[iwar] [fc:The.real.on-the-ground.information.war.]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-05-16 22:35:32


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Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 22:35:32 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:The.real.on-the-ground.information.war.]
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CHECKING IT TWICE DEPT.
HERE'S JOHNNIE
Issue of 2002-05-13
Posted 2002-05-06

<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?020513ta_talk_mcnamer">http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?020513ta_talk_mcnamer>

If you happened to take the US Airways shuttle from Logan to LaGuardia on
March 23rd, you might have been stuck for a good while behind Johnnie
Thomas, a seventy-year-old African-American woman at the head of the
check-in line. The ticket agent disappeared with Thomas's passport, and did
not return for half an hour. When she did, she told Thomas that she was
cleared to fly, but that, from now on, each time she checked in US Airways
would be required to call the state police, who would call the F.B.I., who
would run a check on the date and place of her birth.

"It's not your fault," she told Thomas. "It's just that your name is on the
master terrorist list."

Eight days earlier, at LaGuardia, the same thing had happened, and Thomas
had laughed it off. (The agent had told her, "You seem like a real nice
lady, but please don't come to me the next time you're at LaGuardia.") The
second time, though, Thomas was not amused. She had just spent a fine week
on Martha's Vineyard with her grandchildren, and was in no mood to argue
that she wasn't a terrorist.

March 23rd was a Saturday. On Monday morning, at home in Wayne, New Jersey,
Thomas got busy on the telephone, making notes on each call.

She called the F.B.I. office in Paterson. "If you want your name off the
list, hire a lawyer," said the man who returned her call. He refused to give
his name.

She called the Washington offices of the United States senators from New
Jersey and Montana‹she spends time each year in Miles City, Montana, where
her late husband grew up‹but no one offered a quick solution.

She called Denise Hartse, a reporter at the Miles City Star, who put her in
touch with the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism specialist in Billings, who
suggested that she call the Federal Aviation Administration. The number the
phone book gave for the F.A.A. in Bergen County turned out not to be in
service.

She called the Transportation Security Administration. Pay dirt! A Mrs. Boyd
at the T.S.A. told Johnnie Thomas that she was on an F.B.I. "no fly" list
because John Thomas Christopher was one of the aliases used by Christian
Michael Longo, who had been arrested on January 13th at a beach camp in the
Yucatán and charged with murdering his wife and three children. At the time
of his arrest, he had been on the F.B.I.'s Ten Most Wanted list for two
days; he is now in jail in Oregon awaiting trial. Longo was born in 1974 and
has blue eyes and reddish-blond hair.

O.K., Thomas thought, it's a big, complicated country. Perhaps the T.S.A.
could remove her name from the list? No, said Mrs. Boyd. Only the F.B.I.
could do that.

Thomas called a friend who had been in the foreign service, who called a
colleague, who called an F.B.I. counter- terrorism expert, who said that
some entities called the N.I.S.D.B. and the N.G.A.T. (even he did not know
what the letters stood for) could maybe "scrub the database" to remove her
name. "I have no idea what either of them is," Thomas said. "Mrs. Boyd said
maybe I should call the A.C.L.U."

Instead, Thomas called F.B.I. headquarters in Washington, where she was
directed to the Fugitive Publicity Unit, which told her to talk to
Supervisory Special Agent Rob Haley, in the Criminal Investigative Division.
Haley checked with the Oregon F.B.I. and discovered that one airline had
indeed been alerted during the manhunt for Longo, but US Airways was not it,
so he couldn't say how Thomas's name had ended up on the list. He said he
couldn't speak for "the counterterrorism side of the house." He suggested
that she call her local F.B.I. office. "That's where I started!" she said.
He told her that airline watch lists are generated from many differ- ent
sources. He would check further, but he wasn't optimistic that he could get
her name removed. "He said to be patient," Thomas said. Mrs. Boyd,
meanwhile, informed her that four other law-abiding John Thomases had called
to complain.

By this time, Thomas had been making calls for two weeks. On April 13th, she
checked in at US Airways at LaGuardia for another trip to the Vineyard. This
time, to her surprise, her name had the word "error" next to it on the
computer screen. The ticket agent consulted briefly with his supervisor and
checked her through. "Obviously, somebody had talked to somebody," Thomas
said.

When, four days later, she returned through Logan, her name on the screen
carried a new label: "Not allowed to fly." The agent consulted with his
supervisor, and Thomas was directed to a back room, where her checked
luggage was X-rayed. At the security gate, her carry-on bag was opened. At
the ramp, her carry-on bag was opened again, and she stretched her arms wide
for the top-to-toe wand.

"Something different happens every time," she said last week. "It's scary.
It's surreal‹so surreal that I've written a rap song about it. Here's the
last verse. It's in the voice of the F.B.I.: 'The identity of the anthraxer
is a mystery, that's true / But Mrs. Thomas, give us credit, we did catch
you! / Say uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh!' "
‹ Deirdre McNamer

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