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.

ah, but all were young single males ... enough with the granny body-searching. it's stupidity.

"If people want security they need to understand it's going to be a pain in the
ass, that's how security works. "

No, that's not security, mindless robo-searching of obvious innocents while real suspect go through the seive ... that's a pale imitation.
the Dems got the TSA bureaucracy in place, they won.
You want real security - go through tel aviv's Ben Gurion.

Also, don't be the first to board the plane. Don't jump to the front of the boarding line. They seem to choose folks at the front for gate screening, almost exclusively.

At Southwest, at least, they have stopped this practice. Maybe they don't need them now that the "professional" TSA screeners are on the job. (BTW, there have been 6,000+ complaints about missing items in checked baggage that has been searched. And several TSA inspectors have already been arrested. The lack of locked baggage now gives the ramp baggage handlers another chance to pilfer items from your bag if your transfer to another flight involves a lengthy wait.)

Try this one on for size:
my 60-year mother-in-law wears a prosthetic leg, and they regularly require it to be removed and searched at airports.

They have no idea the pain and inconvenience this causes.
And it clearly serves no useful security purpose.
If you know of a single instance of 60-year-old females hijacking planes let us know.

Profiling would change alot of this. All you have to do is look for arab islamic muslims. We all know this.

I wont be flying again probably for a very long time. Say good by to my money

"(BTW, there have been 6,000+ complaints about missing items in checked baggage that has been searched. And several TSA inspectors have already been arrested. The lack of locked baggage now gives the ramp baggage handlers another chance to pilfer items from your bag if your transfer to another flight involves a lengthy wait."

And before that, airline baggage handlers stole stuff...they may still be doing it. You know what the solution is? Don't pack valuable stuff in your checked luggage. If you must carry it, carry it on.

Ship your valuables to your destination via FedEx, insured. Ship em to your hotel or wherever you're staying. Sheesh! Why tempt fate.

I would never check anything I wasn't prepared to lose. I've had too many bags go missing for a couple of days to do that.

more correctly, Bush 'caved' in a compromise with the Dems to force the security agents to be govt employees. result: overstaffed bureaucracy, main mission: make flying more annoying. i was quite miffed when this happened, it was a big mistake.

IMHO, this whole TSA bureaucracy is just a pointless non-security-enhancing exercise in locking the gate after the horse has bolted.
Are you aware of a single hijacker caught in this net?

Just imagine if instead of 60,000 security guards we used that force *exclusively* on hunting down terrorists worldwide. which application would do more good?

And I like the other question: Do you know of an American citizen hijacker since 1980?

But the fact remains that the security people will still select people who have no — zero — liklihood of being terrorists — octigenarian, wheelchair-bound grannies, babes in arms and the like — for intrusive searches.

And they do it as a sop to American minorities and non-white foreigners so they won't be accused of 'racial profiling'.

And you can bet your last nickel that the security people wouldn't give the smartmouth to aforementioned minorities and non-white foreigners that they will to a white.

Getting on an airplane shold not be as difficult as gaining access to the inner sanctums of the National Security Agency.

"Try this one on for size:
my 60-year mother-in-law wears a prosthetic leg, and they regularly require it to be removed and searched at airports.

They have no idea the pain and inconvenience this causes.
And it clearly serves no useful security purpose.
If you know of a single instance of 60-year-old females hijacking planes let us know.
"

That's a tough one. Prosthetic legs would make great hiding places for explosives or drugs. No, your Mom-in-law is probably not a terrorist, and I don't know of any 60-year-old women who have hijacked planes. In fact, since 9/11, I don't know of anyone who is hijacking planes. I do know that elderly folks are being used as mules for drug smuggling, though. The prosthetic leg could hold a lot of cocaine or heroin. I don't know your Mother-in-law, and neither do the security folks.

I don't have an answer for this one. It's probably policy to check these prosthetics in all cases.

"more correctly, Bush 'caved' in a compromise with the Dems to force the security agents to be govt employees"

Hello. Bush had a GOP Congress, not a Dem Congress. He didn't cave. He was behind the TSA stuff all the way.

The hooks in one of mine (sans underwires) even set one of those handheld gizmatrons off once. Then I got my back felt up by a female screener. She wasn't rude or anything, but I still loathed the experience. According to the screener, there are differing levels of sensitivity the gizmos can be set at. Guess hers was on the really, really, paranoid setting. What fun :(

I stopped flying when the TSA jackboots took over the airports. Flying use to be fun, but now it's an unpleasant experience, third world, I can do withhout.

No way I'm going through the hassle factor. It may take longer to drive but I can carry whatever I want, and I don't have to undress for some repressed Gestapo wanna-be.

I can understand the need for security, but it's being overdone. If a terrorist wants to bring down a plane he'll find a way, and it won't be by going through the passenger gates.

"I stopped flying when the TSA jackboots took over the airports. Flying use to be fun, but now it's an unpleasant experience, third world, I can do withhout. "

Your choice. I still fly a lot, and have no problems with security. By being prepared, I just breeze through. No jackboots at all. I don't beep. I don't carry wierd stuff. I just show my ticket, walk through the magnetic thing, pick up my carryon and go to the gate.

I haven't been pulled aside for months now. It's just a matter of planning.

But thanks, though. There's more room in the airport parking and in the terminal since you're not there.

Gimme a wig a thriftstore dress and some foam prosthetics and I can be an old lady too. It's not that hard to look like somebody you're not.

There are no obvious innocents until the plane lands safely at the end of the trip. People might look innocent but there's no reason to believe they actually are what they look like.

"The hooks in one of mine (sans underwires) even set one of those handheld gizmatrons off once. "

Yeah. Some of those things are really sensitive. The eyelets on my running shoes once set the thing off. I now wear moccasins when travelling. There's no metal on me at all these days, and I never beep. I haven't had any problems on any of my last dozen flights.

Well, it's not just being pulled aside. It's the wait, the security, cancelled flights, the lack of leg room, the lost/damaged luggage, the squirrely rules you have to follow to get a cheap flight, the byzantine scheduling...Flying is a pain in general. Why pay for pain?

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