Ask the pilot

If Annie Jacobsen won't stop her fearmongering about terrorists, then I won't stop exposing the harm she's doing to us all, either.

By Patrick Smith

Aug 6, 2004 | "We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages -- they haven't ended yet."

-- Kurt Vonnegut, from "Deadeye Dick," 1982

If you're tired of hearing about Annie Jacobsen, so am I. Please don't take it out on me. A month ago we were in the midst of a multi-week conversation about airports and terminals. Annie came calling and now, like a bad case of jet lag, she won't go away. You can lay some of the blame on this very column if you want, for bothering to indulge the tenacious paranoia seeded by this story, but as a pilot and air travel columnist I feel uniquely qualified, perhaps obligated, to stick with it. The larger media has presented few, if any, rebuttals from those within the ranks of civil aviation.

Don't look now, but WomensWallStreet.com has just published Part 3 of "Terror in the Skies Again?" -- in which Jacobsen celebrates her incendiary non-story having made it to the ears of policymakers in Washington, D.C. That a Web site ostensibly devoted to the financial interests of American women has posted a hideously callow, three-part (thus far) sermon on what it pathetically characterizes as "national security" is shameless. That officials on Capitol Hill are now paying attention is somewhere between disheartening and irresponsible.

Part 3 of Jacobsen's reactionary triptych is shorter than the first two, but no less infuriating in its relentlessness and arrogant eschewal of the facts. Although it was widely reported that the Syrian musicians aboard flight 327 had not overstayed their I-94 limitations, once again we are baited with talk of those "expired visas." Elsewhere, in a reference to the musicians, the word "harmless" is enclosed in quotes -- yet another instance of the kind of sleazy conjecture that has been this story's only selling point from the beginning.

"It seems to me that the highest-ups don't like having to get information that involves national security from articles written by yours truly," Jacobsen explains. Probably not, and neither do the rest of us, particularly when that information is a bunch of alarmist balderdash.

"I've kept quiet about numerous matters that have surfaced over the past few weeks," she writes. "But there is something I must share because I find it so telling." Jacobsen has a way of ceremoniously preambling the most banal commentary. True to form she goes on to describe a suspiciously paraphrased tit-for-tat telephone conversation with an understandably insulted and annoyed Syrian ambassador, Dr. Imad Moustapha.

"I spoke at length with the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee," Jacobsen informs us. "It was an honor and a privilege, and I believe things are finally in the right hands." Let's hope those hands, manicured by your tax dollars, have the good sense enough to toss this matter where it belongs.

I was unable to procure a transcript of what Jacobsen had to say to this committee, which was attended by representatives from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and the Federal Air Marshals Association. But then, bound by the precepts of honesty and fact, there's only so much she could say:

"Dear Judiciary Committee Members:

"At the end of June, 2004, I flew to California in the company of a large group of Syrian musicians. During flight, the men acted much the way large groups of passengers act aboard flights the world over. They talked a lot, moved around a lot, ignored the seat belt sign, and made frequent trips to the toilet. With the images of September 11 still fresh in our minds, and because the men were Arabs, their behavior was unusually conspicuous and, on some level, cause for concern. We landed safely and it was later determined that the men were professional artists legally in this country. They had no records and were not on terrorist watch lists. Taking every precaution, government authorities followed the men, witnessed their concert performances, and checked out their hotels. They have since returned to Syria. I find this experience deeply troubling."

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