Also this issue:

Skate Crimes
-Howard Altman

Portrait Artistry
One reporter tackles the meaning of grief.
-Tina Kelley

Home School Days
The state legislature considers new rules for teaching kids at home.
-Mary Hudzinski

Letters to the Editor

October 10-16, 2002

loose canon

Cheap Terrorists

by Bruce Schimmel

What I am about to reveal is a top-secret security policy, and I’m telling you because it is also an open joke.

The ticket counter check-in line at the Santa Barbara airport was moving very slowly. No surprise there. But what was curious was how many people ahead of me were being pegged for special searches.

As each passenger approached the counter, the ticket clerk would announce that he or she had been "randomly" selected for more intensive screening. One after another, such unfortunate folks. Both their carry-ons and their checked baggage would be given to a porter -- "Don't touch that, sir" -- and they would be led away.

Since it was a flight to Las Vegas, this was perhaps an omen that these unlucky passengers should avoid the gaming tables. But there was enough bad luck to go around: Though I was only going through Vegas to make a connecting flight, I was also pulled aside.

My untouched-by-me luggage and I were led to a crowded room, filled with screening equipment and government agents, neither of which appeared to be working very well.

"It's the one-way ticket," the man in line in front of me whispered. "Everyone in here didn't have a return ticket and was randomly selected," he said, emphasizing the word "randomly." Derision is apparently not yet recognized by our government as a prohibited form of humor.

The search of my luggage went fast enough, considering that I am a pilot and was traveling with a GPS, an aviation headset, a hand-held transmitter and a complete set of diagrams for every airport in America. The examiner was fascinated instead with my toiletries.

By the time I got to my third check-in line, it dawned on me: "Are we all being put through this because the government assumes that terrorists are too cheap to throw away a return portion?" I asked no one in particular, receiving a chorus of weary nods in return.

"That seems to be their strategy," ventured a fashionably dressed woman. "At least until they perfect that special MRI which will let them detect people with bad thoughts," she added, without a trace of a smile.

Irony is alive and well in America, as is open disgust -- which was the mood of nearly everyone inching through the third and final line. One man would not allow himself to be searched until he regained possession of a wallet that was lost in the bowels of some machine. A woman was doing battle over her black pumps. And I, receiving no answer to my repeated question -- "May I touch my stuff now?" -- became increasingly insistent.

"Do you think you are being treated specially?" the inspector finally responded.

"Not at all," I answered in my most pleasant voice.

Because we were all being the treated in the same way: idiotically.