Ann Jacobsen Was The Real Problem on the Plane
Posted by
Kevin
Apparently, the sniveling little twit was so unreasonably panicked that the air marshals on the plane were concerned about the effect her overreaction would have on the other passengers:
Undercover federal air marshals on board a June 29 Northwest airlines flight from Detroit to LAX identified themselves after a passenger, “overreacted,” to a group of middle-eastern men on board, federal officials and sources have told KFI NEWS.
The passenger, later identified as Annie Jacobsen, was in danger of panicking other passengers and creating a larger problem on the plane, according to a source close to the secretive federal protective service.
Jacobsen, a self-described freelance writer, has published two stories about her experience at womenswallstreet.com, a business advice web site designed for women.
“The lady was overreacting,” said the source. “A flight attendant was told to tell the passenger to calm down; that there were air marshals on the plane.”
She was so overcome with panic, so convinced that innocent people were terrorists, that she was a danger to the safety of the flight. Jacobsen’s terror and hysterical cowardice was much more of a danger than those musicians. Who, by the way, have been completely cleared:
Jacobsen and her husband had a number of conversations with the flight attendants and gestured towards the men several times, the source said.
“In concert with the flight crew, the decision was made to keep [the men] under surveillance since no terrorist or criminal acts were being perpetrated aboard the aircraft; they didn’t interfere with the flight crew,” Adams said.
The air marshals did, however, check the bathrooms after the middle-eastern men had spent time inside, Adams said.
(snip)
Federal agents later verified the musicians’ story.“We followed up with the casino,” Adams said. A supervisor verified they were playing a concert. A second federal law enforcement source said the concert itself was monitored by an agent.
“We also went to the hotel, determined they had checked into the hotel,” Adams said. Each of the men were checked through a series of databases and watch-lists with negative results, he said.
The source said the air marshals on the flight were partially concerned Jacobsen’s actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves.
Air marshals’ only tactical advantage on a flight is their anonymity, the source said, and Jacobsen could have put the entire flight in danger.
So, it seems Jacobsen’s little racist based hysteria (and can anyone who has been following this story, who has seen Jacobsen and her right wing defenders insist that the men were on a dry run, or to insist that they were a danger days after the government has cleared them, or read the article above and notice that none of the flight crew was alarmed, think that her panic had anything to do with anything but race?) was more of a danger than the musicians. And if, by some miracle, they were terrorists, her hyperventilating, pee-in-her-pants reaction could very well have allowed the terrorists to identify the air marshals.
Link via Armed Liberal
It’s even bettern than that:
She was so agitated that the air marshals thought she was a terrorist!
Hysterical coward.
Comment 7/23/2004
“In concert with the flight crew…”
See? They were musicians after all!
I also hear they were flying on insturments (budda boom)!
Comment 7/23/2004
maybe i’m overextending a metaphor here, but is anyone else noticing that the amount of time between the rodeo clown entering the ring and getting ass-gored by the bull is growing increasingly shorter?
i’m holding out for one of these nutjobs being on screen and the news ticker right below their stupid faces refuting what they’re saying as they are saying it. that would be sweet.
Comment 7/23/2004
That woman ought to be made to acknowledge publically that she’s an ass and apologize for her behavior.
Yelling fire in a movie theater is bad business, and that’s what this is.
L.
Comment 7/23/2004
WHO’S FREAKING OUT?
Following the lead of anonymous air marshals (see Eric Leonard’s KFI news story), some in the blogosphere have begun the pile-on against Annie Jacobsen. One blogger calls her a “sniveling little twit.” Kevin Drum pooh-poohs “Panic in the Skies.” And…
Trackback 7/24/2004
Yeah, okay, people who see suspicious activity (or think they might see suspicious activity) should just sit there like sheep, because, hey, the government always takes care of us. Um… yeah. Being concerned for your safety in the air, in a post-9/11 world, now makes you a “sniveling little twit” and a racist. Nice.
Comment 7/24/2004
To the Unsigned poster
Um… yeah. Being concerned for your safety in the air, in a post-9/11 world, now makes you a “sniveling little twit” and a racist. Nice.
What an excellent point! The politically correct thing to do is sit on a plane and pretend absolutely nothing will happen. Even if something did happen all the girly-men would still sit there thinking all is ok, or perhaps we brought this on ourselves.
What group of people are most likely to hijack a plane and kill everyone one on board in this post 9/11 time? Judging from what I have seen at the airports it must be 8 year old (fill in any race) males, and 75 year old (fill in any race) females.
You liberals out there need to stop kidding yourselves. You certainly aren’t kidding the rest of us. In your utopian world there would be neither paranoid people nor hijacking bastards intent on killing everyone on board and thousands on the ground. Sorry pal but reality is different than Utopia.
Peace,
Comment 7/24/2004
Truth and Anonymous:
No, expressing concern doesn’t make you a sniveling little twit. Obsessing about it, long after the people are cleared, does. Making a scene on the plane does.
There’s a huge difference between vigilance and paranoia. It’s too bad some conservatives are too dumb to know that.
Comment 7/24/2004
So
She panics becasue some Arab men go to the bathrrom and talk amongst themselves, she is so hyserical that the air marshalls consider her a threat, and days after the incident — when the men have been proven to be wht they appeared to be — she still continues to insist that they were terrorists. What, aside from racist coward, am I supposed to call her? She and her defenders have already lost the war on terror. They are no slaves to paranoia and unreasoning fear.
Comment 7/24/2004
Were she a pre-September 11th witness to the dry runs of the actual hijackers (eerily similar behavior, if you’ve read the accounts) she’d be a hero. But since she’s seeing things during the current hysterical backlash from the left, she’s a “twit” or worse. Perhaps the passengers in Madrid also suppressed their suspicions and congratulated themselves for “tolerance” when the bombers left their packs on the trains. Man, I hope I’m not commuting to work with any of you jokers. You’re just not doing your part– but here’s to the cold comfort of your self-righteous principles.
Comment 7/24/2004
First, you have to be an idiot to think that these events were remotely like the dry runs the 9/11 hijackers went on.
Second, you just read an article stating that the security specialists were more concerned with this idiots hysteria than with the actions of the people in question, and yet you still defend here.
Third, going to the bathroom, talking amongst themselves, and, umm, that’s it, is hardly suspicious behavior — except to a paranoid. Unlike, say, leaving packages unattended on a train. And it is telling that you would accuse the people who died on the Madrid trains — without evidence — of congratulating themselves instead of acting. It takes a real sick mind to smear the dead based on your own prejudices.
Here is what pisses me off so much about you sniveling little cowards: you are losing the war on terrorism. You thumb-sucking conservatives are living life in exactly the kind of no-basis fear that Bib Laden wants you to live it. this desperate attempt to defend a paranoid idiot, to justify your own paranoia, is just more evidence that the terrorists have gotten inside your head. And that is the most dangerous thing. The terrorists cannot do irreparable damage to the country by themselves. But if people become afraid, if they react unreasonable — such as suggesting that innocent people had no businesses being allowed on the plane — then, and only then, can real damage be done to our country. Bin Laden cannot take our freedoms away, Bin Alden cannot turn this country’s essential openness and decency and turn it into xenophobia and harshness, Bin laden cannot gut the very ideals and freedoms that are our best weapons. Only we can. This sudden desperate fear, this mindless defense of a coward, this frantic search for any reason to justify your own fear is precisely the kind of thing that leads to people giving away their freedoms.
In a very real sense, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Or, rather, we have primarily to fear those among us who have surrendered to fear. If you are so terrified, then stay home and leave the maintenance of the country and her ideals to those of use more clear headed than you. Your children will thank you for it.
Comment 7/25/2004
Tgirsch
There’s a huge difference between vigilance and paranoia. It’s too bad some conservatives are too dumb to know that.
I can buy into the first part of this statement but I don’t think Kevin gets it. As far as the second part are you suggesting this lady is a conservative?
Another thing, all the 9/11 hijackers were cleared.
Another thing; How was the movie that you asked me to pay for?
Peace,
Comment 7/25/2004
Hmmmm….Would the brownshirts be making all this noise if the musicians had a lot less melanin?
Nope, and guess what? Terrorists are recruited from just about any country you can think of. In fact, I think I speak for a lot of people when I say there is a ruthless terrorist organization operation active in plain sight. You can’t miss them. I believe the address is 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in the nation’s capitol…
Comment 7/25/2004
Truth:
Kevin absolutely gets it, and has expressed it better than I have. The thumb-sucking conservatives are the ones who don’t get it. The idea that these people could possibly have been anything other than terrorists conducting a dry run doesn’t seem to have occurred to them for even a heartbeat — and that’s exactly what bin Laden wants, to fuel his war between Islam and the West.
Whether or not Jacobsen is a conservative is not entirely relevant; what’s important is she’s become a pet du jour of conservatives in the blogosphere. I’ve not yet seen any prominent liberals defending her xenophobic actions.
The 9/11 hijackers were investigated and cleared? Even assuming that’s true (and I doubt it is), you have to go back to the old conservative standby excuse of “9/11 changed everything.” Pre-9/11, the Bush Administration didn’t even care about terror, so it’s no surprise that they would have ignored such things.
As for the movie, we need to repay you. The certificates expired in April, before we got a chance to get to the theater.
Comment 7/26/2004
Good post The Truth.
The politically correct crowd loves throwing around the “racist” name. They too get uneasy when they sit next to a certain type of person on a plane.
Better safe than sorry.
Comment 7/26/2004
Sorry, Chris, but the only person I get uneasy sitting next to is one who smells bad or who tries to “witness” to me, and I don’t care about their gender or ethnicity.
Comment 7/26/2004
[…] For the most unhinged pants-wetting alarmism in the face of imaginary terrorism, this year’s award goes to Bruce Kesler of the “Democracy Project”: Stop arguing with your liberal friends about what a dangerous place the world is, and just send them this website. A friend just sent it to me. It’s called Global Incident Map: A Global Display of Terrorism and Other Suspicious Events. […]
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