"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
How does one wind up on a terrorist watch list when all you've done in a journalistic career that spanned almost six decades is report on and expose terrorist and other evildoers?
This reporter was tagged as a terrorist suspect as he returned to the United States via Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia from three consecutive trips abroad. Taken aside and questioned as my luggage was carefully checked shirt by short by socks, then on to washbag to unscrew an electric toothbrush and squeeze a little toothpaste out of the tube. My questions were ignored by a grim-faced young woman wearing her most hostile expression.
An appeal to the powers that be at the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection elicited verbal apologies. But the Dulles brigade gave me the same treatment two more times before my name could be extracted from batteries of computer systems -- and my reputation recovered.