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 entle
readers, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, because as loyal
followers of NRO, you are objective, calm, and measured in your
response to situations that may well get your neighbors' knickers
all in a twist. The latest such situation is the decision by an
American Airlines pilot to remove an Arab-American Secret Service
Agent from his aircraft. If your neighbor's knickers are indeed
twisted over this affair, tell him to calm down. Whether you assist
him in untwisting his knickers is of course entirely up to you.
"Officer
Dunphy," came the inquiry from my editorial masters, "what
would you, as a police officer, have done if you had been called
to the terminal to investigate this incident?" Well, of course
I would have had a look at the agent's credentials, and I might
have followed up with a phone call to the man's office to verify
his identity and assignment. But even if I were satisfied that he
was indeed a Secret Service agent, I could do no more than advise
the pilot of my opinion and let him do what he may with the information.
It is well settled that airline pilots have the final say in who
may fly aboard their aircraft and who may be asked to take his business
elsewhere. And of course, since September 11, it doesn't take much
to be given a refund on your ticket and directions to the bus station.
The details
of the agent's removal from the flight have been exhaustively reported
elsewhere, but here are the essentials: On Christmas Day, the agent
was ticketed on an American Airlines flight from Baltimore to Dallas-Fort
Worth. Before boarding the flight he filled out the paperwork required
of federal agents who fly armed. Once on board he aroused the suspicion
of someone on the crew, and this resulted in a reexamination of
his credentials and paperwork. American Airlines claims there were
inconsistencies and omissions on the forms, and the agent was not
allowed to take the flight. After the matter was cleared up, he
took an American flight to DFW the following day.
This will come
as a surprise to the folks at the Council on American Islamic Relations,
who seem to take great joy in donning the mantle of victimhood,
but even I have been jacked up by airline-security goons, and I'm
seldom mistaken for an Arab. At JFK Airport not long ago, a female
security guard took what seemed to be considerable liberties in
exploring the Dunphy southern regions, to a degree I'm unaccustomed
to without first having been properly introduced. Once at my gate,
I thought the neighborly and responsible thing to do was to inform
a flight attendant that I was a police officer and that they could
call on me should jihads crop up. Well, I was eventually welcomed
aboard, but my ID was checked nine ways from Sunday, and I wasn't
carrying a gun.
American denies
that the agent's ethnicity was weighed in the pilot's decision to
exclude him from the flight. This of course is rubbish, but it's
the kind of rubbish one gets used to hearing these days. It is the
unfortunate burden of Arab Americans that the United States was
viciously attacked by a band of Arab terrorists who turned airliners
full of innocent people into guided missiles. It is naive to expect
anyone, least of all an airline captain, to put this out of his
mind when evaluating potential threats. If the pilot's antennae
were a little more sharply attuned because the agent was Arab American,
so be it. There's still a great distance between being bounced from
a flight and being carted off to Manzanar. Next time, Mr. G-man,
be little more careful with the paperwork, then sit back and enjoy
the flight.
(*Jack
Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are
his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management
.)
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