Monday, September 08, 2003

"You are now a suspect"

Those are mighty chilling words to hear when you’ve been pulled out of the line at the security checkpoint at the airport.

I was on my way to visit my brother and family in Maine last week. We were at Portland airport, my mom (in her 70s) and my wife had already gone through the checkpoint with no problems and were waiting nearby, nervously glancing at their watches as the airline was about to start boarding our plane in a few minutes. I had a fair amount of electronics in my backpack, my brother is a musician like me, so I brought along my portable recording studio - PowerBook, Mbox audio interface and a portable drive. Probably should have packed some of it in my luggage. They held my backpack for further hand inspection and asked me to step over to the security table. So far, no big deal, although I noticed that several security guards were quietly moving into position around the room. I mean, it’s just a precaution, right?

But it really started getting hairy when they called over the armed guards, told me I was a “suspect”, and a few minutes later told me my shoes tested positive for explosives. I was told not to make any sudden moves and to keep my hands in sight. Would they read me my rights next? Take me into the back room and beat the mortal shit out of me?

At this point, you just can’t help but think of where this scenario could go next, in a handbasket, bigtime, fast. There are so many words that poise on the tip of your tongue, wanting to leap off, that you force back down knowing that you’re just one wiseass remark away from Deeply Bad Shit.

They could just tell you that you can’t go, probably meaning that you’re on that secret “not allowed to fly” list that they won’t confirm or deny or be able to ever get yourself off of since it doesn’t officially exist. Or find you’re classified as an “enemy combatant”, with no rights whatsoever to due process, communication or legal representation. An unperson. A classification that, in fact, has no place or precedent in American history, being cooked up by Ashcroft and our oh-so-protective friends at Homeland Security.

Look over here, see? Constitution. Bill of Rights. Shredder. Bzzzzzzt. Makes you just want to click your heels together, raise your stiff arm in a salute and be thankful for the Final Solution and a bottle of Victory Gin. Jawohl!

Let’s hop into the Wayback Machine, Sherman. Set the dial to 1991, San Jose airport, the day after the start of Bush Oil War I. What was it called that time, Operation Desert Scrotum? Operation Overweening Hubris? I forget. But I digress…

I had been in the Bay area for Macworld Expo and then spent a few blissful days snowed-in in the Sierras, skiing the backcountry near Tahoe. No radio or TV. I was mostly unaware of what was happening until just before I walked into the airport. Last I had heard was just the usual sabre-rattling claptrap all recent Republican presidents seem to indulge in as their birthright and mandate. What’s all this? National Guard troops with M-16s? Concrete barriers everywhere? Lines a mile long and cancelled flights? Look at the newstands and all becomes clear. What do oilmen love above all else? Owning the oilfield - and like father, like son.

I was pulled out of the line waiting to board a flight back to Portland by two armed guards who frog-marched me into a security room and while being held at gunpoint, strip-searched. Then they just left, no apology, not even a “you’re free to go”, just walked out leaving the door open as I frantically got dressed, running for the plane that was now 5 minutes from taxiing towards the runway.

Fast-forward to now. Finally after 30-plus minutes of conferring with superiors, after extra security people took up positions in the room, after swabbing every item in my pack and running it through the ion detector while I was fuming and holding my tongue, they finally let me go, having decided that I wasn’t enough of a threat to national security to actually arrest. Once again, we barely made the flight.

Of course this time, I started thinking about whether some Orwellian government database matched my name with the previous search and FBI political files about antiwar activism from the 60s and 70s and antinuke activism from the 70s and 80s and the May Day police riot in 2000 and Carnivore reading this website, and all the accounts of harrassment for political dissent that I’ve read about in the last year, and mostly about how we’ve let our freedoms be stolen away by a cadre of unelected swine that would turn this country into a privatized religious corporate version of the old Soviet Union. Fuck you so very much, Bush and Ashcroft!

- Bob Woods