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Home Front: WoT
Keep your eye on these airline 'incidents'
2007-09-11
Remember Annie Jacobson? Her site is now a valuable place to track the various dry runs aimed at airlines. Here's a recent one:
Over the weekend, Douglas Hagmann, Director of the Northeast Intelligence Network, reported on an incident, Delta Airlines Flight 1824, involving a large group of Middle Eastern passengers, male and female, who were flying from Orlando, Florida to Atlanta, Georgia. Sources told Hagmann the passengers' bags tested positive for SEMTEX explosives at a TSA security checkpoint and were taken away by the FBI. Over the weekend, I spoke to Hagmann, as well as with one of his sources.

Just now, I had a lengthy conversation with TSA Spokesman Christopher White who confirmed the incident....
Posted by:lotp

#8  This might be urban myth or it might not, but it makes good sense - Not to long after 9/11 there was an airline captain who began to speak to his passengers before the takeoff roll. He proceeded to explain to them where the emergency exits and, more specifically, where the emergency fireaxes were located onboard. He explained that these fireaxes were weapons and could and should be used in the case of a hijack attempt. He proceeded to explain that the fireaxes should be used to kill any potential hijacker, stating that one could not trust in makeshift measures to keep a hijacker subdued or that the hijacker might not have a bomb strapped to him that he could somehow set off if he awoke during the flight to a landing site.

The captain's solution was elegant - if you can subdue a hijacker or potential hijacker, kill him. Leave no doubt about his potential fo further harm to the aircraft or the passengers.

Posted by: FOTSGreg   2007-09-11 17:26  

#7  Amen Nimble. Many stuies have concluded that the TSA does a worse job than the much maligned private security screeners they replaced. Just another example of Federal beaurocracies making matters worse instead of better. A good article on it here.
Posted by: mcsegeek1   2007-09-11 14:09  

#6  Psyching you out - or so they hoped.
Posted by: lotp   2007-09-11 14:09  

#5  At the end of July I was coming back from London, went to the head in the back.

A middle eastern man was in there for a while. He came out, walked to the forward head and stood there. After a while, another middle eastern man came out of that one. Without looking at each other, they each walked down the two aisles, in parallel, at the same slow pace.

Paranoid? maybe. but it was definitely strange.
Posted by: PlanetDan   2007-09-11 14:02  

#4  Why in the name of all that is holy would these people have been allowed to board once their bags tested for Semtex?

Because TSA is a bureaucratic disaster staffed, not completely, but primarily, with incompetents who follow the rules and do what they are told in an effort not to offend any constituency.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble   2007-09-11 13:35  

#3  False positive perhaps?

The coating on the bag might be the applied with the same solvent they use to test for explosives.

these tests mean INVESTIGATE FURTHER, nothing more.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2007-09-11 13:34  

#2  Maybe some had cleared security before discovery
Posted by: Sheang Bonaparte2276   2007-09-11 13:26  

#1  Why in the name of all that is holy would these people have been allowed to board once their bags tested for Semtex? As opposed to, say, being sent to Guantanamo?
Posted by: Excalibur   2007-09-11 12:52  

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