Posted on 03/08/2005 12:07:24 PM PST by LaBradford22
Airline Ticket Agent Recalls Atta on 9/11 Monday, March 07, 2005 SCARBOROUGH, Maine — A former U.S. Airways ticket agent who issued boarding passes to the terrorists who later hijacked a plane out of Boston on Sept. 11, 2001, says he felt guilty afterward.
Michael Tuohey, of Scarborough, said he was suspicious of Mohamed Atta (search) and Abdulaziz Alomari (search) when they rushed to make their flight out of Portland International Jetport early that morning.
Atta's demeanor, his angry-looking eyes and the pair's first-class, one-way tickets to Los Angeles made Tuohey think twice.
"I said to myself, 'If this guy doesn't look like an Arab terrorist, then nothing does.' Then I gave myself a mental slap, because in this day and age, it's not nice to say things like this," Tuohey told the Maine Sunday Telegram. "You've checked in hundreds of Arabs and Hindus and Sikhs, and you've never done that. I felt kind of embarrassed."
A few hours later, Tuohey was blaming himself as he watched news reports of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
After leaving Portland on a 6 a.m. flight, Atta and Alomari landed in Boston, where they joined three other hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11 (search), which they crashed into one of the twin towers. Five other hijackers left Boston around the same time and crashed United Airlines Flight 175 (search) into the other tower.
Tuohey, 58, said he felt at least partly responsible in the days following the attacks. "In your mind you're saying, 'Why didn't you react? Why didn't you do something?"' said Tuohey, who retired last year.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Political Correctness in action ...
Profile, profile, profile,......
It's their best weapon. Make us feel guilty for hating them. Then they have us at their mercy, of which they have none.
Exactly.
I feel bad for the guy. I have often thought about the airport people you now must know that they had contact with these guys and how they must feel about that.
Goes to show you, always follow your gut instinct.
Yep. PC and the ACLU types made him think that way.
I saw this guy interviewed last night on the news and my heart just broke for him! Can you imagine how he must feel? How sad.
I don't hear Senator Kerry expressing his guilty feelings for ignoring the information he was given (pre-9/11) about faults in the security at Logan airport.
but if he had spoken up, his life would have been an endless parade of lawyers, "civil rights" officials, press attacks and sensitivity training sessions...what was he to do?
I also feel bad for the Hindus and Sikhs, who are not part of this madness but are often mistaken for Jihadis.
I saw the 9/11 video where the security guard let the hijackers through twice after setting off the alarms.
It his head I like to see on a platter.
Let's see, middle eastern men setting off alarms. This person is as dumb as they get.
" a skull on a poison bottle." Great image !
and yet.... when my husband who had on an FDNY shirt, myself, blonde & blue eyes, and a friend who is blonde & blue eyes and 56, recently went on vacation....we were pulled out of line at LAX while middle easterners walked right thru.
Yeah we really look like terrorists.
He could have been prosecuted if he followed his instincts. It's the law that is the problem - and the law has not changed! Thank Norman Minetta.
IDIOT!!!
That is exactly why this is not racial profiling. You suspected them because they looked suspicious not because they were simply mid-easterners.
Thankfully, few of us will ever make an error of judgment of this magnitude. Unfortunately, rather than learning from this (the value of instincts, profiling, concerns, etc.), the PC choice has been to encourage it to happen again.
Political Correctness Indoctrination facilitated the hijackers on their way.
Despite all I have read, I somehow overlooked this.
Please confirm: Kerry had specific prior information about security problems at Logan?
I will add that I also feel badly for the security guy. He had no tangible basis to deny Atta boarding, and we do live in PC times. Letting Atta on the plane will haunt him for the rest of his life.
I personally do not agree that there should be no racial profiling whatsoever. Middle Eastern males more likely to be terrorists than other people. That's just reality.
I do not think DWB arrests are right, but they don't represent the same risk.
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