July 18, 2004

The Strange Behavior of the Syrian Airline Passengers: A New Explanation

This week the Blogosphere has discussed in detail the strange behavior of 14 Syrian passengers on the June 29, 2004 Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles. As summarized by Daniel Pipes:

To make a long story short, fourteen Syrian “musicians” acted strangely during the flight, coming and going to the toilet, signaling each other from various points on the plane, disobeying instructions, intimidating passengers.

From Jacobsen’s article:

Suddenly, seven of the men stood up—in unison—and walked to the front and back lavatories. One by one, they went into the two lavatories, each spending about four minutes inside. Right in front of us, two men stood up against the emergency exit door, waiting for the lavatory to become available. The men spoke in Arabic among themselves and to the man in the yellow shirt sitting nearby. One of the men took his camera into the lavatory. Another took his cell phone. Again, no one approached the men. Not one of the flight attendants asked them to sit down.

...I grabbed my son, I held my husband’s hand and, despite the fact that I am not a particularly religious person, I prayed. The last man came out of the bathroom, and as he passed the man in the yellow shirt he ran his forefinger across his neck and mouthed the word No.

Many have found anomalies in this account, with a few even questioning its veracity. From BlogCritics:

The “terrorists” in this story apparently are doing very little to hide their connection. They give each other knowing nods and thumbs up signs. Apparently a number of passengers noticed and were afraid. Wouldnt the “terrorists” still want to hide their connection?

...No sir. The whole thing smacks of urban legend. I’m going on record right now. I call BS. I guess we’ll see if I’m right. If I’m wrong and it’s all true, well, I’ll be wrong and the writer will have done the world a service by heightening our awareness. And I’ll apologize.

However, Michelle Malkin confirms many of the details reported by Jacobsen:

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).

Let’s say everybody quoted above is right, namely, Jacobsen reported accurately, and the Syrians were too blatant in their behavior to be what they seemed to be to Jacobsen, and to Dave Adams. What’s going on?

Here’s a possible explanation I haven’t yet seen elsewhere: the Syrians were musicians who were jerking our chains in order to scare us. They purposely and blatantly acted like terrorists in order to scare the plane’s passengers, knowing that as they were carrying no weapons they would not be punished. The result: terrorism without having to do anything that would get them killed, arrested or deported.

As Jacobsen notes:

So here’s my question: Since the FBI issued a warning to the airline industry to be wary of groups of five men on a plane who might be trying to build bombs in the bathroom, shouldn’t a group of 14 Middle Eastern men be screened before boarding a flight?

Apparently not. Due to our rules against discrimination, it can’t be done. During the 9/11 hearings last April, 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman stated that …it was the policy (before 9/11) and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that’s discriminatory.

So even if Northwest Airlines searched two of the men on board my Northwest flight, they couldn’t search the other 12 because they would have already filled a government-imposed quota.

Per Daniel Pipes:

...I looked at the public regulations for airline security procedures back in January 2002 and found them a recipe for disaster. Now we learn that the confidential regulations are yet worse. If we don’t get serious now about security, we will pay severely and then we’ll get serious, after who-knows-how-many are dead.

This has got to go. Air marshalls must be empowered to search anyone they want of any ethnicity, particularly anyone of Arabic descent, at any time during flight. Political correctness be damned. It’s better to have a safe flight and offended passengers than an unsafe flight and all dead pasengers. If passengers of Arabic descent don’t like it, let them ask their leaders to stand up and declare that they are against terrorists wherever they are to be found worldwide.