"NWA Flight 327: Dry run by terrorists for an attack?"

Saturday, July 24, 2004

Flight 327: Dry run by terrorists for an attack?
By Joe Sharkey
The New York (NY) Times


There is no doubt that something out of the ordinary happened on
Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on June 29.
The plane was met at the airport by squads of federal agents and police
responding to radio messages from the pilots about concerns that 14
Middle Eastern male passengers had spent the four-hour flight acting
suspiciously.

But was the episode a dry run for a terrorist attack, as is now being
widely suggested on the Internet and on talk radio, or an aborted
terrorist attack? Or was it an innocent sequence of events that some
passengers, overcome by anxiety and perhaps ethnic stereotyping,
misinterpreted as a plot to blow up their plane?

The story of Flight 327 was first told in a 3,300-word online article,
"Terror in the Skies, Again?" by Annie Jacobsen, a 37-year-old freelance
writer from Los Angeles. Jacobsen's report was published last week on a
Web site for women, www.womenswallstreet.com. It is compelling reading.

I have since spoken at length with Jacobsen, and also with an official
of the Federal Air Marshal Service, who confirmed the gist of Jacobsen's
narrative, if not her interpretation.

On June 29, Jacobsen, her husband, Kevin, and their 4-year-old son were
returning home from a family visit in Rhode Island when they boarded a
connecting flight in Detroit, Northwest 327. While boarding, both she
and her husband became aware of a group of six men of Middle Eastern
appearance who followed them on board. One wore a large orthopedic shoe.
Two carried what appeared to be small musical instrument cases. One wore
a yellow T-shirt and was carrying a big McDonald's sack.

As the Jacobsens settled into their seats, they watched a second group
of Middle Eastern men board. These men were in communication with the
first group "absolutely from the get-go," Jacobsen said. Furthermore,
she said, "they all seemed to be checking in with the guy in the yellow
shirt," who was sitting across the aisle from her.

Kevin Jacobsen, 38, who is the president of an import-and-design
company, was already feeling uneasy. "When I first got on the flight, my
instincts said that something was wrong," he recalled. "I did turn to my
wife and said, 'We must get off this flight.'" He didn't follow through
on that, however, because he didn't want to create a commotion based on
a whim, he said.

Annie Jacobsen's article describes the "unusual activity" the men
engaged in during the flight. Ignoring "fasten seat belt" signs, the men
went frequently to the lavatories and congregated near the galleys.

About two hours into the flight, with tension building, her husband
decided to approach a flight attendant with his suspicions. The flight
attendant said the crew was already aware of the odd behavior, including
the fact that parcels like the McDonald's bag were carried into the
lavatories.

"She said I was 'right on schedule' with what I was feeling was
happening, that she was aware of it, that they were passing notes to
each other, that the pilots were aware of it, and that there were people
on board who are 'higher up than you or me' that were watching them,"
Kevin Jacobsen said. He presumed, correctly, that this was a reference
to undercover federal air marshals.

Later, as the plane was in its final approach to Los Angeles, at the
stage of a flight when even the flight attendants are strapped into
their seats, "suddenly, seven of the men stood up in unison," Jacobsen
said. Some walked toward the back lavatories and some toward the front.
Two stood by the aircraft door. The flight attendants remained silent,
she said.

Then the plane landed without a problem. Waiting at the door were
officers from the Federal Air Marshall Service, the FBI, the
Transportation Security Administration and the Los Angeles Police
Department. The 14 men were questioned at length and released. The
Jacobsens also were questioned for over an hour.

Monday, a Federal Air Marshall Service spokesman, Dave Adams, a
law-enforcement officer for 30 years, said that the suspicious
characters on Flight 327 were musicians. The man in the yellow shirt was
a drummer, he said.

"We interviewed all 14 of these individuals," Adams said. "They were
members of a Syrian band" traveling to a gig at a casino near Los
Angeles, he said, adding that their names were run through "every
possible" databank and terrorist watch list.

Adams said he spoke by phone to Jacobsen for 90 minutes on Friday night.
"This is an individual's perceptions," he said of her account of the
flight. He said that onboard air marshals didn't 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 Jacobsen described.

Adams said air marshals aboard Flight 327 "checked out the lavatories,
and nothing looked like it was in disarray after these people went
inside."

Annie Jacobsen isn't convinced. No one has disputed any of her facts,
she said, and in an article that she posted on the Web site Monday, she
asked why the Syrian band hadn't been identified. She wrote of receiving
numerous e-mail messages from airline crew members, several of whom said
they believed that terrorist-team dry runs had happened on flights.


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