Written by: Beck

As many will recall, Annie Jacobsen published an account in Women's Wall Street of some very suspicious activities she witnessed on an airline flight. My reaction at the time was disbelief. There were too many details that just didn't seem to mesh. As I put it at the time:

My take on it: it's too far fetched. If something like this really happened, every news outlet in the world would have news on it inside an hour. My guess is it's a hoax. Still, it makes for an interesting read.

Later, as a result of further investigation and reporting by others, most notably Michelle Malkin who originally broke the story (at least in the blogosphere) convinced me that the story was legit. While it seems there is little doubt that the broader facts--that there were 14 Syrians on the flight who spent an awful lot of time milling around and behaving in a manner that is not conducive to making terrorism-conscious Americans comfortable--Time Magazine reports, after interviews with Federal Air Marshals who were aboard the flight, that the story was greatly blown out of proportion.

The FAM, who says for security reasons cannot say exactly where he was sitting, was aware of the group of Middle Eastern men from the beginning of the flight. About 25 minutes after takeoff, a flight attendant discreetly told the FAM that she thought the men were "acting suspiciously" and were congregating near one of the lavatories in the back of the plane. He alerted another marshal on the plane and also told the flight attendant to notify the captain. A short while later, the FAM asked the flight crew member to get physical descriptions of the men and their seat numbers.

He watched the men and saw nothing out of the ordinary. In a long, single aisle plane like the Boeing 757 that was carrying Flight 327, there are often many people standing or moving around. That was the case on this flight, says the FAM, who has flown hundreds of missions in his two and half years on the job. The FAM never saw--nor was he told--of any example of the men interfering with the flight crew (which is a federal crime). He never saw any activity that caused him to ask the pilots to turn on the seat belt sign (which he can request) and keep people in their seats. "Nothing my main partner or I saw on Flight 327 brought us anywhere near a conclusion that we considered breaking our cover or deploying as we've been trained. And we never came close to drawing our weapons."

Furthermore, law enforcement didn't exactly ignore these men after the flight was over.

Upon arrival in Los Angeles, the 14 men were interviewed by FBI agents and Federal Air Marshals, who determined the men were a Syrian band heading to play a casino in San Diego. After being checked through government databases, they were not charged with any crime or detained beyond questioning.

Perhaps my greatest concern, one shared by Malkin and others, was that these men would be treated with kid gloves by law enforcement officials afraid of upsetting racial sensitivities by appearing to be profiling these men simply because they were Middle Eastern in appearance. Now that the story has largely settled out, it would seem that the flight crew and law enforcement reacted reasonably and that there wasn't a genuine threat. It's at least a little reassuring to see that everyone's getting the job done quietly and professionally. And what of Annie Jacobsen? I'll give her the benefit of the doubt that she wasn't unreasonably drumming up hype for publicity, but I think she was just guilty of some over reaction and exaggeration. But don't get me wrong--I think threats like this are very serious and should be treated very seriously. This particular incident, however, I'm fairly certain we can safely leave in our past.

(Hat tip: The Politburo Diktat -- and no, I don't get all of my stories from the Commissar, it just seems that way lately).