The only news article that I could find on this story, was the one that Bruce quoted from the NY Times. I don't think that you will be hearing too much more about it in the press, as everyone involved must be totally embarrassed by the actions of their employees.

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You are right. This guy gets to carry a firearm around the President. There are very few people who are allowed to do this.

But you're not going to let him fly?

That's absurd.

This isn't the first time we've heard about discrimination against SS (no, not that German organisation) agents who are not lily white.

Remember the case (during Clinton's first term, IIRC) about staff at some Denny's outlet refusing to serve/ignoring a table of black SS agents while serving their white colleagues?

President: Johnson? Murphy? Jackson? Roberts? Hey, where is my security detail?
Aide: I'm sorry Mr. President it's Christmas - they're off
President: Well I guess we're on our own. C'mon Laura, git my shotgun 'cause we're on our own ta'day

The U.S. Secret Service does not have days in which they "close". We're not talking about employees at the Dept. of Education, Labor or Interior that are able to close a regional office on Friday 12/21 and place a sign on the door that says - open on Wed 12/26. Also, I may your typical arrogant Californian that many times believes that the entire country, and the world, revolves around our state. However with that said, I'm sure even Maryland (especially since they border with D.C.) has a liaison at ATF for the Secret Service.

There is no excuse for this, it was nothing but racism. This I.D. verified, United States Secret Service Agent, working on the President's detail (not out looking for counterfeit money), who happens to be of arab descent was thrown off a plane because they did not feel "comfortable?"

The pilot and airport security personnel should be fired or at the very least suspended. You cannot continue to allow people a legal shield to hide their racist ways.

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Ken in Sacramento

bdschobel & rssrsup. i beg to differ w y'all. if i can't carry a very small knife aboard , then i think that others should not be allowed to have weapons except on an ad hoc basis. i don't care who the person is or how qualified the person is. the weapon should be checked & not in the cabin. i am trying to think of a situation where any one other than the air crew should have a weapon. [marshall is air crew imho]

bdschobel & rssrsup. i beg to differ w y'all. if i can't carry a very small knife aboard , then i think that others should not be allowed to have weapons except on an ad hoc basis. i don't care who the person is or how qualified the person is. the weapon should be checked & not in the cabin. i am trying to think of a situation where any one other than the air crew should have a weapon. [marshall is air crew imho]

Here are the regs for law enforcement officers carrying accessible firearms on planes:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/c...cfr108_00.html
then scroll down to 108.219
Also a later story with some elaboration from AA:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/2001...uard_dc_2.html

Edited to fix url which I can't seem to get to link directly to the proper CFR[This message has been edited by jerry a. laska (edited 12-27-2001).]

[This message has been edited by jerry a. laska (edited 12-27-2001).]

[This message has been edited by jerry a. laska (edited 12-27-2001).]

From cnn.com

"Even when local transit police vouched for the agent, the pilot refused to let him board the plane, the council [of American-Islamic Relations] said."

"The agent eventually was sent to another American Airlines flight, but was banned from boarding the aircraft because he had been reported for "suspicious activity," according to the council.

"The agent ultimately took yet another flight to Texas"

"An American Airlines spokesman said the company stands behind its pilot, saying he took appropriate action to protect his aircraft, passengers and crew."

My 2 cents:

AA has decided that re-assuring the majority that its planes are safe is worth any cost to a minority. It is in their financial interests. It is up to the inconvenienced and enraged to decide whether they should continue to patronize this airline.

The CFR confirms that he would have completed paperwork before taking the flight. In fact, before closing the door, the airline is required to inform every armed person on board of the location of every other armed person on board. The pilot was also informed.

Then, the followup story from AA says that the pilot found discrepancies between the first set of paperwork and the second (there had been a flight cancellation so the agent was required to complete the paperwork a second time).

Having now had access to the actual regulations, and to AA's "followup" story, it appears clear (to me) that I will need to "eat my own words" - the pilot made a decision which, at best, reflected poor judgment.

jerry, to net it out, do the regs allow any police officer to carry on an air plane when not doing a job [vacation, deadheading, etc] ?

This was in the later article, http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/2001...uard_dc_2.html


"The agent, who was not identified by the Secret Service, was to fly from Baltimore Washington International Airport to Dallas to protect Bush on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. He was carrying a weapon because he was on official duty."

If people feel that this agent didn't have the right to carry his weapon while on offical duty, they need a reality check.



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rssrsvp- who was he protecting on the plane?..... edited to change rssrup to rssrsvp.

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

On a related note...

December 27, 2001 - Special Report: Aftermath of Terror
Creating Bullets Safe for Use on Planes Is a Tricky Job, but the Demand Exists
By PAULO PRADA Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The silver bullet in airline safety may turn out to be a new kind of bullet.

With governments adding air marshals to airplanes to subdue hijackers, and some U.S. pilots asking for permission to carry handguns, ammunition-makers are scurrying to produce an airplane-safe bullet. The ideal: a bullet that could kill an adversary, but not pass through a cockpit door and kill the pilot or wreck electronics.

"In an aircraft with people, hydraulics, pneumatics and electronics, you'd be foolish not to be concerned about a miss or the problem of overpenetration," says Bob Giuda, chairman of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, a Warren, N.H., group that lobbies to arm pilots.

Ammunition makers are focusing on so-called frangible bullets, which disintegrate on impact with the first hard substance they hit, eliminating ricochet and reducing the chance that bullets will pass through a body. Frangible bullets usually consist of a copper cladding packed with ground metals or plastics. They were developed to meet new demands on the firearms industry: ammunition that is less deadly for use by police in urban neighborhoods and less polluting than lead.

Often Inaccurate

But frangibles are often inaccurate, because the ground materials inside tend to clump or break apart, throwing off bullet trajectory and making shots behave unpredictably upon impact. By contrast, a conventional bullet, generally a homogeneous slug of lead, flies straight and hits as a solid mass, although with too much power for the inside of an airplane.

SinterFire Inc., in Kersey, Pa., and Bismuth Cartridge Co., of North Hollywood, Calif., believe they have come up with better alternatives, using such materials as copper, tin and bismuth, a hard and lustrous metal. Packing frangible bullets with more consistently machined powder or crystalline metal reduces the problem of clumping and makes the shots more accurate, they say. The companies believe they could sell millions of these bullets a year.

Manufacturers also have fine-tuned the material to make sure the bullets are powerful enough to kill, but not so powerful that they penetrate metal. Technicians have tested the rounds against a variety of materials, including gelatin globs that model human tissue.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center are testing frangible bullets for their effectiveness in police handguns. The Federal Aviation Administration is looking at new weaponry for use by air marshals, but wouldn't say whether they were examining frangible bullets.

The prospect of midair shootouts makes many aviation experts gun-shy, even though they dismiss the idea that bullet holes could lead to a loss of cabin pressure. Unlike the villain in the James Bond movie "Goldfinger," passengers wouldn't get sucked through a window punctured by a bullet. Aircraft manufacturers say pressurization systems are designed to compensate for leaks, and that pilots are trained to fly the craft safely, even in cases of depressurization.

Insurance Liabilities

Instead, airlines worry about insurance liabilities if an errant bullet kills a passenger. UAL Corp.'s United Airlines backs stun guns and is seeking FAA permission to have pilots and flight attendants carry the weapons. But stun guns may not be potent enough to stop a determined group of hijackers.

In Europe, where air marshals operate on a country-by-country basis, aviation regulators haven't even raised the issue of bullets. There, individual countries have authority over air safety, making coordination on security issues complicated enough without the added controversy of weaponry. Few European airlines are pushing the gun issue either.

"The whole thing is fraught with dangers, from accidental discharge to issues of proper training," says Iain Jack, head of security for British Airways. "We don't want bullets flying around inside an aircraft."

SinterFire says its frangible bullets are more airplane-friendly. Its rounds consist of a baked metal powder that is 90% copper and 10% tin. By pulverizing, compressing and heating the metals, the company says, it avoids the clumps in other frangibles, making the bullets more reliable. "Our bullet can penetrate a bad guy's head, but it won't come out the other side," says Dan Smith, SinterFire's director of technology.

SinterFire works closely with Sigarms Co., a handgun maker in Exeter, N.H., which sells firearms to the FAA. Air marshals work for the FAA and use government-issued weapons. The two companies are discussing a new gun designed specifically for the frangible bullets.

Ken Elliott, president of Bismuth Cartridge, says his company recently developed a bullet made of that metal. Those bullets shatter more easily on contact than lead, because bismuth, a metal slightly heavier than lead, has a brittle, crystalline structure.

Mr. Elliott, already sells bismuth shotgun shells in the U.S., and is the publisher of hunting magazine "Sports Afield." He began investigating new ammunition several years ago, when the Clinton administration began pressing bullet makers to move away from lead, which poisons groundwater and soils.

Most frangible bullets, he realized, were "sintered" -- that is baked, not melted into a single unit. But he cast his bismuth bullets from the molten metal, forming a solid, yet breakable mass. The result, he says, is a truer flight path.

But some pro-gun pilots fear the push toward fragile bullets will produce ammunition that wouldn't stop terrorists. Mr. Giuda, of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, says he would prefer short-range versions of standard bullets, whose lethality is unquestioned, but which would be less likely to blast through cockpit doors.

Write to Paulo Prada at mailto[email protected][email protected]</A>

URL: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/r...5355504440.djm

Copyright � 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

You are missing the point, he was on offical duty. As such, he was required to carry his weapon. Please read the regulations pertaining to this, http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/c...cfr108_00.html The agent filled out the forms for both flights.

The reality of the situation is that the pilot played the "paperwork is incorrect" game to hide his racial bias.

One would hope. I kind of had to laugh at this. It might be profiling, which
I don't approve of, but our gov't has be SO clueless and moronic WRT security of late, it's amusing to see the blade cut both ways once in a while.

Another good one was on the 12/25/01 issue of the SF Examiner. On the top fold of the paper, in large-point type(The size usually reserved for "WAR DECLARED!!" type headlines) was the phrase "FBI Hasn't a clue!" with no other sub-header visible above the fold!
I had to buy a copy just for that alone!
JD