does not matter to the Lib press, who will insist on offering 'irrelevancies' to inflame public opinion.
Context is everything; and the fact that he was Arab-American or looking just 'ME' surely added to the context (basic commonsense would hope this is the case as well.
See convulutions of hypocrisy here on behalf of the Libs; and while they make think they are making points; think they are losing the big game here. . .
GW could lose a bit here as well, if he fails or refuses to recognize the context of security. . .
At the least, President Bush could have offered, that if an agent of his Secret Service caused a problem. . .he would be 'madder than heck' as well.
All else is CNN!
Anyone think the FAA descending on that AA flight to
have everyone rechecked may have been a response?
The agent was reported to say he would "get them".
Also, in the report I read, the AA person at the SOC was 1000
miles away and didn't know the ethnicity of the agent until after the fact.
You are right. You can't get through.
I'm amazed that people think it is so easy to get through to the Whitehouse.
Barbara Olsen and her husband were trying to report a plane being hijacked and they had trouble getting through to the right people in the government, let alone some pilot. As it was the government sent planes from a military base too far from the Pentagon to do any good, instead of using planes from the base 10 miles away.
If he were white, you'd never have batted an eyelash at it.
If we get a terrorist attack by the IRA, are we going to start bumping Irish-looking people or people with Irish surnames from flights?
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