That’s Life
Expect screening, even profiling.

Mr. Dunphy* is an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department
January 8, 2002 9:45 a.m.

entle readers, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, because as loyal followers of NRO, you are objective, calm, and measured in your response to situations that may well get your neighbors' knickers all in a twist. The latest such situation is the decision by an American Airlines pilot to remove an Arab-American Secret Service Agent from his aircraft. If your neighbor's knickers are indeed twisted over this affair, tell him to calm down. Whether you assist him in untwisting his knickers is of course entirely up to you.

"Officer Dunphy," came the inquiry from my editorial masters, "what would you, as a police officer, have done if you had been called to the terminal to investigate this incident?" Well, of course I would have had a look at the agent's credentials, and I might have followed up with a phone call to the man's office to verify his identity and assignment. But even if I were satisfied that he was indeed a Secret Service agent, I could do no more than advise the pilot of my opinion and let him do what he may with the information. It is well settled that airline pilots have the final say in who may fly aboard their aircraft and who may be asked to take his business elsewhere. And of course, since September 11, it doesn't take much to be given a refund on your ticket and directions to the bus station.

The details of the agent's removal from the flight have been exhaustively reported elsewhere, but here are the essentials: On Christmas Day, the agent was ticketed on an American Airlines flight from Baltimore to Dallas-Fort Worth. Before boarding the flight he filled out the paperwork required of federal agents who fly armed. Once on board he aroused the suspicion of someone on the crew, and this resulted in a reexamination of his credentials and paperwork. American Airlines claims there were inconsistencies and omissions on the forms, and the agent was not allowed to take the flight. After the matter was cleared up, he took an American flight to DFW the following day.

This will come as a surprise to the folks at the Council on American Islamic Relations, who seem to take great joy in donning the mantle of victimhood, but even I have been jacked up by airline-security goons, and I'm seldom mistaken for an Arab. At JFK Airport not long ago, a female security guard took what seemed to be considerable liberties in exploring the Dunphy southern regions, to a degree I'm unaccustomed to without first having been properly introduced. Once at my gate, I thought the neighborly and responsible thing to do was to inform a flight attendant that I was a police officer and that they could call on me should jihads crop up. Well, I was eventually welcomed aboard, but my ID was checked nine ways from Sunday, and I wasn't carrying a gun.

American denies that the agent's ethnicity was weighed in the pilot's decision to exclude him from the flight. This of course is rubbish, but it's the kind of rubbish one gets used to hearing these days. It is the unfortunate burden of Arab Americans that the United States was viciously attacked by a band of Arab terrorists who turned airliners full of innocent people into guided missiles. It is naive to expect anyone, least of all an airline captain, to put this out of his mind when evaluating potential threats. If the pilot's antennae were a little more sharply attuned because the agent was Arab American, so be it. There's still a great distance between being bounced from a flight and being carted off to Manzanar. Next time, Mr. G-man, be little more careful with the paperwork, then sit back and enjoy the flight.

(*Jack Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management .)