Think about this guy checking in

Agent: Sorry I'm late

Boss: You were suppossed to be here hours ago. McClure had to cover your shift. I hope you have a good explanation.

Agent: The AA pilot threw me off the plane.

Boss: What?

Agent: They wouldn't let me fly.
Getting an understnading look on his face -
Boss: Look, we all party a little too much from time to time. If you had to sleep one off, just let me know. At least come up with a better story than that.

A guy with a bomb in his shoe gets on (after being told the day before he was denied boarding) and a Secret Service Agent is thrown off. Interesting times we live in.

Frank

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TANSTAAFL - but if you work it right, FF miles comes pretty close.

Suprising, no. Unreasonable, yes. The point is that they were willing to take an hour-and-a-half to interrogate this man but were unwilling to make a 10 minute phone call. (They even could have had a fax of his picture sent to them if they wnated to be really paranoid.)

Every gate agent, every pilot, every national guardsman, every baggage scanner, and every policeman is identified by their ID cards. Apparently these cards are not useful if you "look wrong".

I disagree with Plato90s (which is probably obvious already). Plato90s made some unsupported assumptions:

1. Traveling on a one-way ticket. This is not reported by the New York Times.

2. Secret Service agents on presidential detail do not normally travel commercial. As one who worked for a time in the White House complex during the Reagan years, I can say with certainty that this is not true. Many Secret Service agents travel in advance of the President, for lots of obvious reasons, and they indeed travel commercial. Nothing unusual about it.

If this country is going to continue being America as we have known it, then idiotic nonsense like this has got to end immediately. Air crews cannot merely say, "I'm uncomfortable with this guy on 'my' plane," and get away with having the guy thrown off. The guy has rights, too, even if he is a Secret Service agent (joke!).

My opinion: If the flight crew is uncomfortable in situations this innocuous, then THEY should get off -- perhaps permanently.

I am now putting on my asbestos suit.

Bruce

As Sonny and Cher once sand " and the beat goes on... and on and on and on..."

I sit and laugh at this whole thing. Guy with gun gets through security, but they do not empty airport. Guy with gun is on plane and they ask him to step outside. What if he WAS a bad guy, could he have started shooting right then?

And for all you guys that give the rent a cops a hard time, it appears they got it right. But the "professionals" had the problems.

With any luck, we can kill the airline industry and the economy yet. When will we have AmFly - a fully owned subsidiary of AmTrak?

Everybody is saying "why couldnt they just make a call and verify the guy's identity?" as if that's a trivial matter. Do you understand that size of the organizations you are talking about? I doubt that it can be done in an hour, given the level of security held by secret service agents working in the president's detail.

Frankly, I agree with what was said: this was a case of airport security more-or-less doing their job... he fit the profile, he was armed, his reason for flying was suspect. An ID card was not a good enough reason to let him on the plane.

Keep in mind that the guy with the shoebomb was also detained by security and actually allowed to fly the next day. This is not an exact science and never will be. There will be plenty of errors made on both sides of the right/wrong line.

Ron

News like this does suck indeed.

It is embrassing for both parties.

While nobody has said that this is a one-way ticket, I think that's almost certainly the case. Remember that this guy was supposed to be on Air Force One, so buying a RT ticket makes sense only if he won't be returning on AF1 either.

While I forgot to add it, this agent was also flying on Christmas day. FAA has advisories out which suggest airlines tighten security to avoid allowing people from slipping in through the holiday crowds.

It's also quite true that advance teams do go out ahead of any planned presidential trips to secure the area, but they don't travel alone and not last minute. The airlines are required to be notified of the transit of armed passengers, per FAA regulations.

Inferring from the articles I have seen, this agent did not identify himself to the airline, or else the airlines would have known in advance to check his identity.

Calling Secret Service would not be a conclusive answer, IMO. First of all, Secret Service is not in the habit of sharing details about its agents, even with state police. Secondly, it's not all that difficult an exercise to tap the phone of the airport and re-direct calls. You think you're calling Secret Service, but you might be talking to a guy with a tap into a phone hub.

In fact, I think a good deal of the screw-up belongs to Secret Service. An armed agent was boarding a commercial flight on Christmas on a flight path which takes them close over restricted airspace. Secret Service should have called ahead to AA, instead of having the agent telling AA to call Secret Service.

Airlines are responsible for security, and they are doing their job. If the SS [or FBI or ATF or any other agency] want to have one of their armed agent fly commercial, tell them to call ahead to the airlines.

Another scenario: could the agent have identified himself on boarding and even visited the cockpit and offered to surrender his weapon for the duration of the flight?

Jim

I am sure that the State Police have a contact person at the Secret Service that could have verified the ageny's identify by a faxed picture in less than the time that they detained him.

There is absolutely no argument or rationalzation for this type of activity happening, that can justify what took place.

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I may be wrong, but Federal agents (FBI, Secret Service, etc.) are required to carry their weapons.

Frankly, I would be a happy camper, if he would be on a flight that I was taking.



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"Do you understand that size of the organizations you are talking about? I doubt that it can be done in an hour, given the level of security held by secret service agents working in the president's detail."

Umm... it's not that hard. Pick up cell phone. Call supervisor. He calls someone on his contact list, say.. Superintendent of Maryland State Police. At home. In bed. Sup calls Airport and says: "Let him through or you are all working a trash detail for the rest of your lives".

Agent on plane.

Seriously, the Secret Service absolutely has duty officers at communications facilities 24/7 who can reach out to another agency any minute of any day.

The whole :
"This is the White House calling, please stand by" has an AMAZING way of making people pay attention.

Regards,
-Bouncer-

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/rolleyes.gif

I think it's probably a bit difficult to get a hold of all the necessary personnel on Christmas day at 5pm.

As for the supervisor, I'm going to guess he was on Air Force One. This agent was part of the presidential detail, so presumably the rest of the detail was on AF1.

Assuming there's actually a permanent liasion officer assigned to the Maryland police, does anyone think he's working Christmas day?

So let's cut to the scene on Tuesday...

You're the cop who has to be on duty at the BWI airport on Christmas. By default that means you're a pretty junior officer (or on your commander's ****-list), since senior officers have managed to take the day off. Do you...

a) pick up the phone and call your lieutenant or captain so that they can interrupt their holiday in order to track down Secret Service to verify this guy's identity, just so you can let a federal agent board a flight to DFW.

b) simply do nothing to help this guy. Nobody ever got fired (especially in an union shop like the Police Department) by following the written rules. The written rules say an airline can refuse to carry a passenger at their discretion. The policeman on the spot merely agree that he can't verify the identity and let the airline refuse to seat him.

Which do you think is the choice most police will make?

[This message has been edited by Plato90s (edited 12-27-2001).]

The presidential security detail is BIG, more than 200 when I worked in EXOP. Some are with the President; others are not. The White House switchboard can locate people anywhere, anytime -- it's simply amazing what they can do. All the MD State Police had to do was call the White House and ask to speak with the Secret Service agent in charge at the moment. There's always one there, and he could have cleared this up quite rapidly. The notion that a call to the White House could be misdirected to an accomplice terrorist -- and not be detected in any number of ways -- is just science fiction, in my opinion (asbestos suit already on).

Bruce

plato,

i agree that the keystone kops were covering their collective @$$, but that certainly doesn't make it the right thing to do.

what if, God forbid, something had happened on that flight and the armed federal agent were left behind on the ground. those airline personnel who denied him boarding would be responsible.

there is just no excuse for this kind of lunacy.