August 04, 2004

FAMS Challenges Jacobsen's Story

Continuing Questions About Flight

I am disgusted. I have recently been challenging Unfair Witness, a Leftie blogger about his mis-quoting of Nancy Reagan. In checking out his site, I was surprised to find this article, from yesterday's NY Times, about Flight 327, which challenges Ms. Jacobsen's version.

Surely, I thought, Spoons (5 posts today) or Michelle Malkin (7 posts today) would be all over this one, probably to disagree with it. So far, not a word. Nor from my friend Patterico (2 posts today). Maybe they didn't see it; maybe they will get to it later.

This Leftie cretin, Unfair Witness, is the worst of worst. He mis-quotes and lies and omits, and then defends it with "Hey, everyone else is doing it." Not the smallest part of my disgust is that I had to find this article at his site. Like Michele Catalano once said, "I feel like I have to shower with steel wool."

So, comrades, what do we have to say about the latest on Ms. Jacobsen? I've been checking my (admittedly not comprehensive) VRWC blogroll, and Ms. Malkin and Mr. Spoons are not alone in missing this article:

One of the major remaining questions about Northwest Airlines Flight 327 on June 29 from Detroit to Los Angeles - the flight that was met by federal agents and local police responding to a possible terrorist incident - is this:

Did, as a passenger reported, 7 of the 13 Syrian musicians whose behavior was terrifying some passengers stand up in unison and take strategic positions by the lavatories and the exit door during final approach to Los Angeles, an act that would have been a frighteningly overt and unambiguous provocation?

They did not, according to the Federal Air Marshal Service, which had previously left unchallenged assertions by Annie Jacobsen, a freelance writer on the flight, that they did.

"What happened was, they were already standing up in the aisle before the seat belt signs became illuminated," said Dave Adams, a spokesman for the agency, which represents air marshals who travel undercover on airplanes.
"The flight attendants asked them to sit down and the men respected the orders and sat in their seats. Two gentlemen asked why they had to, and a flight attendant told them 'Because, so please take your seats.' And they obeyed," he said.

The new information, he added, came from "subsequent interviews of flight attendants on this matter by our personnel."

So there was absolutely no sudden move by the men on final approach?

"None," Mr. Adams said.

Mr. Adams is on the record. So far, no other passengers have come forward, although Ms. Jacobsen quotes two of them anonymously.

Read the whole thing.

Dammit, all appearances to the contrary, I'm not trying to pick a fight with anybody (other than Unfair Witness), but when we say a story is important, we should deal with all the factual reports that come out. Let's let the Lefties have a complete monopoly on all that stuff: omissions, half-truths, mis-quotes, etc..

UPDATE: Both Spoons and Patterico responded, with understandable vehemence, that they simply had not seen the story. I'll presume the same for Michelle Malkin. Fair enough.


Posted by Commissar at August 4, 2004 05:45 PM
Confessions

Good Points Bro, and you get the Elephants Balls award of the day for pointing this out. On another note how good are you with MT, wanna help a Brutha out on a couple of questions.

Extracted from: David Anderson at August 4, 2004 06:24 PM

Unfair Witness links to Angry Arab in his "fantasy terrorists" post. Angry Arab, in turn, was the site that inspired this post of mine in which I describe an unforseen encounter with disgusting, vile racism.

I'm starting to see a pattern here.

Extracted from: Jeff Harrell at August 4, 2004 06:31 PM

Hadn't seen that; thanks for pointing it out. I'll have to look at it later when I have more time.

I hope you don't think I deliberately ignored this. I was one of the first people to post the story quoting the anonymous federal marshals disputing Jacobsen's version -- the Winds of Change post which was widely cited for publicizing that story, found it by reading my blog. I pride myself on dealing with the facts, no matter which way they fall.

You saw the story on the passenger who corroborated Ms. Jacobsen's story, yes? You kept saying initially that this was just one woman making a fuss. Now it's at least two. I didn't see your post on that, though I may have just missed it, just like I missed the NYT story until I read about it here.

Extracted from: Patterico at August 4, 2004 06:37 PM

Give me a break, Comrade! You're trying to make something out of the fact that no one noticed this story?

It's not like there's some sort of "Flight 327" mailing list that we're all ignoring. The first I heard of this was your trackback.

Extracted from: Spoons at August 4, 2004 06:42 PM

Fair enough, Spoons.

Extracted from: The Commissar at August 4, 2004 07:31 PM

Hey! I check you, Spoons, and Michelle for this stuff. I'm too busy beating up on sKerry to track everthang myself. And LaughingWolf's been moving.

Extracted from: Ironbear at August 4, 2004 07:35 PM

Addressing flight 327 and this "factual" substance of the latest 327 article -

First, Jacobsen doesn't have to be "right" about this being a terrorist dry run to be truthful, or sensible.

There seems to be some sort of intellectual mix-up in some quarters that if they were "innocent" of plooting and attack or dry run, her apprehension at their behavior and eventual questions about the in-air handling of the men and the lack of pre-flight screening are unjustified.

Regarding Dave Admas statement, there is some considerable weasel room in the "no sudden move" on approach statement.

Enough to drive a truck of weasels through.
Not that it is not a fullsome account. The men get up near the end of the flight. This is interpreted by Jacobsen as a "sudden Move," or run on the bathrooms.

The flight attendants eventually request the men sit down, and after a very little resistance, they do sit down. I always assumed that they had to go sit down when the light came on and that they were not standing in the aisle as the plane landed...
We already knew they returned to their seats.

I can not see how the two accounts are inconsistent.

Jacobsen reports them returnign to their seats - One of the returnees, according to Jacobesen, making the universal "kibosh" gesture and mouthing the word "no."

My understanding is that one other female passenger who (for obvious reasons of wishing to avoid the spotlight burning on Jacobsen) was interviewed by the Washington Times, and not to put words in her mouth, was very frightened by the behaviour of the Syrians.


I don't have the link handy, but I'll go get it.

Extracted from: SarahW at August 4, 2004 07:59 PM

"other passenger" link

Extracted from: SarahW at August 4, 2004 08:02 PM

I think the point here is that this incident raises the question. If these 14 guys were not terrorists, great. Yay. We're happy. But if they were, would anything have prevented them from doing whatever it was they would have wanted to do?

The answer should be "yes." If these guys had been terrorists, I want to believe that we would have stopped them, captured them, and shown them pictures of naked women until they begged us to stop.

But I don't know for sure that that's what would have happened.

Extracted from: Jeff Harrell at August 4, 2004 08:40 PM

The other day I saw an old geezer driving a car. He stopped at a stop sign. But he made me nervous. So I had the cops pull him over. He had done nothing wrong, so they let him go. ... You get the idea ...

We might or might not need to tighten up on our senior citizen drivers. Politics aside, they might be a hazard. These are good questions and concerns, meritorious of serious debate.

Question: What light does my experience with the old geezer shed on that debate?

Extracted from: The Commissar at August 4, 2004 08:55 PM

What exactly did this geezer do? I don't understand what made you nervous. I'm not calling you out or anything, I'm just curious.

Also, I think maybe we conservatives were to quick to jump on this story of Ms. Jacobsen's in the first place, at least in regards to it being an actual terrorist dry run. But I agree: the issue at hand is not the intent of the 14 Syrians. It's their behavior. Whether they intended to or not, whether they KNEW it or not, they engaged in suspicious behavior on an airplane. So what's at issue here is how the flight crews reacted and how the air marshal reacted. Since they did nothing, their reactions suck.

Extracted from: Dubya at August 4, 2004 09:42 PM

"they engaged in suspicious behavior on an airplane."

Not according to the Air Marshals.

Extracted from: The Commissar at August 4, 2004 09:49 PM

Who was vehement?

Extracted from: Patterico at August 5, 2004 01:34 AM

By the way, Comrade, there's a real post about this at my blog now.

You didn't answer my question about whether you blogged the stories about the corroborating witness. This is someone who spoke with the Washington Times, who confirmed her identity as one of the passengers on the flight. Had you not heard about that? I discussed it here.

You seemed to criticize us pretty heavily for missing a story that contradicts our point of view. What about this?

You also say that the air marshals say there was no suspicious behavior -- but in your next post you link to an article that states:

There was, the marshal admits, one incident that did concern him: when one of the group came from the back of the plane forward to use the lavatory in First Class. The FAM timed the man, dressed in a green jumpsuit with Arabic writing on it; he stayed about ten minutes in the toilet. Immediately after the man returned to the back to the plane, the FAM searched the washroom and found nothing.
Clearly the FAM found this guy's behavior suspicious, no? Extracted from: Patterico at August 5, 2004 03:15 AM

SarahW (7:59pm) gets at a piece of the Flight 329 story that remains: What should our security response be to ambiguous incidents like this? I include the responses of passengers here.

Variations of these are-they-or-aren't-they situations are going to recur. 100% probability.

FWIW, I find it easy to imagine that many of these Syrian musicians hold the sort of anti-US views that pass for normal in that part of the world. Feeling the suspicions of other passengers, knowing their innocence, and disliking America to begin with, some of them hammed it up. Played gansta. Drew finger across throat while staring at wide-eyed Ms. Jacobsen.

It's a theory, but one that accounts for all the facts in a way that others don't seem to. And it will recur. Other foreigners who quite dislike America will quite want to travel here for bucks or family reasons. Some of them will make some of the rest of us very nervous, sometimes for cause--even if the cause isn't that They're Hijackers! or It's A Dry Run! What's the proper response?

PS--best I can tell, air marshals cover circa 2% of flights. Good luck or pre-existing suspicions that a pair was on 329?

Extracted from: AMac at August 5, 2004 07:17 AM

Too bad the FAM spokesperson didn't come out with this little detail about the Flight Attendants a little bit sooner. One of the things that really bugged me about Ms Jacobson's original story (outside of the overblown prose which just about made me stop reading in the first place), was the fact that these men were supposedly standing during the landing approach. There was no indication earlier that they had been asked to sit down - Ms. J's article seeming to make it appear as if they were allowed to do whatever they wanted.

I want to know what took the FAM so long to get this information out there! That particular part could have been immediately refuted.

The good thing about the story is the fact that people are now talking about Air security - in a better way than they have since 9/11. Debate rages on - people are thinking (at least I hope they are). Better to do this now, when there hasn't been anything horrific in several years, than to ignore it until something else horrific happens and have people in a complete panic. No good ever comes out of acting from panic.

Extracted from: Teresa at August 5, 2004 05:35 PM

There are a few inconsistencies between the air-marshal's story and Jacobsen's. That's not surprising, especially where they may have sat in different parts of the plane, observed various behaviors over the course of hours, etc. Witnesses agree 100% only on Perry Mason.

That said, it seems to me the marshal was rather concerned. He had the flight attendant note their seats and appearance; he had the pilot radio ahead for a meet-and-greet upon landing. He did these things specifically with regard to the Syrians, not anyone else on the flight.

In the end, there was no identifiable ill intent. That's great, and that's why he says there was never any danger. Part of his job is to prevent panic reactions. But these same behaviors might, next time, come from a different group -- perhaps Saudis? -- with ill intent. And what if there aren't multiple air marshals on that flight?

There will be many flights with apparently middle eastern men engaged in odd behavior. Most will mean nothing; all kinds of people behave oddly. But I'd like to see the passengers respond to it -- getting up to talk to the men in the aisle, politely ask where they're traveling, etc. We have to protect ourselves; the Kindly Gov't won't always be there to do it for us. This doesn't mean acting without reasonable suspicion, but it does mean taking measured steps in response to odd behavior.

Extracted from: Shelby at August 5, 2004 07:21 PM