The nation’s system for relaying information about suspicious airplane incidents needs improvement, according to a federal review of a flight on which 13 Syrian men aroused the suspicions of passengers, pilots and air marshals.
The three-page unclassified summary released Monday by the Department of Homeland Security answers few of the questions raised by a freelance journalist Annie Jacobsen, who was on Northwest Airlines Flight 327. Her stories ignited a debate between those who thought she was being paranoid and those who believed the men were staking out the flight for a future attack.
DHS inspector general investigators did not interview the Syrian passengers for the report.
“They disappeared into thin air,” said Jacobsen, who turned her account into a book, “Terror in the Skies.”
The 13 men, identified as members of the backup band for a Syrian singer, were in the U.S. on expired visas. However, at the time of the flight, they had applied for extensions and were here legally, according to David Adams of the Federal Air Marshal Service.
The full report of the June29, 2004, flight from Detroit to Los Angeles remains classified. It contains sensitive information, including the circumstances surrounding the men and the flight and critiques about the way the department handled the situation, wrote DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner.
Jacobsen said the report remained classified because the DHS doesn’t want the public to know how “pathetically it performed.”
The men kept getting up to go to the restroom and made hand signals to each other, Jacobsen said, including one who ran his finger across his neck and mouthed the word “no.”
Their behavior also aroused the suspicions of the pilots, attendants and the air marshals on board, and the men were questioned upon landing, according to the report.
Details on Flight 327
» The Department of Homeland Security issued an “unusually specific internal warning” on the day of the flight.
