[wordup] Daddy, can I be a journalist when I grow up?

[Adam Shand]

Via: Herr Nagengast <todd at gnosh.net>
From: http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2001-10-25/cover.asp

Homeland Insecurity

A Sacramento journalist is taken into custody by police and forced to
destroy photos by an over-zealous National Guardsman. Apparently, the
terrorists are indeed causing instability.

By R.V. Scheide

The Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 sighed as its wheels kissed the Los
Angeles International Airport tarmac. Flight 1206 out of Sacramento taxied
to the gate, and my fellow passengers and I released our white-knuckle
grips on the foam-covered armrests of our seats. No ones throat had been
slit. We hadnt flown into a skyscraper. Wed made it, safely, much to our
collective relief.

It was 5:05 p.m. on Friday, October 12, and we had call to be
apprehensive. The previous day, the FBI had placed the entire nation on
high alert, based on credible information that Al Qaeda, the terrorist
organization headed by Osama bin Laden, was planning reprisal attacks on
U.S. soil for the coming weekend. The bureau urged Americans to report any
suspicious activity. Friday morning, armed troops from the California
National Guard were deployed at Sacramento International Airport.

America, as weve been told over and over since September 11, is forever
changed. Nowhere is this change more evident than in our approach to
national security. Practically overnight, major metropolitan airports
across the country have been turned into militarized zones crawling with
armed soldiers and police. Their presence is designed to deter terrorists
and provide us with a sense of security, but as I was about to discover,
that security has come at a high price.

Id purchased a roundtrip ticket from Sacramento International to LAX to
observe firsthand the unprecedented measures being taken to combat
terrorism. Thered been more than a little fear and paranoia in Sacramento
and I expected to find more of the same in Los Angeles.

I didnt expect to be ordered to destroy photographs by an irate National
Guardsman. I didnt expect the Los Angeles Police Department to confiscate
and read the notes Id taken on my trip. I didnt expect to be questioned by
the FBI and detained for nearly three hours for no probable cause.

I didnt expect any of these things, but thats what happened. As I followed
my fellow passengers up the jetway and into the LAX terminal, I had no
idea I was stepping onto the War on Terrorisms first domestic battlefield,
where, as in all wars, truth was about to become the first casualty.

Terminal 1 at LAX is usually jam-packed with people, but there were no
friends or relatives waiting to greet loved ones at the gate. As part of
the heightened security precautions, only ticketed passengers are
permitted to pass through the metal detectors and into the boarding areas.
Thats why the area between the security checkpoint and the aircraft is
called the sterile zone. Everyone who has been allowed to enter the
sterile zone has been checked out. Everyone is clean.

I checked the time of my return flight on the monitor at the gate and
discovered that because of a ticketing error, I only had a 15-minute
layover--barely enough time to walk down to the security checkpoint and
back--to catch my return flight. In Sacramento, Id taken photographs of
Guard members, armed with M-16s and pistols, taking positions behind the
personnel operating the metal detectors at the security checkpoints. Id
seen other passengers take photos. I figured Id snap a few pictures of the
LAX security checkpoint and board my return flight. I figured wrong.

As I reached the checkpoint, I saw that the four guardsmen were deployed
in exactly the same fashion as in Sacramento, behind the metal detectors.
I removed the small digital camera from the right breast pocket of my
leather jacket and took several photographs of the armed citizen-soldiers.
I had just turned to head back to the gate when a loud voice boomed at me
from the direction of the checkpoint.

Hey you! What are you doing?

A California National Guardsman, a big guy with a buzz-cut dressed
head-to-toe in camouflage army fatigues, was moving rapidly toward me. I
froze as he approached. He came so close it seemed impossible he wasnt
touching me.

Did you take my picture? he asked angrily. Did you take my picture?

Im a journalist, working on a story about airport security, I told him.

You cant take pictures here, he said.

Says who? I asked.

Says me! he barked.

He moved next to me, shoulder-to-shoulder, so he could view the cameras
display screen. You are going to show me the pictures you took, you are
going to delete the pictures you took, and you are going to show me that
they are deleted! he breathed down my neck.

This is a public space, I have every right to be here, I said. There are
no signs that say you cant take pictures here.

Either you delete the photos, or Im taking you to a room, and you can talk
to my superiors. You can talk to the FBI.

Normally, I would have stood my ground. I would have talked to his
superiors, the FBI. I was 99 percent certain that I had every right to
take photographs of the California National Guard at the LAX checkpoint.
Nothing I had read about the new security precautions, no one I had talked
to, including other Guard members, had advised me otherwise.

But these are anything but normal times, and the slight shadow of doubt
that had entered my mind, weighted by the intimidating behavior of the
guardsman, caused me to make a questionable decision, at least from a
journalistic viewpoint. I showed him the photos I had taken of the
checkpoint, he objected to every one of them, and he ordered me to delete
them. So I deleted them. I looked at the guardsmans I.D. badge and wrote
his name down.

What are you doing!? he screamed. By now, his face had visibly reddened.
Dont you write my name down!!

What strange universe had I entered? What was I supposed to do, cross his
name out? Force myself to forget it? The guardsmans anger seemed totally
out of proportion to the situation. To put it bluntly, he scared the
living hell out of me. Only the timely intervention of a female Los
Angeles Police Officer smoothed the scene over. She asked to see my I.D.,
ascertained that my California Drivers License was valid, and allowed me
to proceed back into the terminal to catch my flight.

Hey! the guardsman yelled as I was departing. Wheres your ticket?

I pulled it out of my left breast pocket, where it had been in plain view
during the entire encounter, and showed it to him from 10 feet away.

Right here, I said.

He didnt ask to look at it more closely, to see if it was actually a valid
ticket, so I left, beaten (Id been forced to delete my photographs) but
not broken--I was still going to catch my flight home.

Or so I thought. I reached the gate at the absolute last second and was
permitted to board the plane. The flight was nearly full, and I took one
of only two empty seats in the back. Several passengers chuckled at my
hurried, flustered appearance. I began to furiously scribble in my
reporters notebook, trying to capture all the details of what had just
transpired before they faded from memory. The plane was on the verge of
pulling out of the gate when an LAX Southwest Airlines employee--not a
member of the planes crew--materialized in front of me.

Sir, Im going to have to ask you to exit the aircraft, he said.

Id been on board no longer than three minutes. As I limply followed the
Southwest employee out of the plane and up the jetway, I knew who would be
waiting on the other side of the door.

Two LAPD police officers greeted me at the gate. The California National
Guardsman was standing behind them. Officer Brennan, the same policewoman
who had just checked my I.D., now informed me that passengers from both of
my flights, the one into LAX and the one I had just been removed from, had
complained about my suspicious behavior.

Who complained? I asked her.

I cant tell you that, sir, she said.

What suspicious behavior? I asked.

They said you were going through overhead compartments and writing things
down.

I have one carry-on bag, I said, indicating my backpack. I placed it under
the seat in front of me on both flights. I didnt even touch an overhead
compartment. And since when is writing in a notebook considered suspicious
activity?

Were going to have to detain you, sir.

The guardsman smirked behind her.

You both know I'm a journalist, I said.

Yeah, you said you were working on a story about airport security, the
guardsman said. What do you want to do, give away our security positions
to the enemy? I stared at him incredulously as the second LAPD officer,
Ramirez, confiscated my notebook.

Do you have press credentials? he asked.

Uh-oh. Im a freelance writer. I dont even carry a business card, just my
California Drivers License, my Social Security card, and a bunch of credit
cards. For all they knew, I was Joe Q. Ticketed Passenger walking around
the terminal taking notes and photographs, which, I was still 99 percent
certain, was completely within my rights. I dont need press credentials to
be in an airport, I declared. Give me back my notebook.

Instead, Ramirez passed the notebook to Brennan, who leafed through it
with the guardsman while Ramirez sternly advised me to shut up and stop
asking questions. My handwriting is worse than a doctors, and Brennan
thought Id misspelled her name. She guffawed and elbowed the guardsman. He
got an even bigger kick out of my initial description of him as unarmed. I
hadnt noted his gun until later.

You got that wrong, he said, smugly patting the pistol strapped to his
side.

Turn the page, I said curtly.

My acquiescence was giving way to anger. I had followed the guardsmans
direct order to delete the photographs, against my better judgment. That
should have placated him, in my opinion. I couldnt help feeling that the
guardsman and the LAPD were now harassing me for daring to put up any
verbal resistance at all. Brennans explanation that I had been detained
because unnamed persons had observed me acting suspiciously on both
flights didnt wash. Who are these witnesses? I kept asking. What did I do?
She didnt have to answer my questions, she said, because of operational
security, and new FAA regulations. Then she took my ballpoint pen, because
it could be used as a weapon.

She wasnt being ironic. In fact, the idea that a pen could literally be
used as a weapon had occurred to me before boarding Flight 1206. A month
ago, such thoughts would have been considered unusual. Now, they
constitute the mindset of the average American air traveler. Id discovered
as much earlier that day at Sacramento International.

I arrived at the airport at 11 a.m., just as several local TV crews were
setting up their remote units in front of Terminal A. The California
National Guard had deployed earlier in the morning, and it was big news.
Reporters, photographers and TV camera operators were gathered on the
terminals second level, observing ticketed passengers as they moved
through the metal detectors. Occasionally, a guardsman shouldering an M-16
could be glimpsed behind the checkpoint, but otherwise, it was a dull
photo opportunity. The only way to pass through the checkpoint and into
the sterile zone, where the Guard was actually posted, was to buy a
ticket.

It took 25 minutes to pass through the line at the Southwest Airlines
counter. The customers waiting in line were clearly more jittery than
usual; eye contact and conversations between strangers were rare; furtive,
nervous glances were the norm. A healthcare executive from Kansas City who
said hed flown seven times since September 11 told me about two women hed
seen detained for periods of time in two separate airports. Theyd been
very upset, he said, but were just going to have to get used to it.

After purchasing the ticket, I waited in line at the security checkpoint,
removing the laptop computer out of my backpack as instructed by a
makeshift sign in the staging area. I also removed my camera and my tape
recorder, just in case. The line ahead of me stalled for several minutes;
passengers grumbled. When it was my turn, I placed my devices, along with
the backpack, on the conveyor belt and passed through the checkpoint
without setting off any alarms. I was in the sterile zone.

I proceeded to photograph the half-dozen or so guardsmen at the Sacramento
checkpoint from approximately 30 feet away. I took several shots, then
interviewed California Air National Guard Captain Jeff Wurm, the officer
in charge of the detail. In civilian life, Wurm is a computer programmer
and analyst. Now hes commanding a squad on the frontlines of the War on
Terror. Like all National Guardsmen currently patrolling the nations
airports, he and the members of his unit had received two days FAA airport
security training before being deployed.

What were here for is security and deterrence, Wurm said. Translation: The
Guard were there to be seen, and the citizen-soldiers at Sacramento didnt
flinch when an occasional passerby snapped a photograph of the newly
militarized checkpoint. Although a few people gaped at the camouflaged men
carrying automatic weaponry in the airport, most thanked the Guard for
being there.

During the half-hour I observed the checkpoint, I saw no obvious profiling
of passengers going through. The California National Guard is supervising
the process; all the screening at the checkpoints is still conducted by
security personnel subcontracted by the airlines. A few passengers
complained about being subjected to extra searching, usually because metal
objects they didnt know they had been carrying had set off the metal
detector. Its like down at the jail, said one man whose steel-shanked
boots had set off the buzzer. He was allowed to continue after removing
his boots and being thoroughly wanded with a hand-held metal detector. I
was interviewing a man who had forgotten he was carrying a Buck knife when
two Sacramento sheriffs deputies, J. Coe and Doug Diamond, approached me.
A passenger had reported a suspicious-looking man in a leather jacket
hanging around the checkpoint. I explained that I was on assignment for
the Sacramento News & Review.

Oh, I like that paper, said Deputy Coe.

I had showed them my drivers license, and they had allowed me to continue
doing what I was doing.

Fast-forward to LAX three hours later. As up to 10 LAPD officers guarded
me near the Southwest Airlines Gate 12, I wondered what had gone wrong. No
one could tell me what Id done, and no one seemed to know what to do with
me. They were waiting for some other authority, the FAA or the FBI, they
werent sure, to show up. Id been standing since the ordeal had begun; I
took off my backpack and sat down on the floor behind the check-in counter
in a yoga position as the police continued to stand around. I closed my
eyes and began taking deep breaths. When I opened my eyes, a male
passenger in the boarding area was staring at me like I was the dog-faced
boy at the circus.

Im a journalist! I yelled. His brow furrowed in concern, then he moved
away. Other people in the boarding area were regarding me nervously. An
LAPD sergeant, a burly Hispanic man, arrived. I stood up.

You understand sir, this is a national security measure, and were going to
have to check with the FAA to clear it, he said. You know they might not
let you back on the airplane. You make people nervous.

How do I make people nervous? I asked.

By doing whatever youre doing.

What am I doing?

I dont know, but whatever it is, youre going to stop doing it!

OK, I said. But what am I doing? I wasnt getting it. He began poking his
index finger at me to emphasize the point.

I dont know what youre doing, but youre going to stop doing it!

I re-assumed my yoga position. Higher-ranking LAPD officers began
arriving. Eventually, someone figured out that holding me prisoner right
next to the entrance of the jetway was really making some of the
passengers nervous. I was moved to an empty row of seats facing the
window. My return flight was long-gone; the boarding area was beginning to
fill up for the next flight. A couple of Arab-looking men in their 20s
attempted to sit in the seats next to me.

Can we sit here? one of them asked a police officer. The cop looked at me.
He looked at them. He looked back at me. A dim light flickered in his
eyes, then went out. No, you cant, he said, and they moved off.

I had been detained for more than an hour by the time Lieutenant Joseph
Peyton, the LAPD duty incident commander, arrived. I complained that my
notebook had been taken, and Peyton and another officer immediately
returned it to me.

Can I take notes now? I asked Ramirez.

He didnt say yes, but the rueful look on his face didnt say no. I grabbed
another pen out of my backpack. I was a journalist again.

Peyton explained that the officers at the scene were part of an additional
detail that had been assigned to boost security at the LAPDs airport
substation after September 11. He apologized for my detainment, and said I
would be free to go--as soon as I was cleared by the FBI. He admitted that
the War on Terror was making everybody a little nervous. A few days
previously, hed watched two F-16 fighters escort a Canadian jumbo jet all
the way into LAX. A passenger had set off a smoke detector in the jets
restroom and become irate after a stewardess had reported him. Peyton, who
normally works LAPDs West Traffic division, was soft-spoken and
reassuring, and the tension in the air dissipated somewhat. Then Angela
Karp arrived on the scene.

Karp, the Southwest Airlines station manager for LAX, held what appeared
to be a plane ticket. Instead, it was a credit receipt refunding my return
fare to Sacramento. She said several passengers had complained that my
behavior had made them nervous and because of that, Southwest Airlines was
barring me from all flights out of LAX for the remainder of the evening.

Can you tell me who said I made them nervous? I asked.

No sir, I cannot do that.

Can you tell me what my alleged behavior was?

No sir, I cannot do that.

It was an issue of national security and the safety of the airlines
passengers. As a private business, Southwest had the right to refuse
service to anyone, she said, and they were giving me the boot. She turned
on her heel and was gone.

What is it? I asked Peyton. My black leather jacket?

I hope not, he said. I have a black leather jacket.

By the time the two plainclothes FBI agents arrived, I had been detained
by the LAPD for nearly two hours. One agent was a husky guy in a khaki
green Hawaiian shirt. The other agent, Anthony Gordon, had the grizzled,
wizened demeanor of character actor Harry Dean Stanton. It didnt take him
long to evaluate the situation. Neither the guardsman nor the LAPD had the
name of the passenger(s) who had complained about me, so no one could say
if I had actually done anything suspicious. After questioning the
guardsman and the LAPD, Gordon sat down beside me and quietly explained
that the entire nation was on high alert. Everyones nerves were frayed.
Taking the photographs of the checkpoint was completely legal. But the
guardsman had served on the California National Guards Counter-Drug Task
Force, and was worried that somehow drug dealers might recognize his
photograph if it appeared in the paper.

He does counter-drug work, thats why he freaked on you, Gordon said.

If the explanation was supposed to soothe, it didnt. Id been ordered to
delete photographs, had my notebook confiscated and read by the police,
and detained for three hours with no probable cause--all because the
California National Guard had assigned a camera-shy counter-drug person to
security duty at the airport? What the hell was he doing there? Gordon
just shrugged. Case closed. I was free to go home.

But how? I had been banned from Southwest and the other airline in the
terminal didnt have any Sacramento flights. I wondered if I had been
blackballed off all of the airlines as I trudged the quarter-mile to
Terminal 7, where United Airlines, the only other carrier with a flight to
Sacramento that night, was located. I booked a flight on the 10:05
shuttle, waited an hour in line at the security checkpoint and returned to
Sacramento without further incident.

The following days were filled with conflicting thoughts and emotions. Id
gone to the domestic frontlines of the War on Terrorism to observe the new
security apparatus in action, and the new security apparatus had
terminated my observation without cause. In my opinion, truth is a word
that journalists bandy about too loosely, but there was no denying that my
ability to get at the truth in this case had been severely injured. It
seemed surreal, unbelievable, and possibly illegal. I also felt violated.

At the same time, when a half-dozen different cops tell you youve done
something wrong for two hours straight, theres a tendency to start
believing them, even if you havent done anything. That shadow of a doubt
regarding my rights as a citizen and a journalist in the so-called sterile
zone kept telling me that considering the war was on, I should have known
better, that I deserved to have my photographs erased, my notebook
confiscated. The enormous pressure to stand united with the country in the
War on Terrorism added to my feelings of guilt. But how could I stand
united when the very freedoms we were supposedly defending from the
terrorists were being stripped away before my eyes--not by terrorists, but
by fellow Americans?

The answer was, I couldnt. So I tried to find out what had really gone
wrong at LAX. Lieutenant Colonel Terry Knight, public information officer
for the California National Guard, was stunned when I informed him a
guardsman had ordered me to erase photographs. That doesnt make sense,
Knight said via telephone from Washington, D.C. Thats wrong. But when told
that the guardsman worked in counter-drug operations, Knight had an
epiphany. Its understandable why he didnt want his picture taken.

Should someone who doesnt want their picture taken be working guard duty
in such a public area? I asked.

Theyre fine for that duty ... he began. Then he stopped and referred me to
Sergeant Joe Barker, acting public information officer for the
Counter-Drug Task Force, for further comment.

I know this is real X-Files-sounding stuff, but you cant print that
gentlemans name, Barker said when reached at his Sacramento office. When
asked what law prevented the SN&R from doing so, he backed off. Theres
nothing I can do to stop you from publishing his name and what he does,
but it would definitely endanger his life.

The Guard provides ancillary support to federal, state and local drug
enforcement agencies working in California, particularly near the Mexican
border area and in marijuana eradication programs. Because of operational
security, Barker wouldnt explain what the guardsmans counter-drug duties
were or how publishing his name or photograph might endanger his life, but
the guardsman probably wasnt making undercover buys. Barker was a little
more specific when asked where the guardsman had gotten the idea he could
force me to erase my film.

He was following his FAA training, Barker said, adding that details of the
two-day FAA training course were classified because of operational
security.

The training may be classified, but according to the FAA, the classes dont
instruct guardsmen to confiscate the film or notebooks of anyone,
including journalists.

No, hes totally wrong, said FAA spokesman Mike Ferguson. You didnt do
anything illegal there. The only photography restrictions in the sterile
zone concern the privacy of passengers, not security personnel. Close-up
photos of the X-ray monitors and of people having their luggage searched
by hand are not permitted. Otherwise, Ferguson said, You can shoot
whatever you damn want. By you, he meant anyone--journalist or private
citizen.

Several days later, Barker reversed course. Its perfectly crystal clear
that you cant force someone to erase pictures that have already been
taken, he said, adding that hed passed this information on to guardsmen at
a recent FAA training session in San Francisco. I can personally say that
the people I gave the briefing to have been instructed to not erase
photographs, he said.

Theres a reason members of the Guards Counter-Drug Task Force were
assigned to LAX, according to Nancy Castle, the airports director of
public relations. The task force has some of the Guards more seasoned
members, the ones used to dealing with the public. When told that the
guardsman was afraid his cover might be blown, she pointed out that more
than 100 local media outlets had recently been invited to interview,
photograph and film the Guard during a visit by Governor Gray Davis, who
was touting LAXs new security precautions. No guardsman that she was aware
of had asked that his picture not be taken.

Castle said there are no signs prohibiting photography posted in the
sterile areas of LAX and that she has never heard of anyone having their
film confiscated at the airport.

According to Terry Francke, legal counsel for the California First
Amendment Coalition, no government agency has such authority. Theres no
law that permits anyone to summarily confiscate a camera or film or order
the destruction of that film, Francke said.

While Barker acknowledged that the guardsman was wrong to force the
deletion of the photographs, he knew of no pending disciplinary action in
the case. If there was, Im not sure we would release it, he said.

Francke also said that the Guard and the LAPD may have violated a
California statute designed to protect the unpublished information of
journalists. The law, California Penal Code 1524, prohibits judges from
issuing search warrants for notes, outtakes, photographs, tapes and other
data of whatever sort not itself disseminated to the public through a
medium of communication.

Clearly, they had no right to do what they did, Francke said. Under
California Law, journalists are free from search and seizure directed at
unpublished information. He added that the guardsman and the LAPD officers
also failed to comply with federal law, which states that the U.S.
Attorney must exhaust all other means (such as issuing a subpoena) to
obtain unpublished material before allowing a law enforcement agency to
seize it without a warrant.

While now might not seem like the ideal time to pursue such a case,
Francke said that in the long haul, it might be in the publics best
interest. People caught up in war fervor and the opportunity to express
solidarity with national security are probably going to see this story as
a sign of reassurance--until they get caught with a camera in their bag or
staring at a plainclothes policeman too long, Francke said.

If, as we all hope, this particular hijacking threat recedes and nerves
return closer to normal, I do think people will maybe turn their minds
back on and acquire some common sense.