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.

Comments

[saw-whet]

A post about Fisk. There should be a long thread by now. Thoreau, did you break the server?

[Tom Dooley]

I've never cared for Fisk's lecturing -- there's a great reporter obscured by his need to lecture readers who tend to already agree with him -- but looking at his archive from the spring of 2001 onward, it is difficult to find anything he was wrong about.

That should make people sad, here in America.

You can argue that he spends too much time pointing fingers at Israel & D.C. and not enough time harassing the Muslim theocracies and dictatorships -- all are worthy targets -- although he does quite a bit more of the latter than you'd know from reading blogs or whatever. But you can't argue much with his assessments and predictions. Again and again, Fisk was right and Washington was wrong ... Afghanistan, Iraq, Bin Laden's personality cult being a temporary construct of the White House blaming him for the 9/11 attacks, Powell's bullshit speech to the UN, it just goes on.

I read this one today, http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles197.htm , which describes exactly what's going on in Basra as we are now learning ... but Fisk's story is from March of 2003.

[drf]

Tom: you had one helluva career with the US national team. snaps to you! 🙂

[Eric the .5b]

"F - I - S - K in the USA..."

Damn, now that's stuck in my head.

[whocares]

I would like to suggest the idea that getting a new passport (when you still have one that is "valid" by date) is a pain in the ass for people who have careers or lives to be about.

And, am I correct when I say that the new requirements came into play in early September (9-9-05)?

Whats the turn around-time on a mail-in application , 6-8 weeks? And forget going to the office to get the job done, unless you're up-for 8-10 weeks of line wating. I'm sure though, that things work differently in the way-smater-than-the-united-states region of Europe?

[Steve Smith]

Dude, fisking is sooooooo 9-12. Get over it.

[Drone]

There may be less here than meets the eye. I'm not sure, but Mr. Fisk may have been denied entry because he didn't have a machine-readable passport, not a biometric passport. A machine-readable passport simply allows the immigration officer to use an optical reader to scan the passport and automatically enter the name, country, and date of birth of the traveler into the immigration computers, much like a cashier uses a scanner at the 7-11 to ring up a six-pack. The info is contained in those letters and numbers in the strange font at the bottom of the passport. It really just prevents data entry typos. As of June 2005 business/tourist travelers from visa waiver countries (like the U.K.) are required to have either a machine-readable passport OR a U.S. visa in their passport. Most countries switched to machine-readable passports years before 9/11.

Or, the problem could have been the lack of a press visa (a so-called "I" visa). I couldn't find a more detailed account of the incident on Google news.

see:
http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html

[Pol]

Drone is right - or if he/she isn't, this is seriously harsh - the UK won't issue biometric passports until "early 2006".

http://www.ukpa.gov.uk/press_120905.asp

UK passports issued here in the UK have been machine-readable for years but those issued by embassies abroad aren't always. They can issue new passports in five hours here though if you don't mind turning up in person and paying through the nose.

[DavidS]

From which we conclude that Blankfort has absolutely no idea what he's talking about...

[nick]

Yep, Blankfort is wrong about biometric passports. UK visitors have an opt-out on using them until the end of October (and the things won't be issued until January, which should make life interesting for travellers in the holiday season).

Fisk may well not have had a machine-readable passport -- although they're quite rare these days. (Those are the ones with the laminated photo-page, with the '>>>>>>' thing on the bottom that gets swiped.) Visitors on visa waivers have had to use machine-readable passports since June.

Of course, Fisk may well have encountered an immigration officer who wasn't aware of the rules. It happens a lot. (And why the hell are US immigration officers allowed to work in Canadian airports anyway.)