In “A sure-fire legal recipe for airport insecurity” in the San Francisco Chronicle, February 13, Debra J. Saunders offers some common sense on the Nicholas George case:
Last August, Nicholas George, 22, was getting ready to fly from Pennsylvania to Pomona College in Claremont (Los Angeles County) when TSA agents found Arabic-English flash cards in his pocket – the 200 cards included such words as “bomb” and “explosive” – two stereo speakers in his carry-on bag, a Jordanian student ID card, and a passport that showed he had visited Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Sudan. TSA agents detained George for questioning. They determined he was not a security threat and released him less than five hours later. Now, he is suing.
Of course the ACLU is representing George. The group explained in a press release that episodes like George’s “may actually make us less safe, by diverting vital resources and attention away from true security threats.”
Nonsense. If ever there was a person you want the TSA to look at very carefully, it’s a young male who has Arabic flashcards with words like “bomb” in his pocket, studied in Jordan and recently spent time in Sudan, a country that the State Department believes to sponsor terrorism. Add the fact that George had stereo speakers – remember an explosive-laden tape recorder was used to bring down Pam Am Flight 103 in 1988 – in his carry-on luggage, and it would amount to professional malpractice if TSA and FBI agents did not search and question George.
When I first read this story, I had to wonder if, in a world with no shortage of individuals hungry to be victims or discredit the system, the young man was trying to be detained.…
(As an aside: The ACLU complaint claims that authorities never Mirandized George during the nearly five hours he was held. That would mean that authorities were faster to Mirandize accused Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab than George. That means authorities questioned George longer than Abdulmutallab without Mirandizing him.)
According to the complaint, a TSA supervisor questioned George “in a hostile and aggressive manner,” while he was “polite and calm.” Also, FBI agents questioned George to see if he was involved with any “pro-Islamic groups,” then determined George was not a threat. However, the complaint alleges that FBI questions were “wide-ranging and strayed far from any conceivable criminal activity.”
Boo hoo.
“Nick is not claiming to have been scarred for life. No one is trying to get rich off this,” Roper told me. And: “What this is about is accountability.”
You see, if learning Arabic or traveling to the Middle East is enough to get you handcuffed and questioned by the FBI, then – Roper said this – “the terrorists have won.”
Au contraire, if TSA staff, airport cops and FBI agents – the plaintiffs [sic — should be defendants] in this lawsuit – are afraid to do their jobs, then terrorists will win.
Look no further than Fort Hood, Texas. Colleagues were afraid to report the radicalized rants of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, lest they seem anti-Islamic, so they looked the other way. The toll: 13 dead.…