Saturday, March 15, 2003 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific
Suitcase surprise: Rebuke
written on inspection notice
By Susan Gilmore
Seattle Times staff reporter
Seth Goldberg says that
when he opened his
suitcase in San Diego after
a flight from Seattle this
month, the two "No Iraq
War" signs he'd picked up at
the Pike Place Market were
still nestled among his
clothes.
But there was a third sign,
he said, that shocked him.
Tucked in his luggage was a
card from the Transportation Security Administration
notifying him that his bags had been opened and
inspected at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Handwritten on the side of the card was a note,
"Don't appreciate your anti-American attitude!"
"I found it chilling and a little Orwellian to have
received this message," said Goldberg, 41, a New
Jersey resident who was in Seattle visiting longtime
friend Davis Oldham, a University of Washington
instructor.
Goldberg says that when he took his suitcase off the
airplane in San Diego, the zipper pulls were sealed
with nylon straps, which indicated TSA had
inspected the luggage. It would be hard, he said, for
anyone else to have gotten inside his bags.
TSA officials say they are looking into the incident.
"We do not condone our employees making any kind
of political comments or personal comments to any
travelers," TSA spokeswoman Heather Rosenker
told Reuters. "That is not acceptable."
Goldberg, who is restoring a historic home in New
Jersey, said he picked up the "No Iraq War" signs
because he hadn't seen them in New Jersey and
wanted to put them up at his house.
"In New Jersey there's very little in the way of
protest and when I got to Seattle I was amazed how
many anti-war signs were up in front of houses," he
said. "I'm not a political activist but was distressed
by the way the country was rolling off to war."
Goldberg said he checked two bags at Sea-Tac on
March 2 and traveled to San Diego on Alaska
Airlines. The TSA station was adjacent to the Alaska
check-in counter.
Nico Melendez, western regional spokesman for the
TSA, said the note in Goldberg's luggage will be
investigated, but he said there's no proof that a TSA
employee wrote it. "It's a leap to say it was a TSA
screener," Melendez said.
But Goldberg said, "It seems a little far-fetched to
think people are running around the airport writing
messages on TSA literature and slipping them into
people's bags."
He says TSA should take responsibility and refocus
its training "so TSA employees around the country
are not trampling people's civil rights, not intimidating
or harassing travelers. That's an important issue."
Oldham, the UW instructor, said he was so upset by
the incident he wrote members of Congress. U.S.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has asked TSA for a
response.
"The Senator certainly agrees with you that it is
completely inappropriate for a public employee to
write their opinion of your or your friend's political
opinion," said Jay Pearson, aide to Cantwell, in a
letter to Oldham. He said he expects it may take a
month or more to hear back from the TSA.
"I just thought it was outrageous," Oldham said. "It's
one of many things happening recently where the
government is outstepping its bounds in the midst of
paranoia."
Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or
Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company
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