Until Steigman's confirmation of the no-fly list, the government had never admitted its existence. While FBI spokesman Paul Bresson confirmed existence of the list, officials at the CIA and U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service declined to comment and referred inquiries back to the TSA. Details of how it was assembled and how it is being used by the government, airports and airlines are largely kept secret.

A security officer at United Airlines, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the airlines receive no-fly lists from the Transportation Security Administration but declined further comment, saying it was a security matter. A USAir spokeswoman, however, declined to comment, saying that the airline's security relationship with the federal transit agency was a security matter and that discussing it could "jeopardize passenger safety."

Steigman declined to say who was on the no-fly list, but he conceded that people like Lawinger, Stuber, Gordon, Adams and Olshansky were not "threats to aviation," because they were being allowed to fly after being interrogated and searched. But then, in a Byzantine twist, he raised the possibility that the security agency might have more than one list. "I checked with our security people," he said, "and they said there is no [second] list," he said. "Of course, that could mean one of two things: Either there is no second list, or there is a list and they're not going to talk about it for security reasons."

In fact, most of those who have been stopped from boarding flights (like Lawinger, Stuber, Gordon and Adams) were able to fly later. Obviously, if the TSA thought someone was a genuine "threat to aviation" -- like those on the 1,000-name no-fly list, they would simply be barred from flying. So does the agency have more than one list perhaps -- one for people who are totally barred from flying and another for people who are simply harassed and delayed?

Asked why the TSA would be barring a 74-year-old nun from flying, Steigman said: "I don't know. You could get on the list if you were arrested for a federal felony."

Sister Lawinger says she was arrested only once, back in the 1980s, for sitting down and refusing to leave the district office of a local congressman. And even then, she says, she was never officially charged or fined. But another person who was in the Peace Action delegation that day, Judith Williams, says she was arrested and spent three days in jail for a protest at the White House back in 1991. In that protest, Williams and other Catholic peace activists had scaled the White House perimeter fence and scattered baby dolls around the lawn to protest the bombing of Iraq. She says that the charge from that incident was a misdemeanor, an infraction that would not seem enough to establish her as a threat to aviation.

Inevitably, such questions about how one gets on a federal transit list creates questions about how to get off it. It is a classic -- and unnerving -- Catch-22: Because the Transportation Security Administration says it compiles the list from names provided by other agencies, it has no procedure for correcting a problem. Aggrieved parties would have to go to the agency that first reported their names, but for security reasons, the TSA won't disclose which agency put someone on the list.

Bresson, the FBI spokesperson, would not explain the criteria for classifying someone as a threat to aviation, but suggests that fliers who believe they're on the list improperly should "report to airport security and they should be able to contact the TSA or us and get it cleared up." He concedes that might mean missed flights or other inconveniences. His explanation: "Airline security has gotten very complicated."

Many critics of the security agency's methods accept the need for heightened air security, but remain troubled by the more Kafka-esque traits of the system. Waters, at the Eagle Forum, worries that the government has offered no explanation for how a "threat to aviation" is determined. "Maybe the people being stopped are already being profiled," she says. "If they're profiling people, what kind of things are they looking for? Whether you fit in in your neighborhood?"

"I agree that the government should be keeping known 'threats to aviation' off of planes," Ibish says. "I certainly don't want those people on my plane! But there has to be a procedure for appealing this, and there isn't. There are no safeguards and there is no recourse."

Meanwhile, nobody in the federal government has explained why so many law-abiding but mostly left-leaning political activists and antiwar activists are being harassed at check-in time at airports. "This all raises serious concerns about whether the government has made a decision to target Americans based on their political beliefs," says Katie Corrigan, an ACLU official. The ACLU has set up a No Fly List Complaint Form on its Web site.

One particular concern about the government's threat to aviation list and any other possible lists of people to be subjected to extra security investigation at airports is that names are being made available to private companies -- the airlines and airport authorities -- charged with alerting security personnel. Unlike most other law-enforcement watch lists, these lists are not being closely held within the national security or law-enforcement files and computers, but are apparently being widely dispersed.

"It's bad enough when the federal government has lists like this with no guidelines on how they're compiled or how to use them," says Olshansky at the Center for Constitutional Rights. "But when these lists are then given to the private sector, there are even less controls over how they are used or misused." Noting that airlines have "a free hand" to decide whether someone can board a plane or not, she says the result is a "tremendous chilling of the First Amendment right to travel and speak freely."

But Olshansky, alarmed by her own experience and the number of others reporting apparent political harassment, is fighting back. She says now that the government has confirmed the existence of a blacklist, her center is planning a First Amendment lawsuit against the federal government. CCR has already signed up Lawinger, Stuber, and several others from Milwaukee's Peace Action group.

Editor's Note: This story has been corrected.

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