Terror in the Skies (Continued)

Regarding Annie Jacobsen's intriguing article, I just got word from Dave Adams of the Federal Air Marshals Service (FAM). Adams confirmed that he spoke to Annie Jacobsen, was quoted accurately in her story, and confirmed some of the basic facts outlined in her article (there were 14 Syrians on the flight; they were questioned by the Los Angeles Police Department, FBI, FAM, and so on; they were a musical band).

Update: I agree with many readers that some skepticism is still warranted, especially if this is the same Annie Jacobsen that wrote the piece. (Update to the update: James Taranto notes that the Jungian Annie lives in Toronto, not Los Angeles). Another quick thought: Building a bomb in mid-air using 14 operatives to take down one plane seems like a rather inefficient means of terrorism. If al Qaeda has been driven to such pathetic plots, maybe (no thanks to Norm Mineta) we really are getting somewhere.

Update II: By the way, my friend and Philly talk show host Michael Smerconish was the first to pick up on the idiotic policy that Jacobsen mentions which punished airlines for pulling over more than two Arab/Muslim passengers for secondary questioning. More info here, including Smerconish's testimony about what 9/11 commissioner and former Navy Secretary John Lehman told him.

Update III: Good discussion at Ace of Spades and via Volokh, Jeff the Baptist thinks the Syrians were just praying. Hmmmm. Thomas Galvin had his own experience observing a passenger with "an oblong object wrapped in cloth." Via Daniel Drezner, here's the February 2004 London Observer article on intelligence related to mid-air bomb plots. David Horowitz had an eyebrow-raising flight experience last month.

If this story is real and these men were what Annie thought they were, it's a frightening story, indeed. Enough to make me start doing that nervous twitch everytime a plane flies a bit too low over my house. I thought I got rid of that twitch.

The more I write about it (as I'm reading other bloggers' reactions to the story while I compose this), the more I think, why not? They keep saying they're going to do something, why would I think this story is not true?

Again, I don't want it to be true. The implications are not something I can let my brain chew on right now. Head, meet sand.

But what if? What if they were making a dry run? You can't really protect the country by dealing in what ifs. So what's the solution? Or is there one? And what do you make of this story?

Update V: Just a side note. The air marshals' spokesman, Dave Adams, was a bit defensive in confirming the story, which seems to lend unsettling credence to Jacobsen's account, in my opinion. Also, I've been trying to get a hold of the p.r. reps for WomensWallStreet.com. A receptionist said they've been swamped with calls since this morning. Am hoping this means my colleagues in the mainstream media are digging into the story, too.

Onehand Clapping
http://www.donaldsensing.com/2004/07/casing-northwest-327-threat-or-hoax.html
Friday, July 16, 2004

Casing Northwest #327 - threat or hoax?
Now-famous account seems over-detailed; color me skeptical

There is a lot of controversy over whether "Terror in the Skies," by Annie Jacobsen in Women's Wall Street is credible. Annie wrote at engrossing length about Northwest Airlines Flight 327, from Detroit to Los Angeles, on which there were 14 Arab men acting extremely suspiciously - suspiciously enough to alarm the flight crew and cause a swarm of federal officers to charge the aircraft after it gated in LAX.

Michelle Malkin wrote today that she spoke to Dave Adams of the Federal Air Marshals Service (FAMS), who confirmed the main outline of the story - he "was a bit defensive in confirming the story, which seems to lend unsettling credence to Jacobsen's account," says Malkin. (Why would this add credence? I was a spokesman for this federal law-enforcement agency and can understand Dave's "defensiveness" (more likely caution) in speaking with a reporter who seems to have decided in advance that he had something to hide.)

The feds, says Annie, questioned the 14 men at length and finally released them after determining they were clean. They were, reportedly, a musical band hired to play in LA, hence their trip.

So around the internet the story has traveled, resulting in arguments for and against its authenticity. Malkin says the story is true in the main, confirmed by FAMS. But others argue, "Elements of Mrs. Jacobsen's story do not have the ring of truth."

Count me as one of the skeptics.

One of the things I learned in the years I have spent in law enforcement at both the federal and local level is that witnesses of traumatic events relate few details. When people are frightened or otherwise psychologically shocked, their minds don't record movies, but snapshots, and not many of them, either.

Annie's story has a wealth of detail, so much that I find myself disbelieving that she could have been as afraid as she says she was. Since she nowhere indicates that she took contemporaneous notes, I have to conclude her story was written from memory, and written at a minimum many hours after the flight landed.

Look at what Malkin says FAMS confirmed:

... there were 14 Syrians on the flight; they were questioned by the Los Angeles Police Department, FBI, FAM, and so on; they were a musical band.
That's it. This is a far cry from confirming that Annie's story is all its impressive detail is accurate. In fact, it's not even close.

As charitably as I can, let me explain why I think that Annie considerably embellished her story, and not necessarily embellished it deliberately (but might have in some parts; she's a paid writer after all).

One thing professional investigators learn is that almost every witness they interview understands the events concerned through certain, pre-existing templates. One reason different witnesses of the same events give accounts often greatly varying from each other is that their templates are so different. So investigators learn to be suspicious of details, except for the real, main details that are so obvious or important that they break through anyone's template.

Example: a bank robbery gone bad. Witness A says the robber fired his gun several times. "B" says it was nine times. "C" says it was a half-dozen. "D" says the robber had an automatic weapon and sprayed the area. What have they agreed on? Only that the robber fired his gun more than once.

Like most Americans, Annie Jacobsen has a certain template of post-9/11 airline travel that Arab men, especially multiples, are a potential threat aboard an airliner. This is not an unreasonable template, given that it wasn't kilt-wearing Scotsmen who committed 9/11's grim deeds. I have that template, too.

But unconsciously this template affects how she interpreted the events aboard the airliner. She was predisposed to understand the Arab men's actions in threatening ways. She even admits it. Before all the passengers even finished boarding:

As we sat waiting for the plane to finish boarding, we noticed another large group of Middle Eastern men boarding. The first man wore a dark suit and sunglasses. He sat in first class in seat 1A, the seat second-closet to the cockpit door. The other seven men walked into the coach cabin. As "aware" Americans, my husband and I exchanged glances, and then continued to get comfortable. I noticed some of the other passengers paying attention to the situation as well. As boarding continued, we watched as, one by one, most of the Middle Eastern men made eye contact with each other. They continued to look at each other and nod, as if they were all in agreement about something. I could tell that my husband was beginning to feel "anxious."
NB: the plane was still loading passengers, and Annie has already decided that the Arab men are threats. She has already decided they are threats - for what? They made "eye contact" with one another and seemed to agree about something. Might thay have been ensuring they were all together and simply acknowledging that fact?

This is the mighty thin gruel from which Annie constructs a banquet of a near-death experience. Even a McDonald's bag, carried by one of the Arabs, becomes ominous:

But once we were in the air and the seatbelt sign was turned off, the unusual activity began. The man in the yellow T-shirt got out of his seat and went to the lavatory at the front of coach -- taking his full McDonald's bag with him. When he came out of the lavatory he still had the McDonald's bag, but it was now almost empty. He walked down the aisle to the back of the plane, still holding the bag. When he passed two of the men sitting mid-cabin, he gave a thumbs-up sign. When he returned to his seat, he no longer had the McDonald's bag.
Hmm... The bag was full, then it was "almost empty," then it was gone. Sounds like what happens to my McDonalds bag when I finish eating.

Her whole story is rich with such innuendo, after which we learn that nothing happened.

Red State blog says bluntly that Annie's story, "Seems Like a Hoax to Me." They are near-scornfully dismissive of Annie's report of the flight crews' covert alliance with Annie and her husband - which rang very unlikely with me as well - and denounce the whole account as a hoax.

I don't think Annie's article is a hoax. But by no means is it an unbiased, dispassionate, objective account of the flight. Annie was convinced from before takeoff until after landing that her life was in potential peril, and this template filtered every event.

What I am very skeptical of is the wealth of minutiae she reports. Michelle Malkin wrote that OpinionJournal's James Taranto pointed out that the Annie Jacobsen who offers "Creative Writing, Dreamwork, Individual Psychotherapy" lives in Canada, not LA. But I think the account shows some pretty creative recollection, anyway.

So what did happen on Flight 327? Probably nothing more than what Dave Adams of FAMS confirmed explicitly or implicitly to Malkin: there were 14 Arab men traveling with Syrian passports. Their actions did alert the aircrew enough to contact LAX to have federal officers waiting for the plane. The Arabs, a band en route to a gig in LA, were detained, questioned and released.

That's the entire story.

A reasonable question: were the Arabs in fact a band? A commenter on Malkin's site named a real american [sic] wrote (no direct link),

Did you ever stop to think that Detroit, Michigan has one of the largest populations of Arab-Americans in the nation?

Did you ever stop to think that perhaps an Arab family in LA hired the band for a wedding?

I lived in Akron, Ohio and my nice arab employers hired a band from DETROIT to come play at their daughter's wedding, that band had like 10 people in it.
I am absolutely confident that the feds did check their hire out, almost certainly before they released them. And monitored the gig, too.

I won't try to split hairs over how much of Annie's account is embellished, except for the bare details FAMS confirmed, nor how much of it might have been deliberately, not unconsciously, embellished. Nor am I accusing Annie of making a mountain out of a molehill - Arab terrorism against American airlines is a real, persistent threat. But I do think she templated the events enormously, to the point that I am skeptical of most of the other details.

As I finish writing this post, I see a new post by Michelle that I think confirms my template postulate:

Just got off the phone with Annie Jacobsen. ... Recounting the flight, she told me "My legs were like rubber...It was four and a half hours of terror."
So Annie says she was terrorized before the plane even took off.

Michelle also says that the Washington Post "has been sitting on the true story" (well, how much is true, Michelle?) "since last Friday," and that "NBC Nightly News, ABC, and Dateline NBC are now on the story as well." She also says that FAMS has "apparently supplied" (to whom she says not) witness statements and "other corroborations of Jacobsen's account."

Which, if true, really just proves that the feds concluded there was no threat, because files of active investigations are never released.

I remain skeptical for the reasons I explained above, but it is certain that Annie Jacobsen was indeed scared witless by predisposition to be scared, and this fact affected how she understood and reported everything. Lots of embellishments, psychologizing and dramatic reporting here.

Note to commenters: reviewing comments on other blogs about this makes me aware that emotions run high on this report. Think before you write: no profanity, no name calling, no attacks on persons. Violators will be deleted; egregious violators will be banned forever with no more warning. Sorry, but that's just how it is.

Update: I meant to write near the beginning that while I have worked within law enforcement since 1993, I am not a detective and have never personally investigated crimes. I have been deeply involved in investigations otherwise, though, including the bombing of the Murrah building by T. McVeigh in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Update: Michelle Malkin kindly linked to this post and then asked a eminently reasonable question:

I asked Jacobsen if she talked with other passengers. She said no. I also asked if she had heard from other passengers from her flight in response to her story. She said she hasn't. If anyone else out there was on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles Flight on June 29, 2004, departing at 12:28 p.m., we'd love to hear from you.
Absolutely right!

Monday, July 19, 2004
http://www.donaldsensing.com/2004/07/terror-in-skies-jacobsen-writes-more.html
Terror in the Skies - Jacobsen writes more
Sheds more heat, no more light

Annie Jacobsen, who is not this woman (as some have emailed me she is), has posted part 2 of her story on Women's Wall Street. I just found it and have not read it yet, but I thought I'd pass the link along.

Update: Okay, now I've read it (it isn't long, and for the life of me I don't understand why WWS.com breaks its stories into separate pages of one or two grafs each).

There is no new information about her June 29 flight. Annie says that she has been contacted by a number of major media outlets - whose coverage we still await to see or read (tonight on NBC or ABC, we hope?).

She also writes she has been emailed by members of the airline industry who agree that something suspicious was going on. For example:

Gary Boettcher, Member, Board of Directors, Allied Pilots Association, said, "Folks, I am a Captain with a major airline. I was very involved with the Arming Pilots effort. Your reprint of this airborne event is not a singular nor isolated experience. The terrorists are probing us all the time."

During a later phone conversation I had with Boettcher, he told me that based on his experience, it was his opinion that I was likely on a dry run. He said he's had many of these experiences and so have many of his fellow captains. They've been trying to speak out about this but so far their words have been falling on deaf ears.

According to Mark Bogosian, B-757/767 pilot for American Airlines, "The incident you wrote about, and incidents like it, occur more than you like to think. It is a 'dirty little secret' that all of us, as crew members, have known about for quite some time."
Annie raises a lot more questions and reiterates her belief that Arab men should be singled out for special scrutiny by airline security personnel. First quoting "Rand K. Peck, captain for a major U.S. airline:"
We have little to fear from grandmothers and little boys. But Middle Eastern males are protected, not by our Constitution, but from our current popular policy of political correctness and a desire to offend no one at any cost, regardless of how many airplanes and bodies litter the landscape. This is my personal opinion, formed by my experiences and observations.
To which Annie adds:
This brings us to the heart of the matter -- political correctness. Political correctness has become a major road block for airline safety. From what I've now learned from the many emails and phone calls that I have had with airline industry personnel, it is political correctness that will eventually cause us to stand there wondering, "How did we let 9/11 happen again?"
These are all points worth pondering, for sure. As I said in my first post on the subject,"it wasn't kilt-wearing Scotsmen who committed 9/11's grim deeds" and in "Gaps that need filling,"
... even if these 14 Arab men were entirely innocuous, on another airliner somewhere, somewhen, there seem certain to be other Arab men who intend destruction. The enemy is still out there and he still wants to kill us.
All that being said, we are no more enlightened about NWA Flight 327 of June 29 than we were yesterday. There are no new facts revealed, just a defense by Annie of her deep suspicion of Arab men on airlines and her scorn of airline security systems in place.

Do I think Islamofacsist terrorists would like to hijack an American airliner and either blow it up or use it as a terror weapon? Of course I think so. But that's a generality to which anyone can agree. The hard case is whether Annie's flight specifically was either a near-hijacking or was being cased for terrorist's future purposes. And on that question no certain answer can be given, but these facts remain:

No one was injured, although Annie was frightened and says other passengers and crew members were, too.

Law enforcement personnel detained the Arab men without incident, investigated their story and found no cause to detain them further.

Why is so much being made by commenters or other writers about the McDonald's bag? I wrote of how ominous Annie made the bag to be, when, even by her own words, it was brought on full, then emptied and (apparently) discarded. This is scary? Get a grip! Think, people, think - it was brought aboard as a carry-on. That means it passed through the x-ray machine, just like your car keys, wallet and purses do. Whaddya bet the scanner revealed two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame-seed bun?

Ah, but then come the devastating point, made to me by a number of commenters or emailers: "So, Don, do you eat your McDonalds meal in airplane lavatories?" And I am floored, because, ya know, you're right! It was a bomb! He took a McDonalds bag that had passed preboarding x-ray to the john! He's a terrorist! Or maybe hungry. Or maybe didn't trust the drummer not to swipe his Big Mac.

In Annie's original story, she wrote,
Two days after my experience on Northwest Airlines flight #327 came this notice from SBS TV, The World News, July 1, 2004:
The U.S. Transportation and Security Administration has issued a new directive which demands pilots make a pre-flight announcement banning passengers from congregating in aisles and outside the plane's toilets. The directive also orders flight attendants to check the toilets every two hours for suspicious packages.
Credible? The report is true, Annie's timeline is not. The UK-based Spy Blog posted January 8, 2004 that foreign-flag air carriers flying into US airspace had been told by the TSA
... to ban passengers from queueing for the lavatories.

The directive from the Transport Security Administration (TSA) requires the crew to make announcements every two hours telling passengers that they must not "congregate outside the toilets" or any other location."
He links to the Times Online piece reporting the order. There was a letter to the editor of the Honolulu Advertiser on Jan. 20, 2004, complaining of the TSA's "no congregate" rule. Finally, CNN reported on January 8,
Airlines have been asked to tell passengers they shouldn't congregate near aircraft lavatories because of security concerns, the Transportation Security Administration said Wednesday.

The agency in mid-December sent an advisory to airlines asking them to inform passengers that they should not gather in groups on airplanes, especially near the restroom, said spokesman Darrin Kayser.
I found all these references with ridiculous ease while writing this post. So why did Jacobsen insinuate (and insinuate she certainly did) that the "no congregate" policy somehow originated from the trips to the john the 14 Arab men made on her flight? She is a journalist. Why didn't she check the news record to determine whether the policy pre-existed her four hours of terror (her description, not mine)?

Because, as I said in my first post, her story is not objective, it is not unbiased. It is a fear-soaked article seeking to justify the writer's fear. Let me repeat: It is factual she was fearful, but her fear doesn't provide facts.

By all means, we should reexamine airline security and passenger screening and we certainly should place the safety and security of airline travel above the delicate feelings of political-correctness advocates. We should not need Annie's story to compel us to do that, but if it does, so much the better.

But remember: at the end of her flight, Annie Jacobsen and her family stepped off the airplane safe and sound. So did every other passenger and crew member. Somehow she and her advocates keep overlooking that fact. Annie's story is that, at the end of the day, there is no story.

Update: Michelle Malkin responds that the Jan. 8, 2004 "no congregate" order applied only to international flights, and that the July 1 order was a response to domestic airlines' longstanding request to clarify the policy. I stand corrected, but in any event, that the July 1 order sprang directly from NWA #327 on June 29 seems a stretch: I don't think TSA could work that fast for one, and second, the clarification had already been in the works.

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