http://www.fox11la.com
http://www.fox11.com/stories/news/santa_monica.asp
"FBI joining with Santa Monica Police to investigate possible terrorist"
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The FBI began working with the Santa Monica Police Department to investigate three Middle Eastern individuals who were photographed videotaping the Santa Monica Pier.
According to officials, the FBI earlier investigated the individuals involved when they were spotted videotaping the Vincent Thomas Bridge linking San Pedro and Long Beach."
===
===
Note: The following text is an exact quote:
===
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2005/08/007652print.html
August 12, 2005
Police: 3 Men 'Suspiciously' Videotaping At Santa Monica Pier
"Police: 3 Men 'Suspiciously' Videotaping At Santa Monica Pier: Police Say Men Were Filming Access Roads, Security Structures," from NBC4, with thanks to LB:
SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- Three men who were seen videotaping the Santa Monica pier in a suspicious manner have been identified and were seen videotaping in other communities, police said Thursday.
All three men were of Middle Eastern descent, NBC4 reported. The men's nationalities had nothing to do with the investigation, police said.
Sure. But do you happen to know if they hold to a certain ideology?
"Ordinarily, when tourists videotape, they don't videotape security structures for an extended period of time," said Santa Monica Police Chief James T. Butts. "They don't focus on access roads, and usually, the tourists themselves are in the photographs to document they were there, and that's not what these photgraphs showed."
The three men were not arrested, police said.
At least one community leader, however, questioned whether or not racial profiling was involved, NBC4 reported.
NBC4 does not report, however, on the background of the organization represented by this particular community leader.
"That creates this kind of confusion, this kind of fear that if someone is Middle Eastern and filming, does that fall into the category of being suspicious?" Sabiha Khan, of the Council on American Islamic Relations, said. "So, behavior should be profiled, not people."
Look, Sabiha, James Butts did talk about their behavior, and explained why it was not that of the ordinary tourist. It would be a lot easier for me to be sympathetic to what you're saying if it were actually an accurate characterization of what happened.
Also: where are these men now? What are they doing? Does anyone know? Does anyone care?
Posted at August 12, 2005 01:15 PM
I read they were videotaping a police substation too.
This type of pc cr@p will get a lot of us killed one day!
Of course the media is camped out reporting more important things in Crawford while Rome burns.