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So whose controversy is this anyway? The irony is that Jacobsen has become a darling of reactionary commentary. To a nationwide audience, conservative talk-show host Michael Smerconish went so far as to label her "a victim of terrorism." Near as I can tell, the message is this: There are evildoers among us and it's our patriotic duty to fear them. Those evildoers are either Islamic radicals or Democrats, often in cahoots.

But when examined carefully, the simultaneous presumption of terrorist probes and a government coverup fails to square, at least politically. The present conservative administration has no qualms about keeping people edgy through repeated terror warnings and color-coded alerts. Why then not capitalize on reports of terrorists casing planes?

Cynics might suggest it's because the government needs to pick and choose how and where to frighten people. A vague sense of fear is one thing, as are the minimal impacts of cordoning off a few public buildings or skyscrapers when the mood is politically expedient. Helping to drive already struggling airlines out of business is something else. Publicized warnings of airborne terror activity would be calamitous for the nation's carriers, upsetting Republican reelection chances through the economic fallout of bankruptcies and shutdowns.

Which does not imply that some, all or none of the supposed terrorist probes have merit, only that they allow the administration to trundle out Tom Ridge with the next duck-and-cover assignment.

Now, let's assume that terrorists are indeed out there probing. By concealing information, the government is guilty of negligence or worse. When an attack occurs, the administration looks conniving and foolish, and conservatives have the whole mess thrown right back at them.

Or maybe there are no known probes and the government is telling the truth.

The non-events of flight 327 are invoked in arguments that "political correctness" -- that traitorous, liberal-spawned concept -- is undermining airline security. The left's preoccupation with p.c. sensibilities, so goes the argument, has prevented us from implementing valuable programs of racial and ethnic profiling. Jacobsen's second column contained an almost unbearably corny lamentation on the scourge of political correctness, the presumption being that it somehow lent a hand toward vindicating the 14 Syrians. How, exactly, isn't clear, though apparently those darn civil liberties and a niggling dearth of evidence kept us from shipping the musicians to Guantánamo Bay fast enough.

"Whether or not profiling is racist is irrelevant," says Stanley J. Alluisi, a professor at the Aviation Sciences Institute, Southeastern Oklahoma State University. "More to the point, it's an inefficient use of resources and unlikely to produce good results. Without an extremely specific set of data upon which to build a profile, it would tag so many people as to be useless. Keeping a lookout for 'Middle Eastern men' doesn't help and actually hurts by wasting resources."

"If security authorities are told to look closely at Middle Eastern males," adds Johnson, the military intelligence officer, "then someday the threat will show up as female and Caucasian. In the anti-terrorism business, routine is weakness. The Israelis began successfully profiling suicide bombers as young males, so the Palestinians started sending females and middle-aged men. The first few got through."

To wit, USA Today reported on Aug. 16 that al-Qaida has begun recruiting non-Arab operatives from Bosnia and Chechnya to avoid scrutiny.

Whenever this subject arises, people are quick to cite the example of El Al, the Israeli national airline whose tough-as-nails security regimen includes profiling. But El Al is a relatively tiny carrier (28 planes) with a single small hub. It's easy for them to track and monitor virtually everybody who rides. In this country, half a billion people fly annually. And if El Al is our model of success, you should hear the story of Omar, a Palestinian American who lives in Berkeley, Calif.

Omar was born in the United States, carries a U.S. passport, and speaks without an accent. One day he showed up at the El Al ticket counter at Kennedy airport after spending $1,500 for a ticket to visit his relatives in Israeli-controlled Palestine. Omar was refused transport on El Al and no explanation was given. When he protested, the airline's staff asked the police to escort him from the terminal.

Switching to another carrier, Omar finally landed in Israel. Because he had been denied passage on El Al, however, he was also denied entry into the country and was immediately sent back to America. Having been banned from El Al, and because he'd been denied passage into Israel, he was subsequently detained and interrogated at every connecting point both abroad and in the United States.

"Orwell was an optimist," Omar said. He lost the full price of his ticket and is fearful of attempting the trip again. He reminds us that the Syrians on flight 327 would probably face similar groundless detainment should they ever attempt to visit the United States again, for the absurd reason of having once been wrongly suspected of something.

I have a postulate when it comes to air safety: If a given idea has the tendency to provoke contention and polemics, it's probably a bad one. After Sept. 11, there were no partisan tirades over the fortification of cockpit doors. Why not? Because it was a good and useful idea. There was little or no sparring over the implementation of explosives-screening machines. Why not? Because it was a good and useful idea. Now comes profiling, the perfect idea if our aim is to embroil ourselves in an unwinnable shell game.

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