No More Fisking in the U.S.?

Robert Fisk, the globe-trotting, journalistic critic of United States foreign policy who, depending on your politics, is either an "internationally renowned correspondent" dispensing "wonderful analyses and hard-hitting reports on the Middle East," or a verb; was barred entry into the U.S. on Sept. 20 by immigration officials in Toronto.

So was he "banned" for political reasons? Did the pointless and possibly illegal crackdown on visiting journalists from Visa Waiver countries trip up one of its first non-LAX victims?

Doesn't look like it. According to putative Fisk associate Jeff Blankfort,

Robert Fisk was not barred from entering the U.S. because he is who he is, but because he did not have the latest British biometric passport which evaluates eye-scans and that is now required of all British subjects entering the U.S. I spoke to him while he was at the Toronto airport and he did not want to make a big deal of it.

David Kopel and Michael Krause faced the biometric future in reason's October 2002 issue.

Further biometric-blogging at Hit & Run here, here, and here.

Michael Young crosses swords with Fisk here. Tim Cavanaugh calls him "the War on Terror's Mr. Bill" here. Colby Cosh's futile October 2002 cease-and-desist letter to Fisk-happy warbloggers is here. And the Verb's work is collected at www.robert-fisk.com.