I have never witnessed any behavior like that aboard a plane, regardless of race. You'd think Arabs would be on their best behavior on a plane, given that others are constantly watching them. This whole thing is just bizarrre.

I've thought about this some, and let's just for a second suppose they were up to no good, whether just planning or executing an operation. What was their goal? Given the number involved, I doubt it was a simple bombing operation. Suicide bombers aren't that easy to come by that you'd throw away fifteen at a time. So that leaves hijacking. Fifteen won't be enough unless they'd have really sophisticated plans to gas the plane or something, then take control. Who knows......

If it's worth $5000.00 to $25,000.00 to act a little strange on a flight and arouse suspicion, then welcome to the screwy skies.

True. The money would only be paid out based on a showing of a negligent, malicious, and/or unreasonable degree of scrutiny.

It wouldn't be an automatic payment.

I'm offering this in its positive form -- we'll pay x amount for such an unreasonable detaining. I'm being coy about the negative form-- you can't sue for millions based upon such a detainment. Airline security measures would be immunized against most suits, except for proof of an extremely unreasonable search/questioning/detaining/"humiliation", and such suits would have to be certified as being likely to succeed on the merits by some sort of panel.

A bit like Bush's proposed HMO reforms.

The idea is that you'd limit the payoffs to persons so "humiliated." They could get small amounts upon some showing of unreasonableness, but they would be precluded from suing for jackpot-type awards unless there was some seriously egregious, malicious conduct by the airline.

Basically it would be an invitation to racially profile. Which is for the best.

That'll never fly. You can't just take away due process rights. And even if by the act of buying your ticket you sign a waiver, a plaintiff's lawyer would say it implicates the freedom to travel.

Anyway, I don't think it's the fear of lawsuits that keeps TSA from doing its job. Most of them are federal employees doing their work, so they're immune from suits anyway. I think it's bureaucratic inertia, laziness, and fear of the political (as opposed to the monetary) backlash of a discrimination suit that keeps the TSA from taking more aggressive steps.

That'll never fly. You can't just take away due process rights.

Of course you can. The Warsaw Convention limits your damages for being killed in flight.

So we have a strange regime now where you're limited as to your damages if you're blown up but you can sue for $50 million if someone searches your bag three times.

"But that's not really the point. The point is that these men were in fact behaving strangely enough to alarm the captain, the crew, and most passengers on the plane, and nothing was done about it."

EXACTLY. As I wrote in a post about this, I can't fathom why a planeload of passengers and crew would let them terrorize a plane with goofy behavior for FOUR HOURS. I certainly would have done something.

Ace: Yeah, if you die, they don't care about your due process rights anymore. So I think that's why you can sign your life away under the Warsaw convention.

Whether or not you can consent to be racially discriminated against is another matter. Especially on a plane, which involves the freedom of movement.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for your idea. It's a quite reasonable start at fixing the security frontier. I just don't see Sandy O'Connor, much less the Ninth Circuit, going along with it.

The major media may be picking up this story so maybe we'll get some details that are needed to answer some of the obvious questions. If air marshalls were present and didn't want to give themselves away why didn't they direct or suggest to the crew that the Syrians be told to remain seated? Is they wanted to remain anonymous, why did the steardess feel able to admit their presence to Annie? Did the Syrians in fact have a contract to play at a party? (Surely this was confirmed before they were released.)

Rev. Sensing over at One Hand Clapping has a long post about his doubts on the story. Well worth a read.

Ace: I don't know if you are aware of this, but you've hit on an approach to search and seizure law that actually once existed in this country. In fact, the system you describe was the original approach under the Constitution, at the time it was written. Of course, it should never have been changed in the first place.

Before the law was changed by an activist, liberal Supreme Court, the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures did exactly what you suggest -- it entitled those who were wrongly searched (or seized) to make a civil claim for compensation. Compensation was measured, as with all civil wrongs, in the form of monetary damages.

If the search produced evidence of a crime, then the putative criminal was "estopped" from complaining about the search. In other words, he had no standing to complain if a search or arrest produced evidence of guilt.

The system worked very well -- it punished the guilty and compensated the innocent.

Then, some idiot(s) decided to change all that. Now, any so-called unreasonable search, even if it produces evidence of a crime, means that the evidence cannot be used in court. This is the infamous exclusionary rule. Lawyers (as we have all seen on TV countless times) routinely have evidence excluded on the grounds that a search, however successful, was unreasonable.

And to make matters worse, those who were wrongly searched no longer have the right to complain by filing a civil suit for the trouble they were caused.

It's like were living in Alice in Wonderland -- the guilty are over-protected, and the innocent are under-protected. It's crazy.

Jacobsen is going to do an interview with John Carlson on KVI in Seattle at 16:00 PDT today (16 July). They have an internet feed at 570kvi.com

Whether this incident is true or not, I don't care. Political correctness is going to cost lives, and it's got to stop.

Amnesty International is whining about Miami cops having Tasers, even though the Tasers have reduced shooting incidents. The San Fran police chief won't let his cops arm themselves as well the street thugs are armed.

The leftoid asshats are firmly on the side of terrorists, criminals, and crazy folk. To hell with the average, law-abiding citizen, as far as they're concerned; they won't be happy until we are reduced to a third-world grease spot under the heel of the morons who can't stand America.

I think it's very worrisome that the crew was this concerned about the Syrians and yet could do nothing because no "event" had taken place. I agree that PC protections have run amok. We shouldn't even let Syrians into the damn country, much less care whether we offend them when we arrest them for scaring the shit out of passengers.

One oddity: why were there air marshals on the flight at all? It's not standard. I've discussed this at TPW, and most agree that the flight attendant was probably lying. But what if she wasn't? Why were there air marshals on the flight? Unless it was a coincidence--they were all on their way to a buddy's wedding--it seems at least possible that officials had already noticed these dry runs and were now monitoring them.

For those of you who think the Syrians were harmless: why was one of them flying first class? Why were they all flying one-way tickets? If they were really on their way to a gig, that seems extremely odd.

Cal,

As I wrote in the comments of the previous post about this, I fly several times each month (already logging just over 100,000 mile this year) and find the description of the events of this story completely plausible.

Air Marshals are routinely on long distant domestic flights.

I have no knowledge as to whether or not the uniformed crew in the cabin know who the marshals are, but I believe that the pilots do know as they are given security briefings pre-flight (NB: all flight manifests are to be processed through TSA no later than 30 minutes before scheduled take-off. This is why passengers can no longer check-in less than 30 minutes before the scheduled take-off).

The cabin crew does call into the cockpit as is necessary during the flight, and the pilots can open their door during the flight (to receive meals, use the lavoratory, for example). I can only speculate that if the cabin crew was suspicious of passenger behavior during the flight, that they notified the cockpit, and perhaps at that time they were notified as to the presence of the air marshals (again, presuming that they did not already know). The cabin crew may still not know who the marshals are (or on the other hand, their identities could have been revealed), but that their presence on board is something that is easily transmitted from the cockpit.

And yes, the cabin crew is not to share this knowledge with the passengers.

As to your other questions, the first class passenger may have simply been given that seat (1A is at the bulkhead, window, and not necessarily a desireable first class seat) as on an over-sold flight, coach passengers are sometimes accomodated in first class.

In any case, this story needs and likely will be vetted. But as Ace points out (and a point with which I totally agree) agressive and timely interdiction must be increased to ensure flight safety.

On the Air Marshals-- I posted this in the thread below but dammit, I'm pretty proud of it. I have two theories--one, there weren't any, or they didn't know, but the stewardess was just reassuring the poor people who were freaking out---

Or two, there was a nationwide terror alert on June 29 th that included Detroit and LAX. Here's a link: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/29/eveningnews/main626679.shtml

(You have to watch the video to hear them mention those two airports). You might remember that this is the day they told everyone to look for Pakistanis with rope burns from Al-Qaeda training camps in Waziristan/Afghanistan. So the system was on a hair trigger that day and it's likely there were air marshals up the wazoo.

And they still didn't land the flight before LAX!

CW

As above, I disagree.

If their was, as you suggest, a hair trigger mentality, fighter escorts would have been scrambled and the plane would have then been diverted to the nearest or most appropriate airport.

Rather, it may be the flight crew and marshals responded appropriately by monitoring the suspicious passengers' behavior, and exercising good judgement, landed at LAX with the appropriate authorities in-waiting.

Flight attendants falsely reassuring the passengers with claims of on-board air marshals, to me, sounds implausible.

In hindsight, and not knowing all the details, the criticism arises on the side of there needing been a more agressive response.

The story will be vetted, the complete results of which, we will not likely learn.

MTT--I think we are agreeing--my point about the alert is that we should have been ready to take action on the 29th, and we didn't respond to an apparent threat even with a lot of warning.

Even when we were predicting danger, no fighters were scrambled, no one landed the flight in Vegas (although this might have made the Syrians nervous), no extra searches, no challenges when they start a tag team in the bathroom. Our "hair trigger" response looks pretty rusty. Imagine what'll happen when we're not looking?

We're alone up there. Our government isn't willing to protect us over our own soil.