Casing Northwest #327 - threat or hoax?
Update, 7/23/04: In the week since I posted this essay, much more information about what really happened aboard this flight has come to light. Please see my index of additional posts with that information at the end of this post, especially follow-up posts #4 and #5. Suffice it to say that my skepticism from the begining was well-founded.

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Now-famous account seems over-detailed; color me skeptical

There is a lot of controversy over whether "Terror in the Skies," by Annie Jacobsen in Women's Wall Street is credible. Annie wrote at engrossing length about Northwest Airlines Flight 327, from Detroit to Los Angeles, on which there were 14 Arab men acting extremely suspiciously - suspiciously enough to alarm the flight crew and cause a swarm of federal officers to charge the aircraft after it gated in LAX.

Michelle Malkin wrote today that she spoke to Dave Adams of the Federal Air Marshals Service (FAMS), who confirmed the main outline of the story - he "was a bit defensive in confirming the story, which seems to lend unsettling credence to Jacobsen's account," says Malkin. (Why would this add credence? I was a spokesman for this federal law-enforcement agency and can understand Dave's "defensiveness" (more likely caution) in speaking with a reporter who seems to have decided in advance that he had something to hide.)

The feds, says Annie, questioned the 14 men at length and finally released them after determining they were clean. They were, reportedly, a musical band hired to play in LA, hence their trip.

So around the internet the story has traveled, resulting in arguments for and against its authenticity. Malkin says the story is true in the main, confirmed by FAMS. But others argue, "Elements of Mrs. Jacobsen's story do not have the ring of truth."

Count me as one of the skeptics.

One of the things I learned in the years I have spent in law enforcement at both the federal and local level is that witnesses of traumatic events relate few details. When people are frightened or otherwise psychologically shocked, their minds don't record movies, but snapshots, and not many of them, either.

Annie's story has a wealth of detail, so much that I find myself disbelieving that she could have been as afraid as she says she was. Since she nowhere indicates that she took contemporaneous notes, I have to conclude her story was written from memory, and written at a minimum many hours after the flight landed.

Look at what Malkin says FAMS confirmed:

... there were 14 Syrians on the flight; they were questioned by the Los Angeles Police Department, FBI, FAM, and so on; they were a musical band.

That's it. This is a far cry from confirming that Annie's story is all its impressive detail is accurate. In fact, it's not even close.

As charitably as I can, let me explain why I think that Annie considerably embellished her story, and not necessarily embellished it deliberately (but might have in some parts; she's a paid writer after all).

One thing professional investigators learn is that almost every witness they interview understands the events concerned through certain, pre-existing templates. One reason different witnesses of the same events give accounts often greatly varying from each other is that their templates are so different. So investigators learn to be suspicious of details, except for the real, main details that are so obvious or important that they break through anyone's template.

Example: a bank robbery gone bad. Witness A says the robber fired his gun several times. "B" says it was nine times. "C" says it was a half-dozen. "D" says the robber had an automatic weapon and sprayed the area. What have they agreed on? Only that the robber fired his gun more than once.

Like most Americans, Annie Jacobsen has a certain template of post-9/11 airline travel that Arab men, especially multiples, are a potential threat aboard an airliner. This is not an unreasonable template, given that it wasn't kilt-wearing Scotsmen who committed 9/11's grim deeds. I have that template, too.

But unconsciously this template affects how she interpreted the events aboard the airliner. She was predisposed to understand the Arab men's actions in threatening ways. She even admits it. Before all the passengers even finished boarding:

As we sat waiting for the plane to finish boarding, we noticed another large group of Middle Eastern men boarding. The first man wore a dark suit and sunglasses. He sat in first class in seat 1A, the seat second-closet to the cockpit door. The other seven men walked into the coach cabin. As "aware" Americans, my husband and I exchanged glances, and then continued to get comfortable. I noticed some of the other passengers paying attention to the situation as well. As boarding continued, we watched as, one by one, most of the Middle Eastern men made eye contact with each other. They continued to look at each other and nod, as if they were all in agreement about something. I could tell that my husband was beginning to feel "anxious."

NB: the plane was still loading passengers, and Annie has already decided that the Arab men are threats. She has already decided they are threats - for what? They made "eye contact" with one another and seemed to agree about something. Might thay have been ensuring they were all together and simply acknowledging that fact?

This is the mighty thin gruel from which Annie constructs a banquet of a near-death experience. Even a McDonald's bag, carried by one of the Arabs, becomes ominous:

But once we were in the air and the seatbelt sign was turned off, the unusual activity began. The man in the yellow T-shirt got out of his seat and went to the lavatory at the front of coach -- taking his full McDonald's bag with him. When he came out of the lavatory he still had the McDonald's bag, but it was now almost empty. He walked down the aisle to the back of the plane, still holding the bag. When he passed two of the men sitting mid-cabin, he gave a thumbs-up sign. When he returned to his seat, he no longer had the McDonald's bag.

Hmm... The bag was full, then it was "almost empty," then it was gone. Sounds like what happens to my McDonalds bag when I finish eating.

Her whole story is rich with such innuendo, after which we learn that nothing happened.

Red State blog says bluntly that Annie's story, "Seems Like a Hoax to Me." They are near-scornfully dismissive of Annie's report of the flight crews' covert alliance with Annie and her husband - which rang very unlikely with me as well - and denounce the whole account as a hoax.

I don't think Annie's article is a hoax. But by no means is it an unbiased, dispassionate, objective account of the flight. Annie was convinced from before takeoff until after landing that her life was in potential peril, and this template filtered every event.

What I am very skeptical of is the wealth of minutiae she reports. Michelle Malkin wrote that OpinionJournal's James Taranto pointed out that the Annie Jacobsen who offers "Creative Writing, Dreamwork, Individual Psychotherapy" lives in Canada, not LA. But I think the account shows some pretty creative recollection, anyway.

So what did happen on Flight 327? Probably nothing more than what Dave Adams of FAMS confirmed explicitly or implicitly to Malkin: there were 14 Arab men traveling with Syrian passports. Their actions did alert the aircrew enough to contact LAX to have federal officers waiting for the plane. The Arabs, a band en route to a gig in LA, were detained, questioned and released.

That's the entire story.

A reasonable question: were the Arabs in fact a band? A commenter on Malkin's site named a real american [sic] wrote (no direct link),

Did you ever stop to think that Detroit, Michigan has one of the largest populations of Arab-Americans in the nation?

Did you ever stop to think that perhaps an Arab family in LA hired the band for a wedding?

I lived in Akron, Ohio and my nice arab employers hired a band from DETROIT to come play at their daughter's wedding, that band had like 10 people in it.

I am absolutely confident that the feds did check their hire out, almost certainly before they released them. And monitored the gig, too.

I won't try to split hairs over how much of Annie's account is embellished, except for the bare details FAMS confirmed, nor how much of it might have been deliberately, not unconsciously, embellished. Nor am I accusing Annie of making a mountain out of a molehill - Arab terrorism against American airlines is a real, persistent threat. But I do think she templated the events enormously, to the point that I am skeptical of most of the other details.

As I finish writing this post, I see a new post by Michelle that I think confirms my template postulate:

Just got off the phone with Annie Jacobsen. ... Recounting the flight, she told me "My legs were like rubber...It was four and a half hours of terror."

So Annie says she was terrorized before the plane even took off.

Michelle also says that the Washington Post "has been sitting on the true story" (well, how much is true, Michelle?) "since last Friday," and that "NBC Nightly News, ABC, and Dateline NBC are now on the story as well." She also says that FAMS has "apparently supplied" (to whom she says not) witness statements and "other corroborations of Jacobsen's account."
 
Which, if true, really just proves that the feds concluded there was no threat, because files of active investigations are never released.
 
I remain skeptical for the reasons I explained above, but it is certain that Annie Jacobsen was indeed scared witless by predisposition to be scared, and this fact affected how she understood and reported everything. Lots of embellishments, psychologizing and dramatic reporting here.

Note to commenters: reviewing comments on other blogs about this makes me aware that emotions run high on this report. Think before you write: no profanity, no name calling, no attacks on persons. Violators will be deleted; egregious violators will be banned forever with no more warning. Sorry, but that's just how it is.

Update: I meant to write near the beginning that while I have worked within law enforcement since 1993, I am not a detective and have never personally investigated crimes. I have been deeply involved in investigations otherwise, though, including the bombing of the Murrah building by T. McVeigh in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Update: Michelle Malkin kindly linked to this post and then asked a eminently reasonable question:

I asked Jacobsen if she talked with other passengers. She said no. I also asked if she had heard from other passengers from her flight in response to her story. She said she hasn't. If anyone else out there was on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles Flight on June 29, 2004, departing at 12:28 p.m., we'd love to hear from you.

Absolutely right!

Update: Here are follow-up posts, in the order written:

Follow-up post #1: "Gaps that need filling."

Follow-up post #2: A response to Jacobsen's second article, I posted this reponse.

Follow-up post #3: Unless something truly new turns up, my last post is here.

Follow-up post #4: Something new did turn up: The Syrian band was identified and their gig confirmed by the casino. Their American agent also spoke on the record.

Follow-up post #5: Now the air marshals aboard the flight have spoken up. Guess what" The air marshals were "not worried" aboard Flight 327 and said that Annie Jacobsen was the real problem on the plane. At one time the considered her a "danger."

BTW, my main page is here.

by Donald Sensing, 7/16/2004 03:00:05 PM. Permalink |