more on Fascinating Airline Security Story

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rick Bradley <rick () rickbradley com>
Date: July 22, 2004 10:44:51 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Fascinating Airline Security Story

[for IP, if you like]

Not sure if you have a policy against posting National Review links to
IP (don't want to make the natives restless by challenging their
world-views, after all), but here's a harmless and funny NRO story:  the
"Syrian Band" discussed in this thread has been identified -- by a
college radio station news director no less.

    <http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/taylor200407211921.asp>

    The Syrian Wayne Newton:
    The man inadvertently behind a scare in the skies.

    [...]

    "There aren't that many casinos in southern California, so I had my
    research assistant, Mr. Google, take a look at some. An hour later I
    was talking to the nice folks at Sycuan Casino & Resort, near San
    Diego. Unlike most casinos where it's all Elvis impersonators, Paul
    Anka, and Linda Ronstadt -- oh, wait, scratch that last one --
    Sycuan books the occasional "ethnic music" show, too. In August, for
    example, they'll have a Vietnamese night.

    "Oh, do you mean Arab music?" inquired Angie, who answered Sycuan's
    phone. Yes, they had had an Arab act perform on July 1, an artist
    named Nour Mehana. Terry, Angie's supervisor at Sycuan, confirmed
    that he was there and that there was probably a backup band brought
    in, since there's no house band at Sycuan. In fractions of a second,
    Mr. Google found a website for Sycuan's event promoters, Anthem
    Artists, whose archive confirms Nour Mehana performed at Sycuan on
    7/01/04.

    [...]

    I talked to James Cullen of Anthem Artists who confirms that Nour
    Mehana's large band did arrive on Northwest Flight 327. Some of them
    came in from Detroit, and some from Lebanon. Cullen says they never
    said anything about a disturbance on the flight to him, even though
    "I stayed in the same hotel, they were nice, they stayed right above
    me." He said that they were fine musicians, put on a great show, and
    he would work with them again in the future.

    [...]

    Liberals will likely decry the suspicion and interrogation the
    musicians faced on Flight 327. And the principled Right will regret
    that that was necessary. If the band's English wasn't very good they
    might not have understood the instructions. But a polite word and
    some helpful gestures earlier on, rather than a guilty PC silence,
    might have saved them some embarrassment. In any case, the
    police-state parallels fade quickly: In a real police state, like,
    oh, Syria, you are not even allowed inside the country with an
    Israeli stamp in your passport.

    June 29 was no ordinary day in the skies. That day, Department of
    Homeland Security officials issued an "unusually specific internal
    warning," urging customs officials to watch out for Pakistanis with
    physical signs of rough training in the al Qaeda training camps. The
    warning specifically mentioned Detroit and Los Angeles's LAX
    airports, the origin and terminus of NWA flight 327.

    That means that our air-traffic system was expecting trouble. But
    rather than land the plane in Las Vegas or Omaha, it was allowed to
    continue on to Los Angeles without interruption, as if everything
    were hunky-dory on board. It certainly wasn't. If this had been the
    real thing, and the musicians had instead been terrorists, nothing
    was stopping them from taking control of the plane or assembling a
    bomb in the restroom. Given the information they were working with
    at the time, almost everyone should have reacted differently than
    they did.

    [...]

Read the whole thing -- he even uncovers ties to "a figure of such
repulsive evil that I felt a rush of prickly fear not unlike
Jacobsen's"...

Best,
Rick
--
 http://www.rickbradley.com    MUPRN: 706
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