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Francis Report 01-11 Dave Francis In thinking about the recent dispute between the airlines and the Secret Service agent regarding the agent being bumped from an American Airlines flight, I had some thoughts. In short, the situation was this. An armed man got on an American Airlines jet, with credentials and paperwork saying he was an agent of the Secret Service. The pilot, using his discretion, decided the agent in question needed a bit closer scrutiny. Without taking into account the different sides squabbling about who was angry, abusive, or out of control, which both sides have claimed about the other, it seems fairly easy to figure out who was right and wrong here. The pilot was wrong. In retrospect, the agent should have been allowed on the plane. He was, and is, a member of the Secret Service, and has every right to carry a firearm on an aircraft. The pilots concerns were misplaced. So what? In light of what has happened, isn’t it better to have a pilot err on the side of safety? Everyone talks about the racial profiling aspect of this case, but look for a moment at the undisputed facts. The man was armed. His paperwork was out of order. (There were some minor flaws.) The pilot asked the agent to redo the form, and the agent filled it out wrong. The agent left the plane, leaving his carryon aboard, a security breach the airlines do not easily tolerate. At the end of the day, the captain had a call to make, and he made it. He bounced one passenger, who had, to some degree, magnified the captains concerns by his failure to complete the security forms correctly. He erred on the side of safety. American Airlines is claiming that ethnicity had no bearing. I can’t look into the hearts and minds of the people involved, so I don’t know if it did or not, but I do know one thing. We allow the pilots, require the pilots, to be responsible for their airplanes, passengers, and crews. The authority rests with the captain. If he feels a need, for security reasons, to leave a passenger behind until some security questions can be cleared up, that is within his authority. This captain thought the situation required it, and I don’t think he was wrong in making what, in this case, was the wrong call. What is the point in giving a person discretion if they can only use it to be right? We have to assume that a captain is going to inconvenience some innocents along the way, or the discretion is a figment of our imaginations. Discretion to be right is always too narrow a line to draw with airline security, especially right now, with Sept. 11th, Richard Reid, (The attempted shoe bomber.) and other legitimate security issues in the so recent past. Besides that, what happened to the image of the government servant? Can anyone see Jimmy Stewart as a federal law enforcement official carping and bitching over something like this? “Th..th…they k..k..kept me off the plane because I stuttered…Said it made me look nervous and sus… sus… suspicious.” Can anyone imagine John Wayne carping about being inconvenienced in Green Berets? “Well pilgrim, the rules say you can’t ask. It don’t matter how I walk…..” The ‘servant’ in public servant has gone out the window, and that is too bad. I am sorry for this Secret Service agent’s inconvenience, and I am sorry for the inconvenience of millions of Americans who have to stand in longer lines, can’t tour national monuments, and have had to alter their lives after Sept. 11th, but I thought that sacrificing in a common cause was part of a war effort. If we can’t ask an elite law enforcement official, a member of the Secret Service, a member of the President’s personal security team to set a good example, what the hell is the country coming to? As an aside, Democrat Congressman John Dingle from Michigan, a powerful member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, was forced to enter a private room and disrobe for security screeners after his artificial hip set off metal detectors. Representative Dingle acknowledged seething afterwards to his wife, but to his credit, refused to use his position as a means to avoid or seek retribution for the indignities suffered. Upon receiving an apologetic telephone call from old friend, and now transportation secretary Norman Mineta, Dingle related, “I said, 'Norm, I'm not asking for an apology. And I know we don't want any more events like September 11th. I don't want any special treatment. I don't want to be treated any better than anyone else, but I don't want to be treated any worse either.' " Good for you congressman. The Taliban foreign minister, Mohammed Zaeef, has decided to help the FBI. He is telling all he knows, and the take should be good. Zaeef was in the know, and an intimate of bin Ladin and Omars. Reports from Pakistan say that the new government in Afghanistan will silently sell the freedom of captured Pakistani, and other foreign fighters. 50,000 R’s is the going price. (That is about 780 dollars. The Pakistani Rupee is trading at about 64 to the dollar.) Gunfire erupted as the first flight of Al Qaeda prisoners took off for Cuba, and interrogation by US law enforcement officials. The prisoners, sedated and hooded will be the first of about 300 prisoners to be brought to the US facility at Guantanamo. In an unexpected move, Vladimir Putin’s government has begun a criminal investigation into the Kremlin’s chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin. Voloshin is a holdover since the Yeltsin presidency, and one of the last of Yeltsin’s crew to be around. Voloshin has extensive contacts inside the controversial organization headed by Boris Berezovski. Putin has been removing the holdovers from Yeltsin’s period as President, and Voloshin’s removal is a big step for the Kremlin. In Nigeria, Sharia law has recently been imposed, and the first execution took place in front of government witnesses. Sani Yakubu, a 27 year old man was executed by hanging at a prison in Kaduna. On a side note, Osama has become far and away the most popular name for baby boys, with some reports saying that 70% of Nigerian male children have been named Osama since September 11th. Dave Francis |