By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
03 August 2003 - Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=430073
After more than a year of complaints by some
US anti-war activists that they were being
unfairly targeted by airport security, Washington
has admitted the existence of a list, possibly
hundreds or even thousands of names long, of
people it deems worthy of special scrutiny at
airports.
The list had been kept secret until its disclosure
last week by the new US agency in charge of
aviation safety, the Transportation Security
Administration (TSA). And it is entirely separate
from the relatively well-publicised "no-fly" list,
which covers about 1,000 people believed to have
criminal or terrorist ties that could endanger the
safety of their fellow passengers.
The strong suspicion of such groups as the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),
which is suing the government to try to learn
more, is that the second list has been used to
target political activists who challenge the
government in entirely legal ways. The TSA
acknowledged the existence of the list in
response to a Freedom of Information Act
request concerning two anti-war activists
from San Francisco who were stopped and
briefly detained at the airport last autumn and
told they were on an FBI no-fly list.
The activists, Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams,
work for a small pacifist magazine called War
Times and say they have never been arrested, let
alone have criminal records. Others who have
filed complaints with the ACLU include a
left-wing constitutional lawyer who has been
strip-searched repeatedly when travelling through
US airports, and a 71-year-old nun from
Milwaukee who was prevented from flying to
Washington to join an anti-government protest.
It is impossible to know for sure who might be
on the list, or why. The ACLU says a list kept by
security personnel at Oakland airport ran to 88
pages. More than 300 people have been subject
to special questioning at San Francisco airport,
and another 24 at Oakland, according to police
records. In no case does it appear that a wanted
criminal was apprehended.
The ACLU's senior lawyer on the case, Jayashri
Srikantiah, said she is troubled by several answers
that the TSA gave to her questions. The agency, she
said, had no way of making sure that people did not
end up on the list simply because of things they had
said or organisations they belonged to. Once people
were on the list, there was no procedure for trying to
get off it. The TSA did not even think it was
important to keep track of people singled out in error
for a security grilling. According to documents the
agency released, it saw "no pressing need to do so".
It is not just left-wingers who feel unfairly targeted.
Right-wing civil libertarians have spoken out against
the secret list, and at least one conservative organisation,
the Eagle Forum, says its members have been
interrogated by security staff.
The complaints by the ACLU form part of a pattern of
protest since the 11September attacks, with the Bush
administration repeatedly under fire for detaining people
on the flimsiest of grounds in the name of the "war on
terror". Many Muslims have had a hard time, especially
if they have a surname such as Hussein.