Following up on Annie Jacobsen

Since I’m already blogging on homeland security today, I should point out that Annie Jacobsen has a follow-up on her experiences flying with 14 Syrians from Detroit to Los Angeles. Yours truly is mentioned. Go check it out. I agree with Donald Sensing that here’s not much that’s new information about what actually happened, though there are a few disturbing quotes from airline industry professionals who feign no surprise at this kind of incident and believe it to be an example of terrorist test-runs. However, Jacobsen makes it clear that clear that the blogosphere had the desired effect:

On Wednesday morning, the WWS page views were unusually high, something like 10 times the normal amount. Apparently our readers had been emailing the article to their friends, family and colleagues and everyone was reading it. By Thursday morning, that number had again multiplied ten-fold. It felt like the shampoo commercial from my youth: they told two friends, then they told two friends, then they told two friends. We sat in the WWS offices reading through your emails, taking stock of what you had to say. As the afternoon went on, the number of people reading the article continued to increase and the telephone was ringing off the hook. And then a powerful thing happened. The mainstream media started calling.

Good — this is exactly the kind of story that merits further inquiry by “real” journalists — you know, as opposed to people who “don’t add reporting to the personal views they post online.” Also, it’s worth reprinting Jacobsen’s response on the question of political correctness and the merits of linking to Ann Coulter:

This brings us to the heart of the matter — political correctness. Political correctness has become a major road block for airline safety. From what I’ve now learned from the many emails and phone calls that I have had with airline industry personnel, it is political correctness that will eventually cause us to stand there wondering, “How did we let 9/11 happen again?” During a follow-up phone conversation, one flight attendant told me that it is her airline’s policy not to refer to people as “Middle Eastern men.” In addition, many emails have come in calling me a racist for referring to 14 men with Syrian passports as Middle Eastern men. For the record, the Middle East is a geographical region called just that: The Middle East. If you refer to people who come from countries in this region (including Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq) as “Middle Easterners,” you are being geographically correct. We call people Americans and Canadians and English and French. I call my relatives who live in Norway Norwegians. So really, what is the hang up? The fact that I quoted Ann Coulter seems to have many people up in arms. I want to be clear — there is no political agenda here. I quoted Ann Coulter for the information she had, not for who she is. Read the quote again and pretend Joe or Jane Doe wrote it. She states the facts. The facts she states are that 10 days after 9/11, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta sternly reminded airlines that it was illegal to discriminate against passengers based on their race, color, national or ethnic origin or religion.

I cut and paste; you decide. UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds reports that Annie Jacobsen and spouse appeared on the MSNBC’s Scarborough Country this evening:

The Jacobsens seemed credible — by which I mean they seemed honest. The experts afterward were skeptical that they actually witnessed anything untoward, but they all agreed that security is still weak…. at the end Joe Scarborough said they had been flooded with emails from passengers and crew who said that things have seemed odd lately on a number of flights.

LAST UPDATE: Joe Sharkey discusses Jacobsen’s story in his “On the Road” column in the New York Times. A lot of it is recap, but there is this information:

[Federal Air Marshal Service spokesman Dave] Adams said he spoke by phone to Ms. Jacobsen for 90 minutes on Friday night. “This is an individual’s perceptions,” he said of her account of the flight. “Obviously, since 9/11, everybody’s antennas have risen, and people are very concerned when they see something like this.” He said that onboard air marshals did not intervene because the men weren’t “interfering with the flight crew.” Even so, he said, he had no doubt that “most of the stuff did happen” as Ms. Jacobsen described it. Aware of recent reports that the F.B.I. is worried that teams of terrorists may be practicing ways to sneak explosive device parts onto planes and assemble them in flight, Mr. Adams said, air marshals aboard Flight 327 “checked out the lavatories, and nothing looked like it was in disarray after these people went inside; everything was thoroughly inspected.”