Ask the pilot

Apparently no one can stop Annie Jacobsen from pandering to people's crudest fears. It's time to say bye-bye to the hysterical flier.

By Patrick Smith

Aug 20, 2004 | Annie Jacobsen's mind and keyboard seem to be stuck at Terror Code Red in that Northwest Airlines 757, high over the Rocky Mountains. I think it is best to leave her there. Frankly, there's little chance of talking her down. To those of you who wrote from Turkey, South Africa, New Zealand and elsewhere, entertained by the foibles of us Americans but nonetheless tired of this story, I have good news: This is my last word on l'affaire Jacobsen.

I came to this decision after grinding my way through installment 5 of "Terror in the Skies, Again," this one titled "Another Passenger From Flight 327 Steps Forward With Disturbing New Details." That passenger is a woman named Billie Jo Rodriguez, whose paranoid ramble so teetered on the threshold of self-parody that I wondered if the whole thing wasn't a practical joke. "Inspector" Rodriguez actually monitored the breathing patterns of the Syrians as they sat on the plane with their eyes closed. Because their exhalations weren't heavy enough, she wants us to believe, the men were only pretending to sleep.

Jacobsen spends the bulk of her new column asking why authorities have not bothered to locate and interview additional passengers from flight 327. That's a question answered long ago by law enforcement agencies who detained and interrogated the 14 Syrians. Besides, she's the journalist: Why doesn't she get in touch with one of the musicians and let us hear his side of the story? Regardless, whether two or 200 passengers were interviewed is not the point, and the relentless obsession with every picayune detail of the men's behavior -- from the glints in their eyes to timed observations of their trips to the toilet -- skirts a certain fact: The men were investigated and found to be harmless.

As I've written before, the events of 2001 left every one of us predisposed to suspicion and prejudice. Sitting in an airplane with jitters over the conspicuous presence of a group of young Arabs is neither unexpected nor, necessarily, irrational. But although we're entitled to a degree of unease, we are not entitled to groundless assumptions and paranoia. Not once in the past six weeks has Jacobsen given us even a moment's worth of self-doubt or skeptical analysis. What she presents as an "investigation" is fatally encumbered by her own foregone conclusion.

Unable to accept any premise that the Syrians were innocent, she needs to rehash every cartoonish tidbit -- people making secret gestures, pretending to sleep, smelling like chemicals when they returned from the lav -- lest her inquest be brought to a summary close. She demands that authorities act not on evidence or the rule of law, but on a "belief" that the men had nefarious intentions, despite all evidence to the contrary. She begins with the premise of guilt and works backward, then chides her critics for failure to prove a negative.

"It dawned on me that I need to hear from the FBI," writes Jacobsen in the final paragraphs of Part 5. "Clearly, it's time for me to write a letter to Robert Mueller, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." A letter about what? Mueller's reply, not that she is owed one, is sure to spark new "inconsistencies" and bring about more "unanswered questions." Hang around for Parts 6, 7, and 8.

Some people see this tenacious crusade as one of grass-roots doggedness -- Jacobsen as the "aware American" (her words) seeking truth from a stalled bureaucracy. Others see it differently -- as pathologically pandering to people's crudest fears and assumptions. The temptation is to give her a dose of her own medicine, to use the most devious conjecture and speculation to reach a bad-faith conclusion: I "believe" Annie Jacobsen is a deranged kook, and everything above "proves" it. Could she please now show us that she's not.

Her answer would be that she owes us nothing, that she's done nothing wrong or crazy, and that everybody is entitled to an opinion. Has it ever dawned on her that the FBI, Federal Air Marshal Service, Transportation Security Administration and a band of 14 musicians are likely saying exactly the same thing?

No, I do not think Jacobsen is a lunatic. But I do think her articles have crossed the line from journalism - where they never had much hold to begin with -- to vigilante witchcraft, and the editors at WomensWallStreet.com should be ashamed of their hand in perpetuating this sad nonsense.

Next Page: A testy rebuttal from Jacobsen's "air marshal" allies

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