alan
Member
Joe Adams: terrorist? Cottage Grove man stuck on no-fly list
Bob von Sternberg, Star Tribune
Published July 27, 2003 FLY27
When you try to imagine what a typical terrorist looks like, it's unlikely that Joe Adams will come to mind.
Adams, 71, is a white-haired, bespectacled fellow living in Cottage Grove. He's a soft-spoken retired English teacher who describes his life as a suspected terrorist this way:
"This has been a nightmare. Nobody has told me why this happened -- and I imagine I'll never know."
For more than a year, Adams has found himself on the receiving end of the federal government's efforts to tighten airline security in the United States after Sept. 11, 2001. The experience has left him alternately baffled and amused, frustrated and furious.
He has found himself on the Transportation Security Administration's secretive "no-fly list," a computerized listing of "known terrorists or enemies of the federal government," in the words of TSA spokesman Darren Kayser.
Adams is neither. But despite months of trying, he hasn't been able to prove it.
Kayser went on to say that he can't "confirm or deny whether any name is on the security list because if you know your name is on the list, all you'd have to do is change your name. I'm not even sure I can confirm that we have a list."
Never mind that his boss, TSA Administrator James Loy, confirmed the existence of the list last month, acknowledging that "a tiny number of the 45 million people who fly each month" have been caught in the Kafkaesque computer web that has been snaring Adams.
Although TSA officials have refused to say how many names are on the no-fly lists, civil liberties groups that have opposed its use have said they believe the number could range from several hundred to several thousand. At least one other Joe Adams, an attorney who works for Intel, has complained after the airlines' computers erroneously targeted him. That suggests that somewhere there is a Joe Adams who the government doesn't want to let onto an airplane. A host of David Nelsons, living in several cities, have had the same problem.
The first time it happened to Cottage Grove's Joe Adams, he didn't give it much thought.
It was October 2001. Adams and his wife were flying to North Carolina to visit relatives.
When he tried to check in at the Delta Airlines counter at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the e-ticket kiosk turned him away, directing him to a human ticket agent. There, he was told vaguely that the computer was down. The agent disappeared into a back room. "She said she'd be right back, so I wait and wait as people are lining up behind me," Adams recalled.
The agent returned with two security guards. They scrutinized his driver's license, his passport and his plane ticket. More long minutes passed. They checked his documents again. They finally waved him through to the security gate. No explanation was forthcoming. "Not a word," he said.
It didn't happen every time Adams flew, but by this spring, it had happened more than a dozen times, on several airlines: the long waits, the presence of uniformed guards, the tight-lipped clearances..
During one computerized interrogation, an airline supervisor tried to lighten Adams' mood by jokingly asking him, "You some kind of terrorist?"
"I don't think so," Adams shot back.
Humiliated
Last summer, Adams complained to Delta Airlines, the carrier that accounted for most of his holdups. "I have been humiliated and embarrassed," he wrote. "I am treated like the FBI's most-wanted."
He got a long, opaquely worded reply that told him the airline was merely trying to comply with the tightened federal security standards. "We will do everything we possibly can to prevent a similar experience in the future," wrote Richard Similton, the airline's customer care manager.
By last winter, Adams had tried -- unsuccessfully -- to hack through the bureaucratic thicket of the TSA. The agency referred him to the airlines -- which promptly referred him back to the government.
So he turned to the office of Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn. "WHAT CAN I DO TO GET MY NAME CLEARED?" he wrote.
A Dayton staffer passed Adams' complaint on to the TSA, only to be told initially that the crunch of creating a new federal agency from scratch probably would hold up any resolution.
"We fully understand the need for security to protect the flying public, but there needs to be a process that allows people to travel without hassles," Dayton spokesman Marc Kimball said.
By spring, Adams had begun hearing about the no-fly list from media reports and redoubled his effort to get his name removed from it. In March, he sent an e-mail to the agency's consumer response division, noting that he had "been treated as a criminal for more than a year each time I have checked in to fly on various airlines."
He got an anonymous response essentially telling him to be patient. At some unspecified future date, the agency "will have the capability of removing names at that time."
By May, it appeared he had hit pay dirt, when the agency sent him a Passenger Identity Verification Form that "should provide a more efficient or streamlined process for you during flight check-in."
He filled out all of his vital statistics and assembled certified copies of his birth certificate, his passport, his military discharge paper and his Minnesota driver's license. He mailed it to the agency's headquarters in Arlington, Va., and assumed he had finally been cleared.
'Here we go again'
Kayser said a records check showed that Adams' form had been approved and sent on to the airlines on June 3.
Five days later, Adams arrived at the Orlando airport to fly home via Northwest Airlines. "All of a sudden, the agent disappears into the back -- oh boy, here we go again," he said. "It was hot, I was tired and everyone was staring at me. This time it took 90 minutes."
It took until June 26 for Adams to receive a letter from the TSA telling him that it had verified his identity and that it had "provided sufficient personal information to the airlines to assist in issuing your boarding pass more efficiently."
The problem, Kayser said, "is that we don't know exactly when the airlines got the information. They should have it right in front of them, saying it's fine for him to fly."
Northwest Airlines spokeswoman Mary Stanik refused to comment on Adams' encounter, saying federal regulations prohibit the airline from discussing "names that may or may not be on the TSA watch list."
In a prepared statement, she added: "We are aware that a small number of customers have indicated a problem related to the watch list and so we have been working on automated methods of easing those problems."
Kayser said that a relatively small number of travelers -- probably fewer than 20 -- have used the verification process to get off the no-fly list.
"It's fine they have a procedure now," said Kimball, Dayton's spokesman. "But they need to start making it work for people like Mr. Adams."
Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., who has scrutinized the effect of the TSA's screening program on civil liberties, said Adams' experience "shows something's not working. They say this is a problem of their old system, but they should be sure it will work in their new system."
Under its new security system, the TSA plans to replace the no-fly list with software that will match names with a range of databases. Sabo tried to attach an amendment that would withhold money for the new screening program until the General Accounting Office and the National Academy of Sciences study its potential effect on civil liberties. Although the amendment died on the House floor, Sabo hopes to revive it in conference committee.
For his part, Adams has his teeth gritted as he awaits his next flight on Aug. 14. "We'll see," he said. "I'm too old to quit flying."
To this day, he said, "I still wonder why I'm on that list. I suppose it's just the way the government works. But that's not good enough."
Bob von Sternberg, Star Tribune
Published July 27, 2003 FLY27
When you try to imagine what a typical terrorist looks like, it's unlikely that Joe Adams will come to mind.
Adams, 71, is a white-haired, bespectacled fellow living in Cottage Grove. He's a soft-spoken retired English teacher who describes his life as a suspected terrorist this way:
"This has been a nightmare. Nobody has told me why this happened -- and I imagine I'll never know."
For more than a year, Adams has found himself on the receiving end of the federal government's efforts to tighten airline security in the United States after Sept. 11, 2001. The experience has left him alternately baffled and amused, frustrated and furious.
He has found himself on the Transportation Security Administration's secretive "no-fly list," a computerized listing of "known terrorists or enemies of the federal government," in the words of TSA spokesman Darren Kayser.
Adams is neither. But despite months of trying, he hasn't been able to prove it.
Kayser went on to say that he can't "confirm or deny whether any name is on the security list because if you know your name is on the list, all you'd have to do is change your name. I'm not even sure I can confirm that we have a list."
Never mind that his boss, TSA Administrator James Loy, confirmed the existence of the list last month, acknowledging that "a tiny number of the 45 million people who fly each month" have been caught in the Kafkaesque computer web that has been snaring Adams.
Although TSA officials have refused to say how many names are on the no-fly lists, civil liberties groups that have opposed its use have said they believe the number could range from several hundred to several thousand. At least one other Joe Adams, an attorney who works for Intel, has complained after the airlines' computers erroneously targeted him. That suggests that somewhere there is a Joe Adams who the government doesn't want to let onto an airplane. A host of David Nelsons, living in several cities, have had the same problem.
The first time it happened to Cottage Grove's Joe Adams, he didn't give it much thought.
It was October 2001. Adams and his wife were flying to North Carolina to visit relatives.
When he tried to check in at the Delta Airlines counter at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the e-ticket kiosk turned him away, directing him to a human ticket agent. There, he was told vaguely that the computer was down. The agent disappeared into a back room. "She said she'd be right back, so I wait and wait as people are lining up behind me," Adams recalled.
The agent returned with two security guards. They scrutinized his driver's license, his passport and his plane ticket. More long minutes passed. They checked his documents again. They finally waved him through to the security gate. No explanation was forthcoming. "Not a word," he said.
It didn't happen every time Adams flew, but by this spring, it had happened more than a dozen times, on several airlines: the long waits, the presence of uniformed guards, the tight-lipped clearances..
During one computerized interrogation, an airline supervisor tried to lighten Adams' mood by jokingly asking him, "You some kind of terrorist?"
"I don't think so," Adams shot back.
Humiliated
Last summer, Adams complained to Delta Airlines, the carrier that accounted for most of his holdups. "I have been humiliated and embarrassed," he wrote. "I am treated like the FBI's most-wanted."
He got a long, opaquely worded reply that told him the airline was merely trying to comply with the tightened federal security standards. "We will do everything we possibly can to prevent a similar experience in the future," wrote Richard Similton, the airline's customer care manager.
By last winter, Adams had tried -- unsuccessfully -- to hack through the bureaucratic thicket of the TSA. The agency referred him to the airlines -- which promptly referred him back to the government.
So he turned to the office of Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn. "WHAT CAN I DO TO GET MY NAME CLEARED?" he wrote.
A Dayton staffer passed Adams' complaint on to the TSA, only to be told initially that the crunch of creating a new federal agency from scratch probably would hold up any resolution.
"We fully understand the need for security to protect the flying public, but there needs to be a process that allows people to travel without hassles," Dayton spokesman Marc Kimball said.
By spring, Adams had begun hearing about the no-fly list from media reports and redoubled his effort to get his name removed from it. In March, he sent an e-mail to the agency's consumer response division, noting that he had "been treated as a criminal for more than a year each time I have checked in to fly on various airlines."
He got an anonymous response essentially telling him to be patient. At some unspecified future date, the agency "will have the capability of removing names at that time."
By May, it appeared he had hit pay dirt, when the agency sent him a Passenger Identity Verification Form that "should provide a more efficient or streamlined process for you during flight check-in."
He filled out all of his vital statistics and assembled certified copies of his birth certificate, his passport, his military discharge paper and his Minnesota driver's license. He mailed it to the agency's headquarters in Arlington, Va., and assumed he had finally been cleared.
'Here we go again'
Kayser said a records check showed that Adams' form had been approved and sent on to the airlines on June 3.
Five days later, Adams arrived at the Orlando airport to fly home via Northwest Airlines. "All of a sudden, the agent disappears into the back -- oh boy, here we go again," he said. "It was hot, I was tired and everyone was staring at me. This time it took 90 minutes."
It took until June 26 for Adams to receive a letter from the TSA telling him that it had verified his identity and that it had "provided sufficient personal information to the airlines to assist in issuing your boarding pass more efficiently."
The problem, Kayser said, "is that we don't know exactly when the airlines got the information. They should have it right in front of them, saying it's fine for him to fly."
Northwest Airlines spokeswoman Mary Stanik refused to comment on Adams' encounter, saying federal regulations prohibit the airline from discussing "names that may or may not be on the TSA watch list."
In a prepared statement, she added: "We are aware that a small number of customers have indicated a problem related to the watch list and so we have been working on automated methods of easing those problems."
Kayser said that a relatively small number of travelers -- probably fewer than 20 -- have used the verification process to get off the no-fly list.
"It's fine they have a procedure now," said Kimball, Dayton's spokesman. "But they need to start making it work for people like Mr. Adams."
Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., who has scrutinized the effect of the TSA's screening program on civil liberties, said Adams' experience "shows something's not working. They say this is a problem of their old system, but they should be sure it will work in their new system."
Under its new security system, the TSA plans to replace the no-fly list with software that will match names with a range of databases. Sabo tried to attach an amendment that would withhold money for the new screening program until the General Accounting Office and the National Academy of Sciences study its potential effect on civil liberties. Although the amendment died on the House floor, Sabo hopes to revive it in conference committee.
For his part, Adams has his teeth gritted as he awaits his next flight on Aug. 14. "We'll see," he said. "I'm too old to quit flying."
To this day, he said, "I still wonder why I'm on that list. I suppose it's just the way the government works. But that's not good enough."
