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.

"The author of this article is essentially pissed that no one finds him relevant. Next!"

And we have only his side of this story, to boot. I can, somehow, imagine him cracking wise in his earlier encounters with the security folks. A poor idea. So, he's an idiot who leaves a bag unattended at an airline gate. How stupid is that? Everyone knows you can't do that. So, he gets to go through it all one more time. Why? Because he's an idiot.

Does he get a little smart mouthing from the security folks? Yup. A little payback for the smart-mouting he no doubt gave them earlier.

Gestapo, indeed! He's an idiot who lost me when he left his stupid bag unattended, as a demonstration of his stupidity.

MineralMan wrote: And why do you suppose they took the ticket? They do that so they know whose bag it is. That makes sense, right?

If that's as far as it went,no problem.

But then the TSA guy went further and held on to the ticket to make the author think it was gone in order to 'teach him a lesson'.

I'm reasonably that there's nothing in the airport screener job description about teaching lessons to passenger

The TSA security man overstepped the limitss of his authority, pure and simple.

I had the same experience in Syracuse. Everything I had was spread out for all to see. Result: if I get done with my business trip early, I don't go to the airport early any more. If you are checking in when no one else is, the humiliation factor goes way up.

"But then the TSA guy went further and held on to the ticket to make the author think it was gone in order to 'teach him a lesson'.

I'm reasonably that there's nothing in the airport screener job description about teaching lessons to passenger

The TSA security man overstepped the limitss of his authority, pure and simple."

Piffle. The TSA guy temporarily held this idiot's ticket to demonstrate that leaving your bag unattended is a stupid thing to do. He returned it to the passenger, who boarded his plane.

Nobody was hurt, nobody missed a flight. One idiot who believed himself somehow above the law about unattended bags got a little object lesson in why bags should not be left unattended. He then got on his flight and went on his merry way.

Now, of course, he writes a one-sided account of the whole incident, maximizing the insult to his ego while, no doubt, minimizing his own complicity in what happened. Idiot.

He made his flight. He was inconvenienced only a little. Now he's whining. Poor baby.

MineralMan wrote: Does he get a little smart mouthing from the security folks? Yup. A little payback for the smart-mouting he no doubt gave them earlier.

You have absolutely no factual basis to state that the author made inappropriate remarks to the security people — NONE!

And don't pretend otherwise!

"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. "

Here you go. Now, do you suppose there was any sarcasm in his voice? I'd guess so, based on the tone of his article. In fact, there was a hijacking by an American, and it was the one most recent before 9/11. He was wrong, you see.

How would you like it if you left your car running and unattended and when you returned found a cop had secreted your driver's license and registration in order to make you sweat?

Leaving a car running and unattended is a crime in my state, and therefore, sweating a bit is better than a night in jail.

The TSA security man overstepped the limitss of his authority, pure and simple.

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

"The TSA security man overstepped the limitss of his authority, pure and simple.

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

Good point. And he'd be "within his authority" had he done that. I'm sure the author of this one-sided story would have preferred that, don't you think, instead of actually getting on his flight and going to his destination.

"I just went through this for the first time last week at LAX. I felt so grossed out in my bare feet at an International Airport. It was more sickening than using a public phone. Then I had to put my germy SARS carrying feet back into my formerly pristine shoes. I understand what those of you defending these new policies are saying, but it really seems like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Ugh....gross, maybe should carry those footy things that they give people who go to shoe stores without socks on. Or do what sheep farmers do...sheep coming in to the barn are channeled through a trough filled with hoof medication to prevent the spread of hoof disease inside the barn. BTW: There is only one thing more gross than a public phone and that's a public toilet.

Labyrinthos wrote: (The TSA security man overstepped the limitss of his authority, pure and simple.) Rather than trying to teach him a lesson, he should have just arrested him and thrown him in jail for the night.

BullCENSORED!

There is such a thing as false arrest and this would have been it.

Before airport security was fedaralized many of the screeners were minimum-wage semi-retards, some with arrest records.

Many of these were grandfathered into federal employment and they're still in the process culling them out.

"There is such a thing as false arrest and this would have been it. "

Not really. They could have held him for further investigation...no problem. No false arrest. Just long enough for him to miss his flight. Then a nice, _sincere_ apology.

But they didn't do that at all. He made his flight, despite his stupidity in leaving an unattended bag. Actually, it was a good thing his ticket was in it so they could find him. Otherwise, the bag would have just disappeared into a secure area and he'd have had a hard time claiming it.

He's clearly not a frequent flyer. You should never leave your ticket in a bag, but should have it on you at all times, just for safety's sake. Bags disappear all the time, especially carryons you leave unattended while you get a cuppa joe.

Sorry, the guy's still an idiot.

MineralMan wrote: Here you go. Now, do you suppose there was any sarcasm in his voice? I'd guess so, based on the tone of his article. In fact, there was a hijacking by an American, and it was the one most recent before 9/11. He was wrong, you see.

I am a retired police officer with over thirty years os service.

Law enforcment officers — and that's what these TSA screeners are — are not allowed to take enforcement action for speech as long as there is no breach of the peace, and the peace of a law-enforcement officer cannot be breached by mere words.

"Law enforcment officers — and that's what these TSA screeners are — are not allowed to take enforcement action for speech as long as there is no breach of the peace, and the peace of a law-enforcement officer cannot be breached by mere words."

Can the TSA folks take action if someone leaves a bag unattended? Seems to me that they can, since there's an announcement about it every 30 seconds over the PA? You may have been a cop, but that doesn't mean you know all the regs involved with airport security. Try saying the word bomb, really quietly, to a screener. See how long it takes you to get out of the back room.

Sorry, but you're wrong, in this case. They didn't do a darned thing out of the ordinary to this guy until he stupidly left his bag sitting there while he went for coffee. He's an idiot, and is very lucky he made his flight.

"Please step over here, sir. Now, follow this officer; We have some questions to ask you."

Know what? You're going to have to follow the nice officer and answer his questions at the airport. It's the law.

"And BTW, can you think of a single instance prior to 09.11 when terrorists crashed fully loaded passenger jets into tall buildings? "

Federal authorities knew of such possibilities since 1995, when they found such plans on Khalid Mohammed.

It is true that suicide-terrorism is a relatively new feature of the terrorist's arsenal.

"TSA starts giving one legged 60 year old ladies a free pass, then you can bet that the terrorists will recruit one
legged 60 year old ladies to commit acts of terror. "

You have failed to cite even one instance of this being the case. Israel manages far higher security without using stupid and rigid body search rules. You just be sure you are being honest of you will get horsewhipped.

A law enforcement officer cannot use his office to retaliate against somebody under the color of law.

This constitutes official misconduct and is a crime in itself.

Maliciously misinterpretation either of laws or of a persons action in order to harrass him or her is official misconduct.

The court test of whether an officer has acted properly is whether his actions are those of a reasonable and prudent man.

Unless he can articulate reasonable suspicions why a target of enforcement action has broken a law or otherwise constitutes a danger then such enforcement action will in all probability be deemed illegal.

The provisions of the Constitution, statute law and case law are not suspended the moment one steps into an airport.

"My 82 year mother in law in a wheel chair was scrutinized beyond reason at Houston. She told me she was touched (by a female) places "no one should be allowed to
touch." From her point of view, she was molested.

Terrorists win when freedoms are forfeited. Terrorists win when our grandmothers are molested at our airports in the holy name of "national (in)security" courtesy
of the TSA... "

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

See, it comes down to a stupid liberal notion that you 'cant judge' the person. so they look for weapons, instead of looking for people of ill intent.

An innocent individual surrounded by lots of metal (that's the elderly handicapped for you) are given more rigorous searches that young thugs with no particular reason for travel.

And the morons who think you cant tell - sorry, you are a hypocrite. If you were in a bad part of town and a group of young thuggish characters were on one side and elderly folks on the other, would *you* cross the street, or be a sitting duck?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.