New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | December 14, 2005

James Bovard wants to know why America's editorial boards are so enthusiastic about air marshals gunning down unarmed passengers.

Comments

|12.14.05 @ 5:00PM|#

Plus, hadn't the plane already landed? I would imagine that the best time to detonate the bomb was while it was flying.

In any case, if the air marshalls really did see a guy running down the aisle of a plane saying/shouting he had a bomb, you better believe they should smoke his ass. If not, they had better use a little more discretion, and not lie about it.

|12.14.05 @ 5:02PM|#

"Members of Congress ought not use the excuse of the Miami incident to stick their noses into a layer of security that is clearly the most effective defense we have against future hijackings."

Vigilant passengers and crews?

|12.14.05 @ 5:05PM|#

I had a feeling something was hinky about that whole thing. And I now have a feeling that we'll never know what actually happened.

|12.14.05 @ 5:06PM|#

This is a triumph of hope over experience, given how such investigations over the past 15 years almost always whitewashed federal action.

Given that it is a different world with the pajamahadeen, maybe it won't be so easy to whitewash this one. The big problem seems to be more about public apathy and the rush to believe that agents of the government are actually motivated to act in the best interests of the citizens.

|12.14.05 @ 5:06PM|#

There are levels of libertarian thinking out there. I think of Bovard as that guy you read when you first start out to get you properly outraged. After a while, it occurs to you that he is a hair's breadth from a seizure on every issue, and much of what he says is high in noise and low in signal.

I'd rather read Will Wilkinson, Julian, Matt W, or CPF these days. One of the reasons I like Reason is that it has not changed into a screaming canon of libertarian scripture. It is a place to think things out, for the most part.

Timothy|12.14.05 @ 5:16PM|#

Give the airmarshalls tranquilizer guns, dammit.

Or water pistols.

Timothy|12.14.05 @ 5:17PM|#

Also, where are the Tookie protesters over this tragedy? At least Tookie had been convicted in a court of law and had rigorous appeals, this guy was bipolar, unmedicated, and happened to freak out on a plane. Now he's dead. Where's the due process in that?

Warren|12.14.05 @ 5:34PM|#

Jason,
Federal agents killing innocent civilians in public places seem to be well over the line of things worth getting outraged over. I also don't know what you mean by "high in noise and low in signal". That article had plenty of "signal" if you ask me. James' thesis is that the media is playing lap-dog for the feds under circumstances that call out for watch-dog (but not attack-dog) tactics. He supports this with several citations of major media sources, documenting both disturbing facts that warrant further investigation, and the medias unwillingness to question and dig. But [pithy cheap-shot] he's "a hairs breath from a seizure" so � Nothing to see here move along[/pcs]

|12.14.05 @ 5:48PM|#

I was suspicious of this from the beginning, too, because my standard rule is to distrust any excuse the government initially uses about why it killed an unarmed innocent person.

So the initial story is untrue, and now they're picking at straws trying to justify what they did. And for those of you who sympathize with the shooters, consider: no matter how harmless and normal you're being, someone who's determined to do so can find something to misconstrue, to justify calling you a threat.

If not, they'll just make stuff up. Remember the overcoat-wearing, turnstile-jumping Brazilian they shot in London?

|12.14.05 @ 5:50PM|#

Obedience To The Law Is Freedom

|12.14.05 @ 5:50PM|#

CNN.com is reporting there will be a three-day test of air marshals working on buses and trains. In light of the Alpizar shooting, does this bother anyone else?

|12.14.05 @ 5:51PM|#

What sort of sentence includes threatening words "to the effect" that one has a bomb�but apparently does not include the word bomb?

"I gotta blow this place!"

|12.14.05 @ 5:55PM|#

Bovard goes over the top sometimes, but he does seem to document what he's saying pretty well. And he's an equal opportunity government-bashing author, too, since he has zapped the Clinton and Bush administrations with equal fervor.

|12.14.05 @ 5:57PM|#

How many of the witnesses will be audited by the I.R.S. if their stories don't corroberate the feds'?

|12.14.05 @ 5:58PM|#

Quiet reader girl: Yes.

|12.14.05 @ 6:00PM|#

Plus, hadn't the plane already landed? I would imagine that the best time to detonate the bomb was while it was flying.

That, and Alpizar had already gone through a security checkpoint when he boarded the plane.

Maybe Alpizar was really a terrorist agent on a suicide mission tasked with discrediting the Air Marshals by getting himself shot to death.

|12.14.05 @ 6:02PM|#

"He said he had a bomb"="The Branch Davidians fired first"="The FBI had no knowledge that Vicki Weaver had been shot"

The natural result of unchecked federal law enforcement.

|12.14.05 @ 6:09PM|#

This particular incident may turn out to be a reasonable error on the part of the air marshals--who knows at this point?--but I agree with Bovard's concerns. Why are people so unwilling to question government actions? Our jaded view of the government is one of our biggest virtues. I hope that's not going away.

|12.14.05 @ 6:09PM|#

"He said he had a bomb"="The Branch Davidians fired first"="The FBI had no knowledge that Vicki Weaver had been shot"

I remember when the only people who ever said the last two were reviled not just as Certified Lunatics, but a dangerous threat to the nation as well. I'm ashamed to say that I even remember, for awhile, agreeing with the government's take on the latter two.

But at least I eventually got the hell over it.

The thing is, maybe some of those individual incidents can in fact be explained away as something perfectly innocent. Heck, maybe there's a plausible excuse for all of them.

But even if the individual events can be rationalized away, the cumulative weight of all of them is too much to ignore. Maybe they used to be isolated incidents, but now they're forming definite patterns.

|12.14.05 @ 6:10PM|#

I remember when the only people who ever said the last two were reviled not just as Certified Lunatics

Make that, "I remember when the only people who CRITICIZED the last two."

|12.14.05 @ 6:27PM|#

CNN.com is reporting there will be a three-day test of air marshals working on buses and trains.

I just read that story somewhere else. My guess is that the test will be conducted as follows: if there are no terrorist attacks during those three days, that proves that bus and train marshals work.

And if there is an attack, that just proves we need more marshals.

Larry A|12.14.05 @ 6:33PM|#

What sort of sentence includes threatening words "to the effect" that one has a bomb but apparently does not include the word bomb?

"If I don't get to the restroom, I'm going to explode."

Intelligence check: You're sitting on an airplane and some guy says, "I have a bomb!" and tries to get off. What do you do?

• Let him go. If the bomb is in his backpack and he gets off the plane, isn't that a Good Thing?
• If he's trying to get off, wouldn't the first priority be to check what he might have left behind?

Once more, "If you haven't done anything wrong, why are you worried?" There ought to be a list of these.

|12.14.05 @ 6:37PM|#

Can't help but wonder out of a plane load of people departing a Latin country the seven interviewed did not hear the word bomb. Did any of those interviewed speak English? Did the one doing the yelling speak in Spanish or what? Did anyone ask those questions? Amazing reporting what?

|12.14.05 @ 6:38PM|#

I am inclined to not be so harsh on the air marshalls here. The guy did run down the aisle of the airplane in a rush to get off. The guy was "agitated". The guy was acting abnormal.

What are the air marshall's supposed to do, perform psycho-analysis? We all know now, after the fact, in the comfort of our homes, that this passenger was ill but the air marshalls did not know that in Miami.

The air marshalls did their job. It is a dangerous world we live in. If you fly as a passenger, then don't act as if you are going to hijack/bomb/kill your fellow passengers. If you do, you might wind up with a half dozen 40 caliber rounds in your chest.

Surely none of you think the air marshalls did this for a lark?

|12.14.05 @ 6:50PM|#

But even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, don't you think it would at least be nice if they were totally honest? Maybe not say that the guy was shouting that he had a bomb if he wasn't really shouting that he had a bomb?!?

Ok, he ran off the plane, the marshalls told him to get down, he didn't comply with their orders and perhaps even reached for the backpack he was wearing so they shot him. I'm still not stoked about it, but at least it sounds a lot more honest than saying he said one thing then having witnesses totally claim otherwise.

|12.14.05 @ 6:51PM|#

It is a dangerous world we live in.

No kidding--government agents are gunning people down in public, and claiming this makes people safer.

|12.14.05 @ 6:54PM|#

Wayne, I think the point is that we don't really know what happened. The initial story was BS (seemed a bit to tidy at first glance), so how do we know he ran down the aisle, was agitated or acted abnormal either?

We don't. The government mis-represented what happened, so now all of it become suspect.

|12.14.05 @ 6:55PM|#

yep, I agree that lying about claims of a bomb is wrong, and undermines the cops' position here. Was it the air marshalls who said they heard the bomb claims?

Did any of the witnesses corroborate the "I have a bomb" claim? Frankly, eye witness accounts are usually mostly inaccurate.

|12.14.05 @ 6:57PM|#

Until I learn more, I'm inclined to be sympathetic toward the air marshalls. Although it's disturbing that either they are declining to answer various clarifying questions, or the media are failing to ask them. But in the former case, I'd at least like to know what unanswered questions were asked. Like what jimmy said.

But I really have to take issue with this phrase from Bovard's article:

"A youngish [44 years old?] male

Fuck yes, you young punk! I'm 44 and I'm incredibly youthful. Hell, I got carded a couple months ago when I bought a bottle of vodka at the grocery store. Admittedly by an older lady who apparently forgot her eyeglasses, but still...

When will Reason hire a couple people who are old enough to shave? It might lend a little valuable perspective.

|12.14.05 @ 7:02PM|#

So, apparently some of you think the air marshalls murdered this man, i.e. they had absolutely no reason to shoot this man other than their own murderous impulses, so they laughed it up and took turns drilling holes in a citizen?

It is a dangerous world we live in because there are people who are burning with hatred for the developed world who are willing to drive airplanes into tall buildings and kill themselves as long as they can take a plane load of libertarians with them.

|12.14.05 @ 7:03PM|#

What are the air marshall's supposed to do, perform psycho-analysis?

Apparently, governments expect more of people like Cory Maye and Amadou Diallo than they do of their own armed agents.

Unlike trained law enforcement officers, who are excused for shooting innocent people because they had only a fraction of a second to make a life-or-death decision after initiating a violent confronation, civilians must correctly assess the situation and decide to make the appropriate response -- roll over and surrender -- in that same fraction of a second. Or else...

It takes a special kind of person to believe that "It was Amadou Diallo who set the stage for tragedy."

|12.14.05 @ 7:07PM|#

This discussion is about an incident on an airplane in Miami. I am only vaguely familiar with the Amadou Diallo story, and it is irrelevant to this discussion anyway.

|12.14.05 @ 7:09PM|#

so, what should the air marshalls have done?

|12.14.05 @ 7:13PM|#

The air marshalls did not do this for a lark. They did this because they believe their own hype. Plus the only tool they have and want to use is a hammer. Pretty soon everything looks like a nail.

|12.14.05 @ 7:19PM|#

It is a dangerous world we live in because there are people who are burning with hatred for the developed world who are willing to drive airplanes into tall buildings and kill themselves as long as they can take a plane load of libertarians with them.

And killing a man on the runway after the plane has landed will prevent this. . . . how?

If the air marshals knew they'd done nothing wrong, then I wonder why they lied.

|12.14.05 @ 7:20PM|#

"Plus the only tool they have and want to use is a hammer. Pretty soon everything looks like a nail."

actually, they did not bludgeon this guy with a hammer they shot him. This is the first shooting by air marshalls that I am aware of, hence it seems likely to me that they have used other "tools" in the past, including doing absolutely nothing a year or two ago in a situation that had MANY passengers on an airplane sobbing with fear.

fyodor|12.14.05 @ 7:22PM|#

wayne,

I don't think anyone here thinks the air marshalls shot a man just to watch him die.

But the choices do not come down to either doing their job correctly to make us all safer versus first degree murder. They may have made an honest screw-up. And we're entitled to know if they did. And if they did act correctly under the circumstances, does this make safer or does it create the opposite circumstance? There's plenty worth knowing and discussing about this, even if we totally accept the gist of what you're saying.

|12.14.05 @ 7:23PM|#

so, what should the air marshalls have done?

Uh, maybe subdue him and arrest him? Let's see, no passenger corroborates the marshal's silly claim that he was running up and down the aisle saying he had a bomb. They do say only that he was acting weird and trying to get off the plane and they do corroborate that his wife was yelling not to hurt him, that he's mentally ill. Yeah, sounds like a good time to just blow him away because he SO fits the profile of a hijacker. Oh and add to that the fact the plane was on the ground (where was he hijacking it to - gate 34C?) they shot him after he was off the plane on the boarding ramp for Christ's sake! Yeah some hijacker or terrorist... It doesn't take a psycho-analysis to figure that out - just requires a moderately intelligent non-trigger-happy air marshal.

|12.14.05 @ 7:26PM|#

"And killing a man on the runway after the plane has landed will prevent this. . . . how?

If the air marshals knew they'd done nothing wrong, then I wonder why they lied."

Your first question is easy to answer: They were preventing this bomber from pressing the button on his radio-controlled detonator. Radio controlled detonators are widely used in Iraq in their "Improvised Explosive Devices". I would hope that if I am a passenger sitting on an airplane is such a situation the air marshalls would perform in a like manner.

Your second question is harder. I don't know why they lied. Maybe they panicked and thouhgt they needed to bolster their justification for shooting. Maybe the air marshalls did not even say they heard anything about a bomb, maybe it was a passenger who said it.

|12.14.05 @ 7:26PM|#

There are more possibilities here than just murder or justified shooting. There's a third category: Understandable but still below the standards of judgement that we expect from a Law Enforcement Officer.

When an unarmed civilian is shot, the burden of proof should be on the state for anything it might do. This has two somewhat countervailing effects:

1) On the question of whether the shooters should keep their jobs, the presumption should be that they shouldn't, until they prove otherwise. That may sound counter to the notion of innocent until proven guilty, but that standard is only used when loss of liberty is at stake. Here the stakes are authority, and authority must be constantly earned, not taken for granted.

You can say what you want about the circumstances and how the mistake was understandable. And maybe you're right. But the fact remains that an unarmed man was shot by an agent of the state, and if that agent of the state wants to keep his job, he'd better have a really goddamned good excuse for the mistake.

2) On the other hand, if the state wanted to not only strip those agents of authority, but also convict them of a crime, the burden of proof immediately gets turned around. Now the stakes are loss of liberty.

Also, in regard to putting the Marshalls on buses and subways and whatnot:

You can say what you will about how this mistake was understandable, and maybe at the end of the day it will be the case that the shooting was totally justified and the Marshalls should keep their jobs. The fact remains that this was an encounter with a crazy non-terrorist, and this sort of encounter is far more likely on buses and subways than it is on airplanes. (Trust me, I've traveled cross-country on Greyhound.)

Encounters of this sort are best handled by experienced people who are accustomed to dealing with crazy non-terrorists. Here, I would rather trust the local beat cop than the Air Marshall. Maybe the case in Miami was understandable, and maybe even the most experienced beat cop would have done the same thing. I'd still say that buses and trains are better patrolled by people who's instincts have been honed by lots of encounters with crazy non-terrorists, rather than by former FBI agents or former military personnel. The FBI and armed forces may be very good at what they do, but I doubt they spend much time dealing with crazy guys walking down the streets talking to the voices in their heads.

I guarantee you that if our buses and subways are routinely patrolled by people whose instincts and reflexes are calibrated for encounters with Al Qaeda operatives, over time there will be more than a few tragic mistakes. Understandable? Maybe. But avoidable by people with more appropriate backgrounds? Probably.

Brian|12.14.05 @ 7:27PM|#

What sort of sentence includes threatening words "to the effect" that one has a bomb�but apparently does not include the word bomb?

"If I don't get off this plane soon, my bladder is gonna explode."

|12.14.05 @ 7:33PM|#

"Uh, maybe subdue him and arrest him?"

And while they are wrestling with this guy he detonates the bomb that he planted on the airplane and kills 200 people, maybe you among them. This does not strike me as laudible police work.

The point I am making is that it is plausible that these air marshalls were acting responsibly given the knowledge they had at the time.

I don't deny that it is tragic that an apparently innocent man was killed, but I object to the implication that these cops were just a couple of gun-happy thugs.

Rick H.|12.14.05 @ 7:33PM|#

Bobster: bingo. This incident is being cheered by folks who believe that, in dealing with a possible threat, there are no choices between gentle, passive psychoanalysis and "Shoot him! Shoot him!"

|12.14.05 @ 7:35PM|#

wayne, if you were talking about 1 or 2 eyewitnesses, I would agree that that TSA could be given the benefit of the doubt. But CNN+Time+Orlando Sentinel = 9 or 10 passengers who heard nothing about a bomb.

Bovard also discerns the slight but important "to the effect" change in the official story. I'll bet that, if pressed, the story changes to "he mentioned the bomb when he was on the jetway" which would conveniently allow plausible deniability because voila! -- The passengers on the plane can't hear what's happening on the jetway....except the gunshots that killed this man.

|12.14.05 @ 7:40PM|#

I think one of the major reasons that the editorials are not questioning the shooting is because they are worried that they will be branded as liberal communists that hate America by every right-wing hack with a microphone. It all comes to $$$ as usual. Luckily, they are some journalists and editors that have the guts to ask the right questions and try to get to the bottom of this tragic accident.

|12.14.05 @ 7:41PM|#

"You can say what you want about the circumstances and how the mistake was understandable. And maybe you're right. But the fact remains that an unarmed man was shot by an agent of the state, and if that agent of the state wants to keep his job, he'd better have a really goddamned good excuse for the mistake."

Good point, and I agree. The consequnence of that approach is that you might wind up with a police force that is so afraid to pull the trigger that they fail to pull the trigger when they need to, and hundreds of people die because of it.

Rick H.|12.14.05 @ 7:43PM|#

Wayne, do you think this would be a justified shooting if the guy was "acting weird" at a soccer game of 200 people? The plane was grounded.

My point is that this country's security psychosis seems to mainly center around planes and airports, as if terrorist organizations are drawn to airports and only to airports by some magical voodoo spell.

|12.14.05 @ 7:51PM|#

"Wayne, do you think this would be a justified shooting if the guy was "acting weird" at a soccer game of 200 people? The plane was grounded."

It is impossible, except in hindsight, to know the correct way to handle your scenario, or the airplane scenario in Miami for that matter.

If the guy in the soccer crowd was acting weird because he was about to open the valve on a cannister of nerver gas, then some on-the-spot action to stop him is absilutely justified. If he actually likes soccer then his weirdness is explained and some punishment is in order, but it will be administered by God at a later time.

|12.14.05 @ 7:55PM|#

It is impossible, except in hindsight, to know the correct way to handle your scenario, or the airplane scenario in Miami for that matter. If the guy in the soccer crowd was acting weird because he was about to open the valve on a cannister of nerver gas, then some on-the-spot action to stop him is absilutely justified.

So in this safer America of yours, anybody who acts weird according to the on-the-spot judgment of a gun-toting agent of the state can be killed without consequence? Even if, in hindsight, it becomes spectacularly obvious that this was unnecessary?

|12.14.05 @ 8:03PM|#

"So in this safer America of yours, anybody who acts weird according to the on-the-spot judgment of a gun-toting agent of the state can be killed without consequence? Even if, in hindsight, it becomes spectacularly obvious that this was unnecessary"

Let me turn your question 180 degrees: In your politically correct America where only perfect decisions by cops are allowed, it is acceptable for the death of hundreds, or thousands, because the cop with his finger on the trigger could not shoot when he should have?

Ed|12.14.05 @ 8:07PM|#

Bluto Blutarsky to Splintered Guitar Guy: "Sorry."

|12.14.05 @ 8:08PM|#

Anyone ever hear of reply to this