It Does Happen Here

The CBS program "60 Minutes" on Sunday is slated to expose the rampant idiocy of the No-Fly List. This TV program is different from the dramas that turn Homeland Security into this super-efficient, powerful and vigilant agency. If such an agency existed, perhaps it would have a sensible, reasonable and effective list of terrorists to watch for. But that is fiction. What "60 Minutes" describes is reality.

The reality is that the No-Fly List is an idiotic collection of mostly useless information contributed by numerous agencies apparently in a panic after 9-11, and apparently never revised. It contains some 44,000 names of people who are so dangerous they can't be allowed to board an airplane, even without their shoes, belts, nosehair scissors and shampoo. The list includes known terrorist hijackers and participants in 9-11, but they're unlikely to be caught because they are already dead. Saddam is on the list as well. So is the President of Bolivia. None of those involved in the alleged British plot that sent airports into red alert a few months ago are on the list.

But a lot of common names are on it, like Gary Smith, John Williams and Edward Kennedy (yes, Senator Edward Kennedy, one of the most recognized faces in the country, was stopped from boarding a flight.) CBS talked to 12 people with the name Robert Johnson, and all of them are detained almost every damn time. The detentions can include strip searches and long delays in their travels, the program notes.

So when this list was proposed, nobody thought about the problem of stopping hundreds of people dozens of times because they had a name in common with somebody on the list, who may or may not actually belong on it? Probably not, but more likely: nobody cared.

And CBS found the even more infuriating response that tells you that they still don't
care: "Well, Robert Johnson will never get off the list," says Donna Bucella, who oversaw the creation of the list and has headed up the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center since 2003. She regrets the trouble they experience, but chalks it up to the price of security in the post-9/11 world. "They're going to be inconvenienced every time … because they do have the name of a person who's a known or suspected terrorist," says Bucella.

Fire that woman, and her boss, and that boss' boss. Then arrest them for violating the civil rights of the entire American flying public, or actually the world's passengers who are unfortunate enough to pass through a U.S. airport.

The former FBI agent that CBS interviewed tells them , "They basically did a massive data dump..." They dumped without any known mechanism for getting anyone off the list, or even for telling anyone why they were on it, or who put them on it. Does this sound like America?

While nobody knows who to talk to in order to get their names off the list, it hasn't stopped the most frustrated from trying. A new GAO Report says that some 30,000 people have contacted just one agency--the Transportation Security Agency--not exactly a widely known part of the government, because they were stopped, or stopped and searched, or waylayed or otherwise caused a lot of trouble traveling. Half who complained were "misidentified" and an unknown number were on the list by mistake. No one knows the true number of people wrongly identified and stopped.

"Misidentifications can lead to delays, intensive questioning and searches, missed flights or denied entry at the border," the report said. "Whether appropriate relief is being afforded these individuals is still an open question."

Idiotic bureaucracy is one thing. Failure to take seriously what this does to people, and above all failure to provide information and speedy redress is as serious as things get in a Constitutional democracy. Who compiled the list? Why are people on it? Who do you go to in order to get off the list? For going on five years, nobody knew, and nobody has seemed to care very much, including the media.

That's really the scandal here. "60 Minutes" is doing the story, at least four years after they should have. But fear kept people from asking too many questions, or asserting too many rights. Not just the fear of terrorists but the more proximate fear of our own government at a time when questioning the authoritarians in power about anything was unpatrotic, and more to the point, dangerous.

Complain about being on the no-fly list wrongly, and you could end up in Guantanamo. And by the way, this idiocy ought to suggest just how likely it is that all the people in Guantanamo are ruthless killers and dedicated terrorists. This has been a see no evil speak no evil time, and the result has been: evil.