Posted on 07/01/2003 9:11:53 AM PDT by quidnunc
A fine line exists between a uniformed agent exercising governmental authority and crossing over into willful intimidation and abuse. A friend of mine once called it putting small people in big jobs. Well, after returning from a recent trip through Terminal One of the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., airport, I have a renewed appreciation of the liberties we honor each July 4. First, count me among those who believe our airlines should be as safe and secure as possible. If that means screening baggage and asking us to step through detectors, I have no problem with either. But the Transportation Security Administration is showing signs of needlessly imposing its own brand of terrorism on our own citizens.
A niece who serves in the U.S. military had departed a day before I did. She had called to tell me to "expect the worst" when I arrived at the airport, so when I walked into the terminal the next morning, it was in shorts without a belt, a loose-fitting golf shirt and sandals.
Even my carry-on bag contained only dirty clothes and some normal traveling odds and ends. Arriving nearly two hours early, I zipped through the e-ticket line and found only two ahead of me at TSA’s screening point. Well over a dozen agents clad in white shirts with "TSA" emblazoned on their backs were milling around, seemingly searching for any way to justify their existence.
Ole Mike was about to brighten their day as he stepped front and center.
Watch, ring, sandals, wallet and cell phone go into the small plastic bin. It all disappears through the x-ray machine with my carry-on. Everything is running smoothly. Then as I am exiting through the body-scan tunnel, the alarm.
A TSA agent claims my shoulder narrowly scraped one side. I had felt nothing. "Please step over here, sir," the agent says. Another sitting behind the baggage screening device begins shouting, "Bag check."
Out go my arms. No beeps. No armed terrorist here. Another agent explains that he has to rifle through my belongings. I say fine. He dives in to his elbow and gropes until he discovers something I’d long ago forgotten — my steel butane lighter. He flicks it. The faintest hint of a blue dot appears where there should be flame. "Sir," he says politely, "you’re going to have to take this outside and empty it if you want to keep it."
I look at the lighter, remind myself it had cost about $8 and reply, "Naw, go ahead, take it. It’s not worth all the hassle."
But he insists that I keep it, even escorting me to the nearby arrival gate and demonstrating how to insert the tip of a ball-point to empty the minuscule residue of fuel.
I obediently step 10 yards outside the arrival gate where two other TSA agents are standing guard and punch the pen’s tip into the lighter for one second. The bored younger of the two guards, apparently feeling especially authoritative in his new homeland job, bellows, "Hey, you. When he said take that outside, he meant to take it all the way outside this terminal. That thing could have toxic fumes in it."
I can only smile and shake my head.
Back to the line and another examination of me and my carry-on. I walk through the tunnel again. No alarm this time, but an agent’s voice still instructs me to "Please step over here to this row of seats for a body check." Meanwhile, my bag is passing through its second exam without hassle. The agent who had insisted on saving my lighter is overseeing the second wanding. Two minutes pass as he meticulously checks every inch, including the bottom of my bare feet.
In the process, I ask him a question about which I have wondered. "Can you tell me how many American citizens have hijacked airplanes in the United States during the past 30 or 40 years?"
He stares blankly and says, "I don’t know." I tell him I can’t think of one, short of the legendary D. B. Cooper in the Pacific Northwest a half-century ago, but he parachuted into oblivion.
Finally, the agent says I am fine and can leave. I grab my bag and draw a deep breath. The question of my legitimacy is resolved.
Arriving at my departure gate an hour early, I’m alone in the rows of seats. Placing the planet’s best scrutinized piece of carry-on luggage in the seat beside me, I lean back to stare at the ceiling. Yep, it was as needlessly bad as she warned it would be, I think.
The coffee stand 50 yards away beckons. I stroll over and wait several minutes in line. Then I return to the gate to find a large German shepherd and three uniformed TSA agents standing over my now-unzipped and once again well-rifled carry-on. "Are you Mr. Masterson?" the older one, who looks like a grizzled Philadelphia cop, fires the angry question like a bullet. "Yes, I am. Is there some problem?"
He looks at the bag, then angrily back at me. "Yeah, there’s a problem. You left your bag unattended. You’ll have to get it and come with me for another inspection."
He’s right. I blundered by going for coffee and mindlessly leaving my bag in the seat. I suppose that policy hadn’t even dawned on me since the damned thing had already been twice screened and thoroughly ransacked.
As we walk, this portly agent who never smiles reaches in to snatch the ticket jacket from my now notorious bag. He opens the cover. It is empty. "So just where is your ticket, Mr. Masterson?" he scowls accusingly. By now, I’m feeling like the uniformed Gestapo with their German shepherd have set Mr. Peacefully Traveling American up like a domino. I am definitely being made to look like a terrorist or some other kind of criminal. "My ticket was in there when I came through the gate twice before," I say, my heart now somewhere near my tonsils. "I don’t know where it is. This is crazy. It has to be somewhere in my bag."
By now, I am back in the inspection line for the third time. The little bag gets another search and I get wanded for a third and then a fourth time after a second specialist agent is brought in with a wand so sensitive that the staples in my checkbook sets it to singing. He also wants to see the bottom of my feet.
Through it all, the older cop wannabee agent is staring menacingly as if it’s him against me, and I am wondering (almost out loud) just what in the name of unnecessary fear and jackbooted intimidation we are inflicting on our own citizens today.
And by the way, where the heck is the ticket that 15 minutes earlier had been safely secured in my luggage?
Finally, the second wand wielder completes his assignment and I am pronounced clean in Terminal One of the Fort Lauderdale airport for the third time. With a smirk, the older agent grabs the ticket jacket and replaces my ticket, which he has been secretly holding all along. "Let this be a lesson to you, Mr. Masterson," he says. "Someone can put something into your luggage just as easily as they can take something out." Thirty minutes later, I was feeling the weight of the 757 finally lifting away from Florida soil, headed back to civilization. Rest assured, neither this American citizen nor the carry-on bag now permanently stitched to his hip will ever return for more guilty-until-proven-innocent treatment. Should your travel plans take you through Terminal One in Fort Lauderdale, I’d advise traveling naked without a carry-on.
(Some folks just love to polish leather jackboots with their tongues.)
James Woods disagrees.
I'm not convinced this is a hijacking. Sounds more like worker rage to me. Look at the descriptions of each event listed on the link. All instances contain the classifying word "hijacking" except this one, which is not described as a hijacking.
You are right, hijackings are rare. And even more rare still when Americans are involved.
2) Who's fault is it that he left his bag unattended. Anyone who has ever stepped foot on an airplane knows that the first question asked is "Have you left your bag out of your sight and/or unattended"?
3) Let me also add that it's not the brightest thing in the world to verbally confront, abuse, or make statements that are not likely to ingratiate people in authority. It's generally best not to question police or screeners by asking a question that can be translated into this statement: "How many guys that look like me have [fill in blank] you stupid ars"?
4) If this guy didn't make MULTIPLE mistakes he would have gone thru screening in practically seconds.....which doesn't seem overly bothersome to me.
Sorry, I have no sympathy for this guy, based on his own story. He's a crybaby media type who thinks that he's soooo important that anywone who doesn't give him Red carpet treatment will get written up in his column. I'm unimpressed.
Personally I don't mind if they look at my stuff, but don't steal it or break it.
Additionally I don't mind if they single me out for extra attention as long as they have a logical, reasonable and articulable basis for doing so — which does not include randomness or the desire to avoid criticism by logical suspects.
Nope, but I also don't approve of idiots like Mr. Masterson leaving their bags unattended for even a few minutes in an airport given the obvious concerns over terrorism. Even my pre-teen children have more common sense. If Mr. Masterson is going to pout and act like a child then he desrves to be treated like a child and that's what the TSA guy did. And BTW, I have traveled through FLL at least a half dozen times since the TSA took control of airport security without experiencing or even observing anyone else experience the problems for which Mr. Masterson complains.
I have come to the conclusion that looks mean nothing to the TSA. My kids; Two boys with light brown hair, aged 4 and 2, and my daughter, who is 8 and blonde, have run the gamut, while their mother and I stood watching. Im an airline employee and I get the "treatment" about 70% of the time.
Richard Reid has reddish Brown hair, and about a week ago, one of the homocide bombers in Israel was dressed in traditional Hassidic garb. If the TSA only picked on Arab looking men between the ages of 15 and 35, then you can bet that the bad guys would recruit middle aged, Europeon looking men or women or even small children to do the dirty work. Random searches in my view are a much more effective deterent. And BTW, although I have personally seen the TSA search people who don't fit the profile, I have rarely seen Arab looking men between the ages of 15 and 35 walk through airport security without the TSA giving them a really close look.
My point is that hijacking is today thought to be a political action of terror. This American hijacking differs from the 9/11 acts because at the core of the hijacking is a worker who went postal rather than a group trying to make a political statement. You can see the difference?
Those guys can't take a joke for $hit!
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