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.
In Seattle where I live, they are talking about Homeland Security instituting car and passanger searches on the ferry system on Puget Sound. You want to see a manjor "cluster aaah....mess", this will be it!
As the head of security at El Al, the Israeli airline, said when asked what he thought of our airline security measures; " you don't have a security system, you have a system to piss travelers off"! Amen!
VIVA LA PROFILING!
He was a Muslim whose father was a Middle-Eastern Islamist and who left letters indicating he was going on a suicide mission in support of Osama bin Laden.
Pan_Yans Wife wrote: Prior to September 11th, the worst act of terrorism on American soil took place because of an angry red-headed American male. Did you call for keeping an eye on all American men with red hair after OKCity?
His hair color had nothing to do with it; his identification with the wacko, hard-right-wingnut mentality which motivates the 'suiperpatriot' milita movement had everything to do with it.
You are aware that elements of the militia movement have expressed solidarity with al Qaeda, aren't you?
Actually TSA has more to do with imposing even more federal authority in airports. From here they go to Greyhound and Amtrak and from there to the local metro transits...and from there to our highways.
Get ready for a federal authority with a radar gun on the interstate "scanning for terrorists." For us in Atlanta that means in the corridor between the north 120 loop on I75 and I285 we will have Cobb county sheriff, Marietta City police, Georgia State patrol, and soon a federal agent on patrol all competing to issue citations.
All you snowbirds headed for Florida should take note of this corridor. It's a major income source for three agencies at present. And if my prediction of incremental progression is correct, soon to be four.
Not only an idiot but a crybaby too!
Beats me. I don't understand how any of this is tolerated by real Americans. Most justify the process as a necessary evil to fight terrorism. What they don't get is that when they subject themselves to these unconstitutional intrusions, they have forfeited their freedom and their rights to terrorists...
Are the terrorists winning? Sure looks like they are at our airports.
I traveled for years on airlines with (on my person) fingernail clippers, a multitool, and a survival knife designed to rip thru the skin of an airliner in the event of a survivable crash.
I never hijacked any airplanes with my tools. Furthermore I bet millions of other passengers did the same (at least for the first two), and they never did either. Who were all those US Citizens who hijacked planes and sent them into the WTC and the Pentagon???
In my experience flying since then I have been repeatedly selected for the triple whammy of searches (ticketing/checkpoint/gate), had a detector wand practically shoved up my anus, had a searcher take my handgun out of my checked baggage and wave it around for everyone to see, and experienced numerous other indignities which seemed to bear little relation to finding terrorists.
For example, I recently went to the airport to pick up my son, a 6' 1" 225# 14.9-year old who is perfectly able to change planes by himself and has been doing so since he was 12. The airline had retroactively determined he was too young to travel without "unaccompanied minor" escort which requires an extra $60 of documentation each way, and to collect him I had to pass through the security checkpoint (with the seeming mandatory and gratuitous search) in order to show identification and sign the "i've got it" document. Oh, BTW, since I wasn't traveling that day I had to get a special checkpoint pass. What was the purpose of all this? The airline's excuse? "Federal Rules" made them do it. They couldn't even identify the "Federal Rules" in question.
Lately I've just about given up on flying commercial, it's too much trouble. Unfortunately the feds continue to use our tax dollars to prop up the commercial airlines, so we can expect more of the same for some time to come, since with federal dollars comes more of this bureaucratic nonsense.
If other passengers or flightcrew had been armed, do you think there would have been a possibility of a different outcome?
PS, I'm glad these posters fly so that their asses aren't weaving around the highway in front of me.
Wearing sandals, shorts etc. seems like a bad idea to me in case you have to scramble over hot, jagged metal.
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.