30 May 2007

Be afraid

Be very afraid...

I've never been a "benefit of the doubt" sort of guy... when my spidey sense starts to tingle, I go with it.

That said, you sure don't need supernatural powers to see which way the wind was blowin' here...
A newly released inspector general report backs eyewitness accounts of suspicious behavior by 13 Middle Eastern men on a Northwest Airlines flight in 2004 and reveals several missteps by government officials...
There was a whole comedy of errors here that should scare the bejeezus out of anybody who travels regularly by air.

I've detailed only two of them... there are plenty more in the full report.
The report also says that a background check in the FBI's National Crime Information Center database, which was performed June 18 as part of a visa-extension application, produced "positive hits" for past criminal records or suspicious behavior for eight of the 12 Syrians, who were traveling in the U.S. as a musical group.

In addition, the band's promoter was listed in a separate FBI database on case investigations for acting suspiciously aboard a flight months earlier.

According to the Homeland Security report, the "suspicious passengers," 12 Syrians and their Lebanese-born promoter, were traveling on Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on expired visas.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services extended the visas one week after the June 29, 2004, incident.
PDF file of the full report here.

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