S IS FOR SEARCH

by TJ Johnston

Big Brother paranoiacs are surely not put at ease by the accounts of organic farmer and Green Party activist Nancy Oden and her expulsion from Bangor International Airport for having the temerity to question the surly attitude of a Maine National Guardsman who searched her luggage.

Oden's police state fantasies were beginning to be realized on November 2 at the American Airlines ticket counter. She waited for her round-trip ticket to Chicago which she purchased online six weeks previously (she made two similar purchases earlier in the year and in the same manner). She found it curious that the agent took a while on the computer, though having arrived an additional two hours before her flight, she chalked it up to the new post-September 11 sensibilities.

Then the agent marked an "S" on her boarding pass. Oden inquired why. The agent explained that the computer flagged her to have her luggage searched. It occurred to the anti-war activist who had an op-ed recently printed in an area newspaper that hers may have not been a random search. She asked the agent if this was the case and the agent confirmed that it was.

But it was the manner in which she was searched that riled Oden. She was surrounded by half a dozen Guardsman during the scrutinizing of her baggage. One was especially hostile. When he grabbed her arm and starting haranguing her about "what happened on September 11," Oden felt her personal boundaries compromised and gave him a piece of her mind. The Guardsman found nothing remotely threatening, save for her awareness of her rights.

Inevitably, she was detained and denied passage (according to an American Airlines spokesman, she was "uncooperative"). Eventually, her ticket was refunded, but she was kicked out the airport. The airline offered her the alternative to depart from Boston's Logan Airport but her jalopy was not up for the five-hour detour (it barely made it to Bangor). The Green Party USA Coordinating Committee conference had to deal with her absence.

Oden is still stewing over the abrogation of her civil liberties. The list on which her name appeared in the first place is a compilation of "potential terrorists" the FBI distributes to airports. Normally, known criminals would appear on the airlines' radar, as would people who pay cash on a same-day flight. Of course, neither of these criteria explains the Gestapo treatment she suffered.

If a member of a pacifist political party would be marked for searching, what does it say for the rest of us? How do we avert being labeled as a "potential terrorist" before we embark on our airline travels?

These were the questions on my mind when I attempted to contact Timothy Ahern, American Airlines' VP in charge of safety and security. My calls, of course, went unreturned (granted, the Flight 537 crash in Queens, NY might have had something to do with his unavailability).

Closer to home, I thought of contacting a couple of travel agencies under the guise of a possible holiday traveler on American. Both agencies were surprised to hear about the Nancy Oden incident. All they could offer by way of advice was declaring your carry-on luggage and refraining from packing sharp or metallic-looking objects. At least they were friendly.

Between the military-corporate collusion in "rounding up the usual suspects" and the hassles inherent in holiday travel, I might as well ride Greyhound this year.