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Old Oct 26th, 2005, 05:35 PM        airplane II: the sequel
http://www.nationalreview.com/commen...0510260833.asp

October 26, 2005, 8:33 a.m.
Could It Happen Again?
Terrorists might not have given up on planes.

By Anne Morse

Journalist Annie Jacobsen gained a certain degree of fame last year as the
woman who wrote about the strange and frightening behavior of a group of
Syrian "musicians" aboard a Northwest Airlines flight. She has now written a
riveting book,
<http://www.nationalreview.com/redirect/amazon.p?j=1890626627> Terror in the
Skies: Why 9-11 Could Happen Again about what happened that day and in the
months that followed. Jacobsen put her investigative skills to work, and
discovered that the harrowing events that took place on her flight were far
from an isolated occurrence. She ends her book with a warning: If our
security system does not improve, another 9/11 is almost inevitable.

The events of Flight 327, on June 29, 2004, became notorious after Jacobsen
described them on WomensWallStreet.com <http://www.womenswallstreet.com/> .
Jacobsen, her husband, and their four-year-old son boarded Flight 327 in
Detroit, the last leg of their flight home to Los Angeles after a family
vacation in Connecticut. Settling into their seats, the Jacobsens noticed 14
Middle Eastern men board the plane. Shortly after takeoff, she writes, "The
unusual activity began." One of the men got up and entered the restroom at
the front of the coach section, taking with him a large McDonald's bag.
Leaving the restroom, he passed the bag to another man and gave him a
thumbs-up sign. For the next hour, the men used the restroom consecutively.
They congregated in groups at the rear of the plane. One of them stood in
first class a foot from the cockpit door. Two were standing mid-cabin, and
two more were standing in the galley, keeping an eye on the flight
attendant. Others spent the flight patrolling the aisles, scrutinizing
increasingly nervous passengers.

Unable to stand it any longer, Jacobsen's husband got up and spoke with a
flight attendant, who told him the captain was concerned about what was
going on, and that there were people on board "higher up than you and me
watching" - an apparent reference to federal air marshals. But it got worse:
As the plane prepared to land, seven of the men suddenly stood up in unison
and walked to the front and back lavatories of the coach-class cabin. One by
one, they entered the lavatories, each spending about four minutes inside.
Two men stood against the emergency-exit door; another stood blocking the
aisle. At the back of the plane, two more men stood next to the bathroom,
blocking the aisle. They ignored repeated orders from a flight attendant to
sit down. "The last man came out of the bathroom, and as he passed [one of
the other Syrians] he ran his forefinger across his neck and mouthed the
word 'No,'" Jacobsen writes.

As they deplaned, the Jacobsens saw two air marshals flash their badges and
pull over several of the men. She later learned that representatives of the
FBI, the LAPD, the Federal Air Marshals Service (FAMS) and the
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) met the plane. But, contrary to
protocol, there was nobody from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
the post-9/11 law-enforcement arm of what was once the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, which oversees the air marshals. Nor was there
anyone to take statements from passengers who'd witnessed the events. The
Jacobsens told airport security what they had seen, and eventually told
their story to a FAMS supervisor, who directed them to write down their
statements and swear to their veracity. It quickly became clear that key
elements of the story they (and a flight attendant) told - particularly
regarding what the men had done with the McDonald's bag - conflicted with
accounts offered by the Syrians.

The next day Jacobsen was surprised to find no mention of the incident in
the newspapers, or of any arrests at LAX. She began doing some online
digging - and what she found chilled her. Jason Burke, a correspondent for
the London Observer, had written a story a few months earlier headlined
"Terrorist Bid to Build Bombs in Mid-Flight: Intelligence Reveals Dry Runs
of New Threat to Blow Up Airlines." Burke described "dry runs" on European
flights by terrorists attempting to carry components of explosive devices
onto passenger jets hidden in everyday items like cameras and medicine
bottles, and assemble them in mid-flight - in restrooms. Burke noted that
the United States was aware of these dry runs and that recent British
Airways flights from London to Washington had been canceled over fears of
such attacks. The French also knew of these attempts after discovering 100
grams of the explosive pentrite hidden in an armrest on a jet arriving in
France from Morocco. (In August 2004, barely a month after the Jacobsens'
flight, two civilian aircraft in Russia exploded, killing all 90 passengers
and crew. The cause of the explosions? Bombs that had been placed in the
planes' bathrooms by women with links to Chechen terrorists.)

When Jacobsen decided to write about her experience aboard Flight 327, she
was contacted by Dave Adams, the head of public affairs at FAMS. Adams
insisted that the Middle Eastern men on her flight were "just musicians"
from Syria. They'd been questioned by FAMS, the FBI, and the TSA. Their
story checked out, Adams said, and none of their names appeared on the FBI's
"no fly" list. Given the evidence that terrorists had been trying to
assemble bombs in airliner restrooms, why, Jacobsen asked, had air marshals
done nothing about the Syrians' bizarre behavior - much of it involving
restrooms? "Our . . . agents have to have an event to arrest somebody,"
Adams explained.

Jacobsen didn't buy Adams's "they were just musicians" story, and her
gripping account of what happened on Flight 327 - "Terror
<http://www.womenswallstreet.com/columns/column.aspx?aid=578> in the Skies,
Again?" - was posted on July 12, 2004, on WomensWallStreet. It exploded
through the blogosphere, then the mainstream media, spawning intense debate.
To some, Jacobsen was a courageous journalist exposing deadly flaws in
America's security system; to others, she was a racist, paranoid mommy with
an overactive imagination. Jacobsen's persistence in pursuing the story
angered higher-ups in FAMS, and led to her testimony to the U.S. House
Judiciary Committee.

Astonishingly, Jacobsen writes, many of the federal agents who investigated
the events of Flight 327 continued to insist that nothing unusual happened.
In a sense, this was correct: These dry runs, or probes, apparently happen
all the time. In the weeks after she posted her story, Jacobsen received
more than 5,000 e-mails - including 250 from commercial pilots, flight
attendants, and other airport employees who are forbidden by their employers
to talk to the press about similar "incidents." Gary Boettcher, president of
the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations, told Jacobsen that she'd
likely witnessed a "dry run," and that he'd had many similar experiences
himself: "The terrorists are probing us all the time." Mark Bogosian, an
American Airlines pilot, said incidents like the one she described were a
"dirty little secret" that airline crew members had known about for some
time. Air marshals sent e-mails congratulating Jacobsen for bringing to
light "something that had been going on since shortly after 9/11 and was
being suppressed." Many airline employees expressed outrage over security
procedures that are lax, politically correct, and likely to lead to another
9/11.




RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT

Much blame for these procedures can be assigned to two entities: the
Transportation Department and the ACLU. Incredibly, the Transportation
Department forbids searches of more than two male Arabs per flight; to
search more would be "discriminatory." This rule is strictly enforced by
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, who, just ten days after Arab
hijackers used jets to murder 3,000 Americans, reminded all U.S. airlines
that it was illegal to discriminate against passengers based on their race,
color, national or ethnic origin, or religion. To make sure they got the
message, Mineta subsequently directed his department to file discrimination
complaints against Continental, United Airlines, and American Airlines.
(United and American settled their cases for $1.5 million each; Continental,
for $500,000.)

In June 2002, the ACLU got into the act, joining forces with the Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee to launch a number of lawsuits over cases of
men being removed from jets. The ACLU has also filed a class-action lawsuit
against the Department of Homeland Security, claming, among other things,
that the "no-fly list" violates passengers' right to be free from
unreasonable search and seizure. The airlines are now working hard to avoid
discriminating against anyone else - apparently by allowing unlimited
numbers of Middle Eastern men carrying expired visas and mysterious packages
to board jets and engage in conduct that terrifies the passengers and crew.
"The airlines' fear of being accused of racial profiling could very well
lead us to stand around and wonder, 'How did we let 9/11 happen again?'"
Jacobsen writes.

As Jacobsen began appearing on television, FAMS kicked into high gear,
repeatedly denying that anything untoward had occurred on Flight 327 and
that it had no "specific intelligence information" that terrorists were
conducting dry runs, even as more and more journalists broke stories about
them. FAMS spokesman Dave Adams insisted that all 14 of the Syrians had been
thoroughly investigated and that they were in the U.S. legally. FAMS
employees had followed the Syrians to the casino, he claimed, and then
trailed them to their hotel.

The reality, as Jacobsen documents, was that only two of the men were
briefly investigated, 13 were traveling on expired visas (the 14th was an
American citizen), and nobody had any idea where the "musicians" went after
leaving the airport.

Much of the information FAMS gave out about Flight 327 was contradictory,
and as Jacobsen continued to write and speak out, frustrated FAMS and FBI
spokesmen tried to discredit her, painting the Princeton-educated journalist
as a hysterical mother who had become upset at the sight of Middle
Easterners on her plane. "That the FBI and FAMS wanted the story to
disappear was obvious. And I knew why," Jacobsen writes. "They made major
errors in their handling of Flight 372. The more attention it received, the
more would be revealed about how they had bungled the operation."

Even as they attacked her veracity, seven other passengers from Flight 327
came forward to confirm Jacobsen's account. One was so frightened by what
she witnessed that she no longer travels by air. Others said they were
convinced they were about to die. These passengers contacted Homeland
Security, the FBI, and FAMS, telling stories similar to Jacobsen's.
Nevertheless, Dave Adams continued to insist that Jacobsen and her husband
were the only passengers to complain.

"That so many passengers were terrified underscores how outrageous it was
that the government had simply let the fourteen Syrians go based only on
their claim that they were a traveling band of musicians with a gig to get
to," Jacobsen writes. (Months later, Jacobsen says, Adams admitted that he'd
lied to her about the Syrians' being followed to the casino and to their
hotel.)

Thanks to Jacobsen's reporting - she wrote 13 additional articles about
Flight 327 - the House Judiciary Committee opened an investigation into the
matter, putting the actions of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and
other federal agencies under congressional scrutiny. Even then, Jacobsen
says, FAMS officials continued to lie about her, about what took place on
Flight 327, and about how they'd dealt with the Syrians once the plane
landed. They also refused to allow the Judiciary Committee to question the
air marshals from Flight 327.

Jacobsen continues to receive e-mails from airline employees relating
apparent terrorist probes: Middle Eastern men who arrive moments before
boarding, without luggage, and pay cash for one-way flights on which they
take photographs and pass objects to one another. She writes of the all but
useless "no fly" list that allows suspected terrorists to board while
keeping babies and U.S. senators off; of law-enforcement officials not
bothering to show up to interview badly behaving passengers despite requests
from pilots to do so. In July 2004, a flight attendant e-mailed Jacobsen,
telling her that a partially made bomb had been found in a flight-attendant
jump seat on an Airbus 330S - discovered because flight attendants heard
ticking. And on April 8, 2005, Department of Homeland Security officials
discovered that two passengers aboard KLM Flight 685, traveling from
Amsterdam to Mexico City, were Saudis who had attended the same flight
school as 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour. "Will we ever know how often these
incidents occur? Twice a year? Once a month? Every day?" Jacobsen asks.

More to the point: What can we do to stop them? What it will take, Jacobsen
says, is a strong leader in the Department of Homeland Security - one who
will ruthlessly purge the agency of incompetence and out-of-date policies
(such as continuing to train flight crews to cooperate with hijackers). The
National Intelligence Reform Act, known as the Intel Bill, should also help:
It created a new Cabinet-level position, the Director of National
Intelligence - someone who will oversee the 15 federal intelligence agencies
and presumably teach them the need to share crucial information about terror
suspects. Furthermore, the Intel Bill will make it more difficult for
airlines - ever mindful of those empty jets in the weeks after 9/11 - to
hide suspicious incidents from the public. They must now report them
directly to the TSA Operations Center as they happen, preventing airlines
from making information from these incidents disappear - and pretending
people like Annie Jacobsen are crazy.

Jacobsen also recommends that Americans take a leaf from the Israeli
intelligence book: The Israelis have not lost a commercial plane to
hijackers in 35 years because they engage, not in racial profiling, but in
passenger profiling.
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