"Atlantic City Airport Terror Scare"

Monday, October 7, 2002

A.C. AIRPORT TERROR SCARE
The Press of Atlantic City, NJ


It was a scary story - at first.

A 21-year-old foreign student was arrested at Atlantic City
International Airport as he tried to board a flight to Myrtle Beach,
S.C. He had a one-way ticket that was purchased over the Internet - and
he had two box cutters and a pair of scissors concealed in his backpack.

The national media went into full overdrive. The story led the national
news for a day or two last week - fueled, undoubtedly, by federal
officials' claims that the scissors were "embedded" in a bar of soap and
that the box cutters were hidden in a bottle of lotion. It all sounded
so ominous.

But now, Nikolay Dzhonev, a Bulgarian law student who worked in a North
Wildwood Wawa this summer, has been released to the custody of the
Bulgarian consulate in Washington pending resolution of the charges
against him. The Justice Department now says it does not believe Dzhonev
is a terrorist or had any criminal plans. Box cutters, which Dzhonev
used at the Wawa, are apparently rare in Bulgaria, so he was taking two
home.

As it turns out, the incident was probably scarier to Dzhonev than to
anyone else. But with one notable exception, no one has anything to
apologize for here. Dzhonev was foolish to try to take these items
aboard a plane. And security screeners at the Atlantic City airport made
a nice catch.

But this story seemed far scarier than it, in fact, was, because of
initial information provided by the Transportation Security
Administration in Washington.

Contrary to the TSA's initial comments, the scissors were not "embedded"
in a bar of soap; they were in a small plastic container next to a bar
of soap. And the box cutters were not concealed in a bottle of lotion;
they were in a box next to a bottle of aftershave.

In terms of the scare factor, the revised description cast the incident
in an entirely different light. After all, innocent law students would
not be likely to embed anything into a bar of soap or slip two knives
into a bottle of lotion -but a terrorist would.

In the end, the system worked here. A federal judge quickly released
Dzhonev when it became clear he was no terrorist. 

But the TSA needlessly alarmed the entire nation with an initial press
release that inexplicably made the incident appear far scarier than it
was.


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