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The case of the Flying Imams reached a settlement; and it favors political correctness and misguided views on profiling and religious sensitivities over common sense. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which represented the imams, said the settlement is "a victory for civil rights." "The six imams are pleased," Hooper said. "Their rights were maintained by the settlement." This is no victory for civil rights. These imams gave reasonable cause for alarm, based as much upon behavioral profiling as much as religious and ethnic profiling. The settlement sends a message that favors stupidity over safety: That lawsuit...

A settlement has been reached in the "Flying Imams" federal lawsuit that was filed by six Muslim men who claim they were falsely arrested on a US Airways jet in the Twin Cities three years ago because of their religious and ethnic backgrounds. According to federal court records, a settlement was reached Monday and filed with the court today. A clerk for U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan would not comment on a settlement and instead referred questions to attorneys. A New York attorney for the imams Omar Mohammedi, said this afternoon that settlement is "satisfactory to the plaintiffs." Mohammedi added...

President Barack Obama has asked to make a prime-time appearance during May sweeps. White House officials have requested up to an hour of airtime for Wednesday, April 29, according to TV Week. The press conference, which falls on the 100th day of Obama's presidency, will probably air in the 8 o'clock hour and address questions of the president's performance. Broadcast networks have not yet announced their response, but a source said that they will most likely agree to the administration's request. Will you tune in to President Obama's "100 Days" press conference? Or have there been too many already?

The Metropolitan Airports Commission has told a judge that six Muslim imams who sued after being kicked off a flight almost two years ago shouldn't be allowed to add an FBI agent as a defendant in the case. Lawyers for the imams claimed last week that they should be allowed to amend their suit because the FBI agent's involvement in the incident was "new evidence," but lawyers for the airports commission said that wasn't the case. "The FBI's specific role was disclosed in the police report and in court filings, well before the deadline to amend passed," the commission argued...

An Alaska Airlines plane has been isolated at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and passengers unloaded because an "unclaimed package" was found as the aircraft was flying from San Jose this morning. The pilot of Flight 383 informed the airport control tower that he had something on his plane that was of concern to him, said airport spokeswoman Terri-Ann Betancourt. She said it was something that "looked like a cellphone" but was not sure what the object was. The airlines described it as an "unclaimed package" discovered while the Boeing 737-400 was en route. There were 104 passengers and five crew members...

"Credible Security Risk" Those are the words of the pilot on Delta Flight 1824 out of OIA, after it pulled back from the gate Friday morning to take off for Atlanta. Nine Middle Eastern passengers, six males and three females, had been denied access to the plane when TSA screeners found they were carrying an array of suspicious items ranging from hydrogen peroxide, which can be used to make bombs, to wires and Vaseline bottles taped together. Perhaps most disturbing, what one TSA worker tells me were the first positive tests for SEMTEX ever reported by security at OIA. SEMTEX...

My wife was flying between 2 cities in the midwest this week and noticed that the arabic man next to her was texting the entire time of the flight. It is my opinion that the guy was testing the limits of cell-phone texting capability during flight. Perhaps a dry-run for another coordinated attack. I urged her to call DHS and let them know what she saw. Anybody else witness this kind of behavior?

MINNEAPOLIS — The six Muslim leaders who were removed from a US Airways flight last fall after passengers thought they were acting suspiciously will not include those passengers in their lawsuit against the airline and police, an attorney for the imams said Wednesday. A motion to amend the complaint to include the names of airline employees and police officers was entered Tuesday in U.S. District Court, attorney Frederick Goetz said. "We've identified the people we think are responsible," he said. No passengers were named. The imams, who were handcuffed and questioned, say the airline discriminated against them and violated their...

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.

...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...

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...

Six imams who are suing an airline and an airport for removing them from a flight also have aimed the lawsuit at passengers who the imams believe reported some of their activities. The suit filed this week in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis names as defendants "John Does" who "contacted US Airways to report the alleged suspicious behavior" of the imams before the Nov. 20 flight -- an inclusion some lawyers, who are not connected to the litigation, say will have a "chilling effect" on airline security. "If such a suit could proceed, it would have a chilling effect on...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - An Iraqi national wearing wires and concealing a magnet inside his rectum triggered a security scare at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday but officials said he posed no apparent threat.

BOSTON -- Four "hoax devices" were found at several Boston locations Wednesday, hours after officials detonated a suspicious package on an elevated structure above the Sullivan Square Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority station. The additional packages were found at the Boston University Bridge, the Longfellow Bridge and near the intersection of Stuart and Columbus streets. A device described by officials as a pipe bomb was found in the basement of the Tufts New England Medical Center at 185 Harrison Ave. A spokesman for the Boston Police Department said that all of the packages appeared to be similar. "Our device was not...

Three men detained at Port of Miami after giving suspicious statements By Vanessa Blum South Florida Sun-Sentinel Posted January 7 2007, 4:22 PM EST MIAMI -- Three men were detained Sunday after trying to gain access to the Port of Miami, according to a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The driver drew suspicion at the port's delivery entrance around 8 a.m. after making inconsistent statements, said Judy Orihuela. The driver could not produce the requested paperwork to identify himself and his cargo. The vehicle was subsequently searched and two additional men were found in the truck's cab, Orihuela...

Can you believe the six imams kicked off the US Airways flight in Minneapolis are threatening to sue? Can you believe they're walking around free rather than being held and investigated for "probing" on behalf of terrorists? Can you believe most of the media coverage of this incident focuses on possible civil rights violations and inappropriate religious "profiling"? Let's review the facts of the case: Several passengers on the flight complained to the crew about excessively loud "praying" by the Muslim "holy men." They complained that they were moving around the plane. An air marshal characterized their behavior as a...

He mentioned that an FBI agent slipped the idea that other box cutters were found, but that since the planes were grounded, they were not hijacked. He also mentioned that six weeks prior to 9/11, he identified four men on his flight from Boston and told the flight stewardess. Turns out two were actual 9/11 hijackers, but the report was dismissed as racial profiling.

A West Virginia airport terminal was evacuated Thursday after two bottles of liquid found in a woman's carry-on luggage twice tested positive for explosives residue, a Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman said. "It looks like there were four items containing liquids," said TSA spokeswoman Amy von Walter. "Two of those containers tested positive." A machine that security checkpoint screeners use to test for explosives registered positive, and a canine team also got a positive hit, von Walter said. Larry Salyers, manager of Tri-State Airport, said the bottles would be moved by robot to a remote area of the airport where officials...

The terrorist attack foiled by British authorities on Thursday was aimed at blowing up as many as 10 airplanes on trans-Atlantic flights, and plotters hoped to stage a dry run within two days, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The actual attack would have followed within days. One official said the suicide attackers planned to use a peroxide- based solution that could ignite when sparked by a camera flash or another electronic device. The test run was designed to see whether the plotters would be able to smuggle the needed materials aboard the planes, these officials said. They spoke only on...

This is the response from a retired Delta pilot in response to questions about whether he was going to see UAL 93. I haven't seen the movie, yet, but I intend to when I get the chance. Retirement has made me busier than ever, and I haven't had the chance to see many movies lately. As a Delta B-767 captain myself at the time of the attacks on 9/11 I was in crew rest in Orlando that morning. I had just turned on the TV in my hotel room only to see the WTC tower on fire, then saw the...

AMPA - A judge revoked bail for two Saudi men arrested Friday for boarding a school bus and riding to Wharton High. Initially, Mana Saleh Almanajam, 23, and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran, 20, were held in Orient Road Jail on bails of $250 each on misdemeanor trespassing charges. Circuit Judge Monica Sierra decided to hold them at a court appearance Saturday so investigators could dig deeper into their pasts. A friend of the two University of South Florida students tried to post their bail Friday night, said Ahmed Bedier, Tampa director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, but a jail clerk...

Saudi men arrested after jumping aboard public school bus in Tampa, Fla. (courtesy WTSP-TV) TAMPA, Fla. – Local and federal authorities are trying to determine the real reason two Saudi men jumped aboard a local school bus on Friday, alarming students as well as education officials. Mana Saleh Almanajam, 23, and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran, 20, were immediately taken into custody when the bus arrived at Wharton High School, and they are being charged with trespassing on school property. "Both defendants gave several versions of the reason they took a school bus to a high school," Hillsborough County sheriff's spokesman J.D....

Two Saudi men were arrested Friday after they boarded a school bus and rode to Wharton High School in New Tampa. Students on the bus became alarmed, as did the bus driver, who called ahead. Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies met the bus at the school and detained the men. No one was injured and nothing out of line occurred on the bus, deputies said. Mana Saleh Almanajam, 23, who lives in Apt. 302 in The Point apartments, and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran, 20 Monticello Gardens, Apt. 304-A, each were charged with trespassing on school property. Both remained in Orient Road Jail...

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, 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...

Since I first starting writing on the subject of airline security (Terror in the Skies) I have received volumes of email on related subjects. Among my correspondence, there are certain incidents that stand out, including the one you'll read about today. It stands out not just because of the incident itself, but because the lack of media coverage as well as the "official" spin on the part of the airline and security personnel in its aftermath, much like my experience, defies belief. But I'm getting ahead of myself… A few days ago, I received an interesting email from Barry Johnson,...

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,...

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...

It's been two-and-a-half weeks since the first "Terror in the Skies, Again?" article was posted on WomensWallStreet.com and subsequently set off an international debate.  From the cockpit to the coffee shop, from the water coolers to the halls of Congress, countless numbers of people have been talking -- and shouting -- about this article.  It seems that anyone who reads the article develops a strong opinion, which in turn creates more questions.  Flight #327 has opened Pandora's box.Last week, when the name of the band was revealed (Syrian singer Nour Mehana) one side shouted: See, we told you so!  Then,...

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....

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...

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...

(CNSNews.com) - The terrifying account of a Northwest Airlines passenger, detailing how the suspicious activities of a group of Middle Eastern men aboard the plane had convinced her that it was being hijacked, is one of hundreds, if not thousands of similarly scary events reported to U.S. authorities since the 9/11 attacks. Counter terrorism experts interviewed by CNSNews.com say these incidents, many of which were "probing attacks" by terrorists methodically casing locations for an actual assault in the future, indicate the extent to which the United States currently finds itself threatened. "What we have seen all across the country --...

Washington Times Article

Terrorists testing jets, crews sayBy Audrey HudsonTHE WASHINGTON TIMES Flight crews and air marshals say Middle Eastern men are staking out airports, probing security measures and conducting test runs aboard airplanes for a terrorist attack.     At least two midflight incidents have involved numerous men of Middle Eastern descent behaving in what one pilot called "stereotypical" behavior of an organized attempt to attack a plane. ---Snip--- A June 29 incident aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles is similar to a Feb. 15 incident on American Airlines Flight 1732 from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New York's John...

A small pipe bomb packed with gunpowder and BBs exploded in a subway station last night, injuring a transit cop and throwing several blocks near Times Square into chaos. A police spokesman insisted that authorities do not believe that the incident was terrorism — but federal officials, including the Secret Service and the Joint Terrorism Task Force are investigating, it was learned. The officer, whose name was withheld, was standing near a staircase leading to the A, C and E trains at 43rd Street and Eighth Avenue at around 8 p.m., when he saw a burning knapsack, police said. He...

It bears the innocuous name of "Internal Look". But the American military's elaborate command-and-control exercise, which begins at a base in the Qatari desert today, looks very like a dry run for a war against Iraq which many believe is inevitable. The exercise, the largest of its kind, is also the first to be held outside the United States. However, though Washington is continuing a build-up – some 60,000 men are now in or near the Gulf – no troops will be involved in the exercise. Instead, "Internal Look" will test the abilities of the electronic equipment installed over the...