Sitting in the airport waiting for Homeland Security screening has a wee bonus — I get to watch cable news on those little TVs dangling from the ceiling. And so it was oddly enough in airport security that I saw a fleeting news story that has gone otherwise uncovered. At the beginning of the previous week, the Associated Press had published an article detailing new warnings from the Transportation Security Agency of Homeland Security to be on the lookout for terrorist “dry runs” in planning for a new attack on U.S. soil. The basis for this claim? One person’s checked baggage contained a nine volt battery, some wires, and a “clay-like substance.” Two people had packed blocks of cheese in their bags. And one woman had ice packs with holes in them, containing clay in them!
The Associated Press article got national coverage, freaking everybody out. But by the next day, the San Diego Tribune had uncovered a local TSA official who said the national TSA was off its rocker; the woman’s ice packs had holes in them because they were old, and the “clay” in them was the dried gel that had seeped out the holes. By Saturday, CNN had this woman — a non-profit worker in her sixties — on the air rolling her eyes that TSA investigators had asked her, “Do you know Osama bin Laden?” She said, “If I really did know Osama bin Laden, do you think I’d answer that question?” People near the checkpoint chuckled when they heard that. CNN contacted a government official who told them that these four cases all checked out fine. And yet the TSA still was sending its breathless warnings out about terrorist dry runs.
I’ve had it with a government that seems bent on goading its citizens into a state of unreasonable fear.
(Sources: CNN July 28 2007; San Diego Tribune July 25 2007; Associated Press July 25 2007)
Yeah, Jim, a lot of us “have had it” but what do we DO about it (besides whine some more or petition our ineffective “elected” officials)?
We sit by and watch it get worse.