Who is the Terrorist? (The horror that air travel in the U.S. is becoming)

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.

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."

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.

"They have - or at least had until recently - quotas and from all appearences at least some of the people are selected for no other reason than they are not minorities
or non-white foreigners."

Yeah. from the Charles Moose rulebook on PC investigations. let's keep looking for the white men in the white van, shall we??

"So far your advice is don't pack anyting of value, keep your mouth shut, change your style of dress, accept having yourself and your family being pawed at airports by
low level goverment workers, your belongings being rifled through etc. etc. "

Why do I have the sinking feeling MineralMan is one of the sheeple and not a freeper??!?

The airport screeners are probably second only to Post Office employees in their frequency of interaction with the general public.

People will continue to put up with the TSA's officious arbitrariness only so long before they will cease cutting them slack.

Folks are going to either quit flying or start raising hell until a semblance of appropriatness is restored.

Thanks for your comments on the inappropriateness of TSA officers to use their "power" to put harried passengers through hell if they say seomthing sarcastic.

"People will continue to put up with the TSA's officious arbitrariness only so long before they will cease cutting them
slack."

I didnt mind my own shoes etc. being searched even with the obvious pointlessness of it all. But I do mind the indignity of my handicapped elderly mother-in-law, where its a physically painful process for her that they forced her through for no good end except to mindlessly 'wand' a prosthetic device. They have no slack in my book after that.

We are not managing it right. And it's the PC notions of folks like Norm Manetta, disallowing even rational forms of prfiling, and treating everyone equally culpable and ignoring obvious matters of individuals that gets my goat.

The argument that if they detect a soft spot in security terrorists will recruit octegenarian white women or young white mothers with babies to blow up planes is a load of bull.

As for Norman Minetta, he was scheduled for the chopping block unti he came down with some life-threatening illness or other.

If you think these semi-retarded illiterates the TSA employs are increasing security, think again. I went to San Jose for a product demo, and the company gave us all squirt guns. The squirt guns had a metal spring in them.

The security guy kept 'wanding' and it would beep everytime it went by my cargo pocket with the squirt gun in it. He grabbed my calf with a quizzical look and asked if I had metal in my leg. I said "No", and he wanded again, it beeped again, he grabbed my calf again. This happened four or five times....HE NEVER CHECKED MY POCKET ONCE. I walked on the plane with the squirt gun.

TSA provides NO security. I can think of many ways to get around these stupid, lazy, stand-around, power trippers. They only accomplish the unthinkable - Americans submitting to brainless authority.

I had a similar experience in Atlanta and again in New York. Just search the stinking Muslims, leave the rest of us alone already.

We'll have none of that around here, comrade #56334FT7, Report to the nearest Political Sensitivity Re-Training Center as soon as possible. You have been warned.

Bush? Remember the rats still control the Senate with the few rinos from the NE who are beholden to the Unions.

Question: How many airplanes have been hijacked since 9/11?

I fully agree with suggestions about positive attitude and avoiding Darwin award stupidity on carrying the wrong stuff, and dressing wrong.

A strong suggestion that I have not seen yet: We had the unfortunate experience of landing at DeGaulle Airport in frogland as a first stop, and I had some prescription medicine in my luggage - candidate for the Darwin award - yes I was!

The frog baggage handlers went on strike as in what else is new, and I had to sweat my medicines out for three days. SPLIT THEM UP AT LEAST.

Finally Mineral Man, I hope you are not a Godless Athiest. My question to you is who made the Universe, and how did Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead for starters.

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.

Whoa, whoa whoa..! Making WAY too much sense here, pal. I think this is where you would normally be labeled a "reactionary", though just why reacting logically to moronic regulation or legislation can be considered a bad thing is never quite explained. I'll bet you've been called "mean spirited" at least once in your life, eh? Or worse a republican or something like that ;)

In the year before 9/11, I flew about 20,000 miles.

Since then, I haven't flown any. It simply isn't worth the hassle nor the risk of being arrested for saying the wrong thing, or accidentally forgetting about leaving the wrong thing in my luggage. Nor is it worth the humilation of watching other Americans treated like criminals.

I'm not going to fly anymore unless my Rights as an American are recognized by what passes as airport "security". This includes the Right to not be treated like a turd worlder, not unreasonably searched, and the Right to fly armed.

Until they recognize these Rights, I'll simply drive to my destination.

Some folks just love to polish leather jackboots with their tongues

Yep. And they love to show up on these airport threads and explain how we Americans should spend hundreds of dollars to get treated like crap and have our Rights violated by some JBT-wannabee.

I call them the "strip me, search me, humilate me" crowd. Their mindset is more along the lines of a Russian peasant than a Free American.

It's a big country, full of a lot of wierd, wierd folks.

And all of us "weird folks" have Constitutional Rights.

If you don't like "weird", why don't you try fascist China or communist North Korea. There aren't too many weird folks there, as they all follow the rules and are good little slaves to their totalitarian regimes.

Screw that. I won't set foot near an airport or an airplane until this madness stops. Americans have never hijacked a plane, this is as stupid and illogical as the people who defend it.

Well stated. I'm not flying either until this crap ends. This stuff is more reminiscient of Soviet Russia than a Free America.

The airlines can go bankrupt for all I care.

If this guy didn't make MULTIPLE mistakes he would have gone thru screening in practically seconds

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe "we the people" aren't the problem here?

There have been literally thousands of documented cases of harassment of Americans by out of control bureaucrats working at the airport. Everything ranging from children and women being harassed, to a Medal of Honor winner who was told he couldn't fly with his medal, to a serviceman returing from Afghanistan with his mouth wired shut being harassed, etc..... has occurred.

Others have had their lives ruined by being arrested for making a joke or smarting off (likely provoked) to the wrong person.

The situation is totally out of control to everyone except for the bootlicking contingent.

Rather than trying to teach him a lesson, he should have just arrested him and thrown him in jail for the night.

For what charge?

Or do you believe like a good little peasant that our lords should be able to throw anyone they want into jail for any reason.

Every dollar spent on this stupidity is a dollar less on fighting the real terrorists

Exactly correct. Many folks don't want to accept the fact that there are only finite resources to protect assets from terrorists.

While diverting resources towards airport security may seem like a good idea on the surface, people need to realize that this diverts from efforts to protect other areas (nuke plants, bridges, communication infrastructure, etc....).

Every dollar spent harassing granny or junior at the airport is a dollar less that is available for going after the real terrorists.

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