Part II: Terror in the Skies, Again? (New Story) Part II: Terror in the Skies, Again?

Last Tuesday morning, WomensWallStreet.com (WWS) published my first-person account of a recent Northwest Airlines flight that I took from Detroit to Los Angeles called Terror in the Skies, Again? A heads up about this article went out in our Daily Cents email -- our subscriber newsletter which primarily features financial tips and information for women.

On Wednesday morning, the WWS page views were unusually high, something like 10 times the normal amount. Apparently our readers had been emailing the article to their friends, family and colleagues and everyone was reading it.

By Thursday morning, that number had again multiplied ten-fold. It felt like the shampoo commercial from my youth: they told two friends, then they told two friends, then they told two friends. We sat in the WWS offices reading through your emails, taking stock of what you had to say. As the afternoon went on, the number of people reading the article continued to increase and the telephone was ringing off the hook.

The following statement was made by Daniel Drezner, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, on his website danieldrezner.com:

I received a mass email linking to this disturbing first-person account by Annie Jacobsen... I can say that the e-mail sent to me and other bloggers was cc-ed to movers and shakers in the mediaspere -- Bill Keller, David Ignatius, George Will, Anne Applebaum, and Nicholas D. Kristoff. So they're certainly aware of the story... I'd like to see real journalists dig deeper into this.

Dig they did. NBC was the first major news outlet to contact WomensWallStreet. The producer I spoke with on the telephone said the FBI had confirmed that 14 Syrians were on the flight, they confirmed the details about what happened upon landing in Los Angeles, and they said that the accounts from the flight attendants regarding what happened during the flight matched the accounts given by me and my husband to the FBI after we landed.

Then I spoke with a producer from ABC. She explained that she could not get Dave Adams, Head of Public Affairs of the Federal Air Marshal Services (FAM), on the phone. So she asked me some of the questions that she had wanted to ask him: Where exactly did this band of 14 musicians play? What was the name of the band? Who booked the band and what kind of music did they play? Did anyone follow up and actually witness these 14 men performing at their desert casino gig? I had none of the answers, even though I had asked Adams these exact questions myself when we spoke last week. The ABC producer also asked me other questions which had crossed my mind after hanging up with Adams. Did I know anything about their return flight on JetBlue? Did the men go back to Syria? Did I believe FAM's story?

I don't know if anyone posted this, but from One Hand Clapping (Blog)
Monday, July 19, 2004
http://www.donaldsensing.com/2004/07/terror-in-skies-jacobsen-writes-more.html
Terror in the Skies - Jacobsen writes more
Sheds more heat, no more light

Annie Jacobsen, who is not this woman (as some have emailed me she is), has posted part 2 of her story on Women's Wall Street. I just found it and have not read it yet, but I thought I'd pass the link along.

Update: Okay, now I've read it (it isn't long, and for the life of me I don't understand why WWS.com breaks its stories into separate pages of one or two grafs each).

There is no new information about her June 29 flight. Annie says that she has been contacted by a number of major media outlets - whose coverage we still await to see or read (tonight on NBC or ABC, we hope?).

She also writes she has been emailed by members of the airline industry who agree that something suspicious was going on. For example:

Gary Boettcher, Member, Board of Directors, Allied Pilots Association, said, "Folks, I am a Captain with a major airline. I was very involved with the Arming Pilots effort. Your reprint of this airborne event is not a singular nor isolated experience. The terrorists are probing us all the time."

During a later phone conversation I had with Boettcher, he told me that based on his experience, it was his opinion that I was likely on a dry run. He said he's had many of these experiences and so have many of his fellow captains. They've been trying to speak out about this but so far their words have been falling on deaf ears.

According to Mark Bogosian, B-757/767 pilot for American Airlines, "The incident you wrote about, and incidents like it, occur more than you like to think. It is a 'dirty little secret' that all of us, as crew members, have known about for quite some time."
Annie raises a lot more questions and reiterates her belief that Arab men should be singled out for special scrutiny by airline security personnel. First quoting "Rand K. Peck, captain for a major U.S. airline:"
We have little to fear from grandmothers and little boys. But Middle Eastern males are protected, not by our Constitution, but from our current popular policy of political correctness and a desire to offend no one at any cost, regardless of how many airplanes and bodies litter the landscape. This is my personal opinion, formed by my experiences and observations.
To which Annie adds:
This brings us to the heart of the matter -- political correctness. Political correctness has become a major road block for airline safety. From what I've now learned from the many emails and phone calls that I have had with airline industry personnel, it is political correctness that will eventually cause us to stand there wondering, "How did we let 9/11 happen again?"
These are all points worth pondering, for sure. As I said in my first post on the subject,"it wasn't kilt-wearing Scotsmen who committed 9/11's grim deeds" and in "Gaps that need filling,"
... even if these 14 Arab men were entirely innocuous, on another airliner somewhere, somewhen, there seem certain to be other Arab men who intend destruction. The enemy is still out there and he still wants to kill us.
All that being said, we are no more enlightened about NWA Flight 327 of June 29 than we were yesterday. There are no new facts revealed, just a defense by Annie of her deep suspicion of Arab men on airlines and her scorn of airline security systems in place.

Do I think Islamofacsist terrorists would like to hijack an American airliner and either blow it up or use it as a terror weapon? Of course I think so. But that's a generality to which anyone can agree. The hard case is whether Annie's flight specifically was either a near-hijacking or was being cased for terrorist's future purposes. And on that question no certain answer can be given, but these facts remain:

No one was injured, although Annie was frightened and says other passengers and crew members were, too.

Law enforcement personnel detained the Arab men without incident, investigated their story and found no cause to detain them further.

Why is so much being made by commenters or other writers about the McDonald's bag? I wrote of how ominous Annie made the bag to be, when, even by her own words, it was brought on full, then emptied and (apparently) discarded. This is scary? Get a grip! Think, people, think - it was brought aboard as a carry-on. That means it passed through the x-ray machine, just like your car keys, wallet and purses do. Whaddya bet the scanner revealed two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame-seed bun?

Ah, but then come the devastating point, made to me by a number of commenters or emailers: "So, Don, do you eat your McDonalds meal in airplane lavatories?" And I am floored, because, ya know, you're right! It was a bomb! He took a McDonalds bag that had passed preboarding x-ray to the john! He's a terrorist! Or maybe hungry. Or maybe didn't trust the drummer not to swipe his Big Mac.

In Annie's original story, she wrote,
Two days after my experience on Northwest Airlines flight #327 came this notice from SBS TV, The World News, July 1, 2004:
The U.S. Transportation and Security Administration has issued a new directive which demands pilots make a pre-flight announcement banning passengers from congregating in aisles and outside the plane's toilets. The directive also orders flight attendants to check the toilets every two hours for suspicious packages.
Credible? The report is true, Annie's timeline is not. The UK-based Spy Blog posted January 8, 2004 that foreign-flag air carriers flying into US airspace had been told by the TSA
... to ban passengers from queueing for the lavatories.

The directive from the Transport Security Administration (TSA) requires the crew to make announcements every two hours telling passengers that they must not "congregate outside the toilets" or any other location."
He links to the Times Online piece reporting the order. There was a letter to the editor of the Honolulu Advertiser on Jan. 20, 2004, complaining of the TSA's "no congregate" rule. Finally, CNN reported on January 8,
Airlines have been asked to tell passengers they shouldn't congregate near aircraft lavatories because of security concerns, the Transportation Security Administration said Wednesday.

The agency in mid-December sent an advisory to airlines asking them to inform passengers that they should not gather in groups on airplanes, especially near the restroom, said spokesman Darrin Kayser.
I found all these references with ridiculous ease while writing this post. So why did Jacobsen insinuate (and insinuate she certainly did) that the "no congregate" policy somehow originated from the trips to the john the 14 Arab men made on her flight? She is a journalist. Why didn't she check the news record to determine whether the policy pre-existed her four hours of terror (her description, not mine)?

Because, as I said in my first post, her story is not objective, it is not unbiased. It is a fear-soaked article seeking to justify the writer's fear. Let me repeat: It is factual she was fearful, but her fear doesn't provide facts.

By all means, we should reexamine airline security and passenger screening and we certainly should place the safety and security of airline travel above the delicate feelings of political-correctness advocates. We should not need Annie's story to compel us to do that, but if it does, so much the better.

But remember: at the end of her flight, Annie Jacobsen and her family stepped off the airplane safe and sound. So did every other passenger and crew member. Somehow she and her advocates keep overlooking that fact. Annie's story is that, at the end of the day, there is no story.

Update: Michelle Malkin responds that the Jan. 8, 2004 "no congregate" order applied only to international flights, and that the July 1 order was a response to domestic airlines' longstanding request to clarify the policy. I stand corrected, but in any event, that the July 1 order sprang directly from NWA #327 on June 29 seems a stretch: I don't think TSA could work that fast for one, and second, the clarification had already been in the works.

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