Submitted by Charlton Stanley (Otteray Scribe) guest blogger
This has not gotten much national press….yet. I had been hearing of these events through the aviation grapevine, but did not know for sure it was actually happening until the story of Gabriel Silverstein broke on the AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) news web page. Mr. Silverstein is a New Jersey businessperson who was returning from a business trip to California with his husband. He had filed a flight plan, and landed his Cirrus SR22, a small private aircraft, in Oklahoma for a fuel stop. At that time, he was subjected to a ramp check. By Federal Air Regulations, a ramp check is supposed to be done only by an FAA official. On a standard ramp check, the pilot has to produce documents showing the airplane is airworthy, is registered, and has the paperwork on board as required under Part 91 of the Federal Air Regulations. The pilot must show his or her pilot’s license and medical certificate. The Oklahoma ramp check was brief, and he went on his way. He had to stop for fuel again in Iowa City. Upon arrival, he went into the FBO (Fixed Base Operator) office to pay for his gas, take a break and file a new flight plan. When he returned to his plane, he found it surrounded by officers, being searched without his permission, and with no explanation. The officers said “Probable Cause” was the K-9 dog had “hit” on the baggage compartment. The officers ordered him to be quiet, and if he asked any more questions, he would spend the rest of the day in the back of a police cruiser in handcuffs.
CPB captions this as being at their Air and Marine Operations Center
One officer handed Mr. Silverstein a business card identifying him as being with the Department of Customs and Border Protection. Mr. Silverstein says the brown uniforms and shoulder patches he saw that day were identical to the one worn by the officer on the right in this stock CPB photo. On their web page, the CPB identifies this location as being at their Air and Marine Operations Center. I think we can safely assume this is not the main operations room, but only part of the operation.
Geography was not my favorite subject in school, but last time I looked, both Oklahoma and Iowa are a long way from any international border.
More Border Patrol and Homeland Security goodness over the jump, including a video interview with Mr. Silverstein.
This link is to the AOPA news page. There is a video interview with Mr. Silverstein where he gives his explanation of what happened (sorry, I can’t get it to embed). Since AOPA first broke that story, they have followed up with another account: Fresh reports of aircraft searches, CBP has little to say
Two CBP Air Interdiction officers stopping a small twin-engine plane on a runway.
Reason given? “Suspicion.”
James Fallows of The Atlantic has also covered the story in some detail. The pilot accounts he reports are chilling. Apparently, the simple fact that one is flying from west to east across the country is enough to arouse suspicion and bring out these guys to greet you.
In one incident, the officers wanted their dog to jump up on the wing of an airplane. The owner said he would allow it if the officer would take personal responsibility and sign a document attesting that he would pay for repainting the plane if the dog’s paws scratched the paint, and it would have to be witnessed by all the other 19 officers present.
Some of the pilots detained for these “ramp checks” report that when CPB agents can’t find anything, they seem to become increasingly angry and frustrated.
There has been at least one report where an agent started taking inspection plates off an airplane. That is illegal, since those inspection panels should only be removed (and replaced) by an FAA certified and licensed aircraft technician.
The CPB has developed a huge electronic net called the Air and Marine Operations Surveillance System (AMOSS). According to an online statement:
“AMOSS utilizes extensive law enforcement and intelligence databases, and tracking and communications networks to provide a single display that is capable of tracking over 24,000 individual targets.”
The CPB admits to monitoring FAA and military radar systems, but its full capability is unknown.
There are increasing numbers of heavy-handed searches. In one incident, a 70 year old glider pilot was forced down and arrested after flying over a nuclear plant, despite the fact no flight restrictions are shown on any chart, there are no NOTAMS (Notice to Airmen), and no listed TFRs (Temporary Flight Restrictions). Additionally, gliders, being unpowered aircraft, have the right of way over all other air traffic except balloons. Glider pilot Robin Fleming is interviewed here by AOPA:
When his case went to court, the charges were dropped, provided he sign a statement agreeing to not sue the law enforcement agencies and officers involved in his illegal arrest and detention.
This is just another chapter in the growing police state the US is becoming in the name of the “War on Terror” and the “War on Drugs.”
The floor is open for discussion and additional stories if any aviators out there have them. Personally, I would love to get a response from the CPB explaining just what they hope to accomplish by these draconian stops with no probable cause other than a general aviation plane is flying from west to east.
I am offering an open invitation to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Acting Commissioner Thomas Winkowski to log on and explain themselves.
Corrrection OS: Instead of “rich white guys” lets call them “well off white guys” (mere semantics) since, lets face facts: the vast majority of airplane owners are well off white males, typically bourgeois (or petite-bougeois) businessmen.
There are are virtually zero proletarian aircraft owners in this world.
Now they know what it’s like to face the arbitrariness of unlawful police actions as non-white proletarian youth encounter every hour in most of the burroughs of NYC.
When you have only the one Property Party with its two right wings, you can only:
“… what has gone wrong in the entire misguided “war on terror,” which is pretty much everything. Nearly everything we have done in the name of fighting terrorism since 2001 has blown back in our faces like piss on a windy beach, turning those who should be allies into enemies and making the whole problem immeasurably worse.” — Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com(Sunday, Jun 9, 2013 )
See: Obama’s “Dirty Wars” — and a soiled presidency
How the echoes from forty years ago in Southeast Asia just keep on coming:
“We can’t knock off this stupid shit because our friends won’t respect us and our enemies won’t fear us if we stop acting so stupidly.” (Which implies that our friends respect our stupidity and our enemies fear it — precisely the opposite of the way friends and enemies actually think).
From the Best and the Brightest to the Worst and the Dullest in only one generation. You just can’t make up nonsense as spectacular as this.
Snowden is just another idealistic Ron Paul supporter.
I say, let those 50-100 Al Qaeda (I mean, Saudi Arabian) jihadis “follow us home.” We can just hire a couple of inner-city gangs to ambush them as they try to wade ashore at Galveston Bay. The need for our own government to terrify a continental nation of 300,000,000 people over such a ludicrous possibility would simply baffle me if the notorious American susceptibility to official fear-mongering did not have such a dreadfully long history.
America has millions of “patriotic” gun owners and 50 state militias just waiting for those 50-to-100 reported Al Qaeda jihadis to leave their far-off caves in Afghanistan, flap their arms, and fly through vast airspaces to “attack” America — the officially concocted nightmare otherwise known as “following us home.” Why do we need a trillion-dollar-a-year military/intelligence/homeland-insecurity boondoggle to handle a pathetic little “threat” like that? Especially when our traumatized soldiers kill more of themselves every year than the Taliban and Al Qaeda do. I mean, something just screams of naked war-profiteering here.
More Greenwald:
OS
it was my first thought that homeland security was learning tactics from DEA and the war on drugs. sounds like nobody informed the FAA though.
merge the two and save tax dollars. yippie
How can our foreign enemies “follow us home” if our vaunted Visigoths never come home? Just asking …
When Rand Paul demands the cancellation of the so-called AUMF, the abrogation of the so-called “Patriot” Act, and demands the dismantling of the so-called Department of Homeland Security, just for starters, then I’ll consider him something more than a grandstanding political opportunist. If he has actually done these things and I haven’t noticed, then I encourage him to press ahead even more energetically. And, of course, he could demand the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act and insist on a modest increase in the top marginal tax rate. Then, I would really begin to take him seriously.
At any rate: nothing but officially declaring Peace and demobilizing the National Insecurity State will restore to America anything like the free republic that Benjamin Franklin said we could have only if we could keep it — which we obviously haven’t.
Take away the US president’s perpetual “war” candy. Only that will free up the human and economic resources that America requires for its own rehabilitation. Starve the Beast of War. Good things follow as the night follows the day.
Sorry for the cut-and-paste that resulted in two copies (each with a different title) of the same verse. I intended the first, although the epigram at the beginning of the second has relevance as well.
http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/06/rand-paul-ill-file-class-action-lawsuit-to-stop-government-snooping/
Paul appears on Fox News Sunday and vowed to challenge such violations of the Constitution. “I’m going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level,” he said.
“I’m going to be asking all the internet providers and all of the phone companies: Ask your customers to join me in a class action lawsuit. If we get 10 million Americans saying we don’t want our phone records looked at then maybe someone will wake up and something will change in Washington,” he continued.
“We are a symbol using class of life, and those who rule the symbols rule us.” — Alfred Korzybski
Fly Untied (not a misspelling).
—
Remembering twelve years of U.S. military briefings in Iraq and Afghanistan (formerly known in Saigon as “The Five O’Clock Follies”) predicting “signs of fragile progress” real soon now — or, perhaps in twenty years.
.
Jaundice: a state or attitude characterized by satiety, distaste, or hostility (synonyms: animosity, animus, antagonism, antipathy, bad blood, bitterness, gall, grudge, enmity, rancor)
“Charles Oman, in his classic study of war, spoke of the veterans of the battles of the Middle Ages as ‘the best of soldiers while the war lasted … [but] a most dangerous and unruly race in times of truce or peace.'” — Robert Jay Lifton, Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans, neither victims nor executioners
“Americans are among the most easily frightened people on earth.”
“America has only one political party, the Property Party, and it has two right wings.”
— Gore Vidal
What he said.
Do not go outside on a sunny day, Americans. You will cast shadows and they will “follow you home.”
If it wasn’t for fear itself, Americans would have nothing but reactionary panic, mystic dread, and abstract angst with which to terrify themselves.
Bendix,
That is disgusting.
Bendix:
what do you mean?
SM:
wow, shut those b^stards down as well.