Free Republic

...we are awash in government studies, reports and other data which make clear that nearly six years after September 11, the government bureaucracies that are supposed to keep out terrorists are in many ways as incompetent and dysfunctional as they were before... A newly released report from the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about the government's handling of 13 suspicious passengers on a June 29, 2004, Northwest Airlines flight serves as a reminder of why so many Americans are rightly skeptical of Washington's ability to manage a mass-amnesty program... The report, which details what happened on...

Sunday, June 03, 2007 Here's what we know happened on Northwest Flight 327 back on June 29, 2004: Thirteen Middle Eastern men -- 12 from Syria, one a permanent U.S. resident from Lebanon -- had one-way tickets for the weekday nonstop from Detroit to Los Angeles. The men, a musical group and their U.S. promoter, took seats all over the plane. Takeoff was delayed when one man with a limp refused to move from an emergency row, pretending he did not understand English. In flight, one or two of the men walked the aisle, seeming to count passengers. One rushed...

War On Terror: The 9/11 hijackers are known to have flown cross-country routes to test airline security before the attacks. Now there is evidence of others doing similar dry runs. And once again, Washington has been caught napping. Homeland Security officials failed to report a group of Middle Eastern men acting suspiciously aboard a Northwest Airlines flight three years ago.

A newly released inspector general report backs eyewitness accounts of suspicious behavior by 13 Middle Eastern men on a Northwest Airlines flight in 2004 and reveals several missteps by government officials, including failure to file an incident report until a month after the matter became public. According to the Homeland Security report, the "suspicious passengers," 12 Syrians and their Lebanese-born promoter, were traveling on Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on expired visas. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services extended the visas one week after the June 29, 2004, incident. The report also says that a background check in the...

Report confirms terror dry run By Audrey Hudson THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published May 30, 2007 Download the inspector general report (PDF) A newly released inspector general report backs eyewitness accounts of suspicious behavior by 13 Middle Eastern men on a Northwest Airlines flight in 2004 and reveals several missteps by government officials, including failure to file an incident report until a month after the matter became public. According to the Homeland Security report, the "suspicious passengers," 12 Syrians and their Lebanese-born promoter, were traveling on Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on expired visas. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services...

The inspector general for Homeland Security late Friday released new details of what federal air marshals say was a terrorist dry run aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on June 29, 2004. Several portions of the report remain redacted. The release stems from a Freedom of Information request by The Washington Times in April 2006. The Times first reported on July 22 that this and other probes and dry runs were occurring on commercial flights since the September 11 terrorist attacks. Look for the full report in Wednesday's edition of The Times. Excerpts fom 51-page inspector...

U.S. Seeks Closing of Visa Loophole for Britons -Full Story- Omar Khyam, the ringleader of the thwarted London bomb plot who was sentenced to life imprisonment on Monday, showed the potential for disaffected young men to be lured as terrorists, a threat that British officials said they would have to contend with for a generation.But the 25-year-old Mr. Khyam, a Briton of Pakistani descent, also personifies a larger and more immediate concern: as a British citizen, he could have entered the United States without a visa, like many of an estimated 800,000 other Britons of Pakistani origin.American officials, citing...

The recent terror attempt in Britian reminded me of Annie Jacobsen's account about flight 327 on Northwest Airlines that she believes was a "dry run" for terrorists. So one asks, how much of this has been going on? What other plots are in motion? Is it time to keep all foreigners off planes or subject to extreme scrutiny?

A secret federal investigation has been launched into alarming events on a now-infamous domestic flight last June when a group of passengers claimed that some Syrians were conducting a dry run for a terror attack or hijacking. Annie Jacobsen, who first came forward with details of disturbing behaviour by the 14 Syrians on Northwest Flight 327, from Detroit to Los Angeles, has been interviewed about events on the flight by four officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). They flew from Chicago to Los Angeles to talk to her, she said last week, even though she was three days...

Source Annie Jacobsen Gets a Visit from the Feds This is Part XIII of the ongoing series entitled "Terror in the Skies". By Annie Jacobsen 4/22/2005 The call came a little over a month ago, on my cellular phone -- which is not listed. It went like this: "Hello Annie, this is [name withheld, and name withheld, and name withheld and name withheld]. We're from the Department of Homeland Security." "Yes." "We'd like to set up a time to talk with you." "Okay, now is good." "Actually, we'd prefer to come to your house. How is March 15?" "Not so...

... Then, just minutes before the aircraft doors were set to close, ground agents hurried down the jet way with a group of late arrivals. advertisement According to the ground agents, the nine men had arrived independently on separate itineraries from various Middle Eastern countries. The flight crew was told that one man came from Lahore, Pakistan, another from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, another from Afghanistan. Several of the men had no carry-ons, which one of the flight attendants found unusual. Most passengers embarking on a long, international flight carry at least something with them. The flight attendant took the...

This is Part V of the ongoing series entitled “Terror in the Skies, Again?” A few days ago, WomensWallStreet.com received an important email. It was from Billie Jo Rodriguez, another passenger who was on Northwest Airlines flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on June 29. Billie Jo is a Certified Public Accountant living in Oxnard, California. She had some additional, disturbing information about flight 327 that she felt someone needed to know. She had been so terrified by what happened on the flight that she sent two emails to the Department of Homeland Security telling them about the experience,...

A WWS Exclusive Article Note from the Editors: You are about to read an account of what happened during a domestic flight that one of our writers, Annie Jacobsen, took from Detroit to Los Angeles. The WWS Editorial Team debated long and hard about how to handle this information and ultimately we decided it was something that should be shared. What does it have to do with finances? Nothing, and everything. Here is Annie's story. On June 29, 2004, at 12:28 p.m., I flew on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles with my husband and our young...

On June 29, 2004, at 12:28 p.m., I flew on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles with my husband and our young son. Also on our flight were 14 Middle Eastern men between the ages of approximately 20 and 50 years old. What I experienced during that flight has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats. On that Tuesday, our journey began uneventfully. Starting out that morning in Providence, Rhode Island, we went through security screening,...

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....

The 14 Syrians on Northwest Airlines flight 327...To the dismay of many, it's the story that won't go away. The fact that a group of Syrian men acted in a way that terrified some passengers and caused a squad of federal officials to be called out to meet the plane upon landing is of interest to anyone who flies the friendly skies. And that is why this story won't just go away. The 14 Syrians on Northwest Airlines flight 327...To the dismay of many, it's the story that won't go away. The fact that a group of Syrian men acted...

No one yet has the full story on the infamous June 29 Northwest Airlines Flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles, on which thirteen Syrian musicians acted so suspiciously that passenger and WomensWallStreet.com writer Annie Jacobsen feared she was about to be killed by terrorists. The identity of the band remained unknown for a while until I identified them as the backup band for Canaanite crooner Nour Mehana, whom I dubbed the "Syrian Wayne Newton." Regardless of the behavior of Nour Mehana's band, Ms. Jacobsen's story has focused international attention on the very serious issue of terrorists sizing up our...

For much of the past month a fight has been raging in news reports and over the Internet about the behavior of 14 male Middle Eastern passengers on Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles. Were the men terrorists casing the plane for a possible attack, as freelance journalist Annie Jacobsen suspected in a long article about the incident? Or were they, as the men said and federal investigators later concluded, a Syrian band on their way to a gig? Until now, news accounts have only featured government spokesmen or airline personnel who were not actually on the...

Rashomon in the Skies: The Tangled Tale of Flight 327 By Clinton W. Taylor Published 8/5/2004 12:09:20 AM No one yet has the full story on the infamous June 29 Northwest Airlines Flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles, on which thirteen Syrian musicians acted so suspiciously that passenger and WomensWallStreet.com writer Annie Jacobsen feared she was about to be killed by terrorists. The identity of the band remained unknown for a while until I identified them as the backup band for Canaanite crooner Nour Mehana, whom I dubbed the "Syrian Wayne Newton." Regardless of the behavior of Nour Mehana's...

Continuing Questions About Flight By JOE SHARKEY Published: August 3, 2004 ne of the major remaining questions about Northwest Airlines Flight 327 on June 29 from Detroit to Los Angeles - the flight that was met by federal agents and local police responding to a possible terrorist incident - is this: Did, as a passenger reported, 7 of the 13 Syrian musicians whose behavior was terrifying some passengers stand up in unison and take strategic positions by the lavatories and the exit door during final approach to Los Angeles, an act that would have been a frighteningly overt and unambiguous...