In 2005, Rahinah Ibrahim, a Malaysian architect, was placed on the United States Government’s No-Fly list, operated by the Terrorist Screening Center.
It wasn’t because she was a member of Al Qaeda. It happened because of an FBI screw-up.
The mess started in January 2005, when Ibrahim and her 14-year-old daughter arrived at the San Francisco Airport. Their destination: Hawaii, to attend a conference trip sponsored by Stanford.
Ibrahim, still recovering from a recent hysterectomy, was in a wheelchair.
When she approached the United Airlines counter to check in, she was seized, handcuffed, thrown in the back of a police car and taken to a holding cell.
There she was interrogated. During this, paramedics had to be summoned because she hadn’t taken her surgery medication.
Then, to her surprise, she was released—and told that her name had been removed from the No-Fly list. She boarded a flight to Hawaii and attended the conference.
But in March 2005, the situation suddenly changed.
Having returned to Malasia, she bought a ticket to fly back to California to meet with her Stanford thesis adviser. But at the airport, she was banned from the flight.
She was told that her student visa had been revoked, and that she would longer be let into the United States. When she asked why, authorities refused to give a reason.
She would not learn the answer for another eight years.
An FBI agent in San Jose, California, had conducted a background check on Ibrahim. He hadn’t meant to place her on theNo-Fly list.
Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
He had simply checked the wrong boxes on a form. He didn’t even realize the mistake until nearly a decade later, during his deposition in 2013.
In fact, he filled out the form exactly the opposite way from the instructions provided on the form. He did so even though the form stated, “It is recommended that the subject NOT be entered into the following selected terrorist screening databases.”
Thus, Ibrahim was placed on the No-Fly list.
That was bad enough—but at least understandable. FBI agents are human, and can and do err like anyone else.
What is not understandable or forgivable is this:
After Ibrahim filed a lawsuit against the United States Government in 2006, the Justice Department ordered a cover-up—to prevent word from leaking that one of its agents had made a mistake.
Moreover, Ibrahim was ordered by the Justice Department to not divulge to anyone that she was suing the United States Government—or the reason for the lawsuit.
Ibrahim is currently the dean of architecture at University Putra Malaysia.
Because the Justice Department refused to admit its mistake, attorneys working pro bono for Ibrahim incurred a reported $3.8 million in legal fees, as well as $300,000 in litigation costs.
In his recent decision on the case, U.S. District Judge William Alsup, based in San Francisco, called the agent’s error “conceded, proven, undeniable and serious.”
“Once derogatory information is posted to the Terrorist Screening Database, it can propagate extensively through the government’s interlocking complex of databases, like a bad credit report that will never go away,” he wrote.
The Justice Department could have quickly admitted the mistake and quickly moved to correct it. But the egos of Federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors effectively ruled out this option.
Robert Gates, who served as Secretary of Defense under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama (2006-2011) had a completely different approach to dealing with mistakes.
In his autobiography, Duty, he writes of his determination to promote good relations between the Pentagon and the reporters who covered it.
Robert Gates
In his commencement address at the Anapolis Naval Academy on May 25, 2007, he said:
“…the press, in my view [is] a critically important guarantor of our freedom.
“When it identifies a problem, the response of senior leaders should be to find out if the allegations are true. And if so, say so, and then act to remedy the problem.
“If [the allegations are] untrue, then be able to document that fact.”
Millions of Americans not only distrust the Federal Government—they believe it is aggressively conspiring against them.
But the vast majority of Federal employees do not come to work intent on destroying the lives of their fellow Americans.
They spend most of their time carrying out routine, often mind-numbing tasks—such as filling out what seem like an endless series of forms.
But even where no malice is involved, their actions can have devastating consequences for innocent men and women. It’s easy, for example, to turn down someone for disability coverage when you’ve reduced human applicants to black-and-white documents.
But the consequences become even more frightening in cases where “national security” can be invoked to hide error, stupidity, or even criminality.
The refusal of the Justice Department to quickly admit the honest mistake of one of its agents prevented Ibrahim from boarding a commercial flight for seven years.
Federal agencies should follow the advice given by Robert Gates: Admit your mistakes and act quickly to correct them.
Unless this happens, the poisonous atmosphere of distrust between the Government and its citizens will only worsen.
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REPUBLICANS: AIR RAGE OVER MASKS ISN’T TERRORISM
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on March 2, 2022 at 12:18 amDuring the first six weeks of 2022, nearly 500 unruly passenger incidents were reported to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
That makes for more than 6,400 since the start of 2021.
About two-thirds of the incidents in 2021 concerned violations of the federal mask mandate.
On February 16, the FAA said it had referred a total of 80 incidents to the Justice Department to consider criminal prosecution.
Airlines may ban an unruly passenger from their own flights, but competition rules mean that information is not shared with other carriers. Which means that a flier who was banned on Delta might board a flight on Southwest.
In September, 2021, the airline industry asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) to establish a Federal “no-fly” passenger list, whose information would be shared with all airlines.
In February, Delta Air Lines renewed the request in a letter to the DOJ.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg suggested to CNN’s Dana Bash last fall that a federal no-fly list for violent airplane passengers “should be on the table.”
American Airlines Pilot Captain Dennis Tajer explained the dangers facing everyone on board when an “air rage” incident erupts: “The moment something happens in the back of the aircraft, as a captain, my attention goes off of my primary duty and onto the back of the airplane.”
Dennis Tajer
Tajer, who represents the Allied Pilots Association, wants stricter punishments for air rage.
So who isn’t in favor of a “no-fly” ban?
At least eight “law-and-order” Republican United States Senators.
Their names:
All eight are virulent supporters of Donald Trump, who, as President, refused to wear a mask and incited violent action against governors who declared mask mandates.
The reason for their unexpected clemency: It would be unfair to people who break mask mandates.
In a jointly-signed letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, dated February 14, they stated:
“Your office received a letter from Delta Airlines on February 3, 2022. In that letter, Delta indicated their desire for the U.S, Department of Justice (DOJ) to create a comprehensive “nofly” list.
“This list would would presumably include any airline passenger who has been convicted of any on-board disruption. As a result, those passengers would subsequently be banned from using any commercial air service provider moving forward. We write today to express our strong opposition to the creation of such a list.
“While airlines are currently free to deny service to any individual over past transgressions on their flights, the federal government’s role in denying access to the commercial aviation network has been limited to ensuring that suspected terrorists remain off of domestic flights.
“According to data from the Federal Aviation Administration, the majority of recent infractions on airplanes has been in relation to the mask mandates from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
“While we strongly condemn any violence toward airline workers, there is significant uncertainty toward the efficacy of this mandate as highlighted by the CEO of Southwest Airlines during a recent Senate Conference, Science and Transportation Committee hearing.”
N95 mask
There is no uncertainty about the “efficacy” of the ability of masks to protect people from COVID-19. Since the virus appeared in 2020, the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has repeatedly urged Americans to mask up to protect themselves and others.
“Creating a federal ‘no-fly’ list for unruly passengers who are skeptical of this mandate would seemingly equate them to terrorists who seek to actively take the lives of Americans and perpetrate attacks on the homeland.”
Being “skeptical” of the need for mask mandates poses no threat to anyone. But refusing to mask up to protect yourself and others from a deadly virus presents a danger to both. And attacking airline employees who are trying to enforce that law presents a clear and present danger to them and passengers.
“The TSA was created in the wake of 9/11 to protect Americans from future horrific attacks, not to regulate human behavior aboard flights.”
In short: It’s OK to protect American airline passengers from Islamic lawbreakers who endanger their lives aboard aircraft. But it’s unfair to protect American airline passengers from American lawbreakers who endanger their lives aboard aircraft.
“The creation of this list by DOJ would result in a severe restriction on the ability of citizens to fully exercise their constitutional right to engage in interstate transportation.”
At the time the Constitution was ratified in 1788, airline travel didn’t exist. In addition, it’s customary to place “severe restrictions” on citizens who break the law. And while Americans have the right to travel between states, they do not have the right to threaten the safety of others while doing so.
Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, minced no words about the senators’ request: It’s “irresponsible and political brinkmanship that puts our economic security at risk right along with our lives.
“We’ve been punched, kicked, spit on, and sexually assaulted. We urge the FAA, TSA, and DOJ to come together to implement a plan with due process to keep dangerous flyers on the ground.”
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