Hysteria in the Skies (and the Blogs)

The least trustworthy newspaper in the country, the Washington Times, has a new article that implies (without actually saying so explicitly) that a report from the Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that a group of terrorists conducted a "dry run" on a Northwest Airlines flight in 2004. Here's how the Times puts it:

The inspector general for Homeland Security late Friday released new details of what federal air marshals say was a terrorist dry run aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on June 29, 2004.

The article then goes on to paraphrase various parts of the report. Nowhere in the article, however, is there anything that even remotely supports the implication in the opening paragraph, that the incident on Flight 327 was a "dry run" of some terrorist plot. Indeed, there's nothing even indicating that any air marshals ever thought it was. In other words, the first paragraph of the article is entirely unsupported by the remainder of the article.

And that's not surprising given that this entire story was more or less definitively debunked three years ago by TIME Magazine reporter Sally Donnelly, who interviewed the senior air marshal on Flight 327:

This week, TIME conducted a detailed interview with the lead FAM on board Flight 327, one of the thousands of covert, armed government agents who patrol the skies. . . . The FAM, who says for security reasons cannot say exactly where he was sitting, was aware of the group of Middle Eastern men from the beginning of the flight. . . .

He watched the men and saw nothing out of the ordinary. In a long, single aisle plane like the Boeing 757 that was carrying Flight 327, there are often many people standing or moving around. That was the case on this flight, says the FAM, who has flown hundreds of missions in his two and half years on the job. The FAM never saw — nor was he told — of any example of the men interfering with the flight crew (which is a federal crime). He never saw any activity that caused him to ask the pilots to turn on the seat belt sign (which he can request) and keep people in their seats. "Nothing my main partner or I saw on Flight 327 brought us anywhere near a conclusion that we considered breaking our cover or deploying as we've been trained. And we never came close to drawing our weapons."

Some of you may remember that this all started when a freelance writer named Anne Jacobsen--who was aboard Flight 327--wrote an alarmist piece for an obscure online magazine recounting what she witnessed on that flight and claiming that it was a "dry run" of a terrorist plot. Her piece was picked up and hyped relentlessly by right wing blogs--at least until it was debunked.

I suppose it's not surprising then that many of these same blogs--Captain's Quarters, Powerline, Hot Air--are now breathlessly hyping this latest article and claiming that they were right all along. Bertrand Russell once said:

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.

This is clearly an example of the second phenomenon. Not only does the Times article offer no evidence whatsoever that the Syrian musicians on Flight 327 were terrorists, but it doesn't even claim that they were. All it says is that a recently released report has "new details" on the incident. It then claims--without attribution--that federal air marshals (though not necessarily the ones on the plane) have said that this was a terrorist "dry run." The article then quotes a bunch of totally uninteresting and irrelevant details from the report. From this meager evidence, right wing bloggers are willing to conclude--without caveat or qualification--that this was indeed a terrorist "dry run."

Now let's put aside for a second the fact that the Washington Times has almost no credibility and is known for printing things that are totally misleading. And let's put aside the fact that no credible news outlets have reported anything that corroborates this story (indeed they've actually debunked its core assertions).

Even putting all those warning signs aside, the story itself doesn't make any sense. The Times itself notes that the men on the plane (who were part of a band) were all checked out by the FBI and released. None of them were ever arrested. If this was a "dry run" of some terrorist plot, why hasn't the U.S. government arrested or detained these men? Why has this band/terrorist cell been allowed to freely operate and to continue playing gigs? Remember, we're talking about the same government here that locked up Jose Padilla--a U.S. citizen--for years without any process because he supposedly planned to "separate plutonium from nuclear material by rapidly swinging over his head a bucket filled with fissionable material."

But we're supposed to believe that the government allowed a bunch of Syrian nationals who were conducting dry runs of terrorist attacks on domestic flights to roam freely about the country, even after they'd been identified? Does that even pass the smell test?

Which reminds me of my favorite detail from the TIME article. Apparently the guy who created the most concern was "dressed in a green jumpsuit with Arabic writing on it." That sure sounds like a terrorist mastermind to me. I'm sure that in al Qaeda training camp they teach you to wear brightly colored clothes with arabic words written all over them, particularly when you're trying to conduct sensitive "dry runs" of important operations.

The Times says that it plans to release the full report on Wednesday. I can't wait.