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June 10, 2003

Powerful U.S. anti-terrorism network gets their man

I couldn't stop laughing while I was reading this. I seriously doubt The Portland Oregonian would be making this up. Thanks to asparagirl for pointing this article out in her blog. And you thought the federal government had problems co-ordinating their anti-terrorism efforts before September 11th? This is so ridiculous - and such a waste of time and resources - it boggles the mind. If all they really have to go on is a name, shouldn't the focus be on identifying the Dave Nelson they think is a terrorist, yet can not seem to locate, as opposed to harassing the Dave Nelsons that they have a long list of ways to identify? Instead, they just keep repeating the process over and over again with the same Dave Nelsons they have already ruled out? What about a photo or a general description of terror-suspect Nelson, so they might be able to tell if they've got the right Dave Nelson, assuming suspected international terrorist Dave Nelson is stupid enough to use his own name instead of an alias. You really need to read this whole column. It's great:

If your name is David Nelson you can expect to be hassled, delayed, questioned and searched before being allowed to board aircraft anywhere in the United States for the foreseeable future....

...This week 18 men named David Nelson, all residents of Oregon, confirmed they have been repeatedly delayed at airport counters and security checkpoints in the last year or so.

Take the February experience of Dave Nelson of Salem, a lobbyist whose largest client is the Oregon Seed Council....

Dave was asked for I.D. and turned over his driver's license. "They called downtown and ran a criminal check, and I was clean. Then the counter clerk had to call national Delta and get permission for me to go on the airplane. We were now pretty close to takeoff time." Dave and his wife were issued tickets, but again at the gate Dave was thoroughly frisked, searched and identified.

At the airport in Atlanta on the way back, the same thing happened. "The woman punched in my name and said, 'Oh, no, Mr. Nelson...' "

One after another, local David Nelsons tell the same story: At airports their bags are put through bomb detectors; they are delayed, searched, questioned.

Somewhere in the world there's an actual terrorist suspect named David Nelson who started all this mess. Several David Nelsons have been told by security or airline personnel that he's from Nashville.

But they're looking for him everywhere. Portland radiologist David Nelson "never could figure out why I was constantly getting flagged. Our bags would always come back with tape around them, saying they had been searched." His son and namesake, David Wesley Nelson, who's 27, thought he was always stopped "because of my age." When he flew to Los Angeles recently, "they gave me a big hassle because I didn't have a passport. I said, 'I don't normally carry a passport when traveling within the U.S.' "

Every single David Nelson interviewed understood the need for greater security in a post Sept. 11 world. They realize there are trade-offs between liberty and security. But in today's world of high-tech wizardry, it's hard to believe the Transportation Security Administration can't come up with a computer software program that would create a "free-to-fly" list of people whose I.D. has been checked and whose innocence already has been verified....

Posted by Mike at June 10, 2003 12:19 AM

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