I think that airport and airline personnel were right to act on their suspicions. I would rather they stop people and ask questions than give every passenger the benefit of the doubt. Given that the kid's ticket showed a purchase date of September 11, that he had a book about ecoterrorism bombings, that he was unemployed and a recent college dropout, why not take the extra time and make sure that this kid isn't trying to pull a copycat incident or a copycat hoax?

And I do agree with Mike that there probably was more to the story. The article admits that the 22-year-old involved is the brother of an employee of the alternative paper that wrote the article. The whole article is the kid's recollection of the events; there's nothing from the national guardsmen or security officers involved. I would suspect that the kid showed some rudeness towards the security personnel that didn't help his case.


[This message has been edited by bry99 (edited 10-19-2001).]