David Steigman, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the newly established federal airport security agency, said in an interview with the online magazine Salon.com, "We have a list of about 1,000 people." It is "composed of names that are provided to us by various government organizations like the FBI, CIA, and INS.... Each agency decides on its own who is a threat to aviation." The existence of such a list was also confirmed by FBI spokesman Paul Bresson.

Those who have been delayed or barred from flights include Green Party activists, members of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and people affiliated with Arab or Arab-American groups.

Hussein Ibish, communications director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said his organization has documented more than 80 cases involving 200 people in which passengers with Arab names have been delayed at airports or prevented from flying.

Dave Lindorff of Salon.com reported that in September, six staff members of the Center for Constitutional Rights were "subjected to intense scrutiny" at the airport in Newark, New Jersey, before being allowed to board the plane. When one of them, Barbara Olshansky, the CCR’s assistant legal director, demanded to know why she had been singled out, the airline clerk told her, "The computer spit you out." Olshansky had been harassed several times before by airport security personnel, including one incident last March when she was ordered to pull her pants down while in view of other travelers.

In October two journalists with the San Francisco-based antiwar magazine War Times, Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams, were stopped at the check-in counter of Air Tran Airlines when a reservation clerk reportedly told them the computer showed them as being on "the FBI No Fly list." The airline then called the FBI and local cops, who held the two writers for some time before allowing them to leave.

"The U.S. government appears to be targeting citizens because of their beliefs," said CCR legal director William Goodman. The organization is preparing a First Amendment lawsuit against this policy. The American Civil Liberties Union has set up a "No Fly List Complaint Form" on its web site, www.aclu.org.

Another government probe against workers’ rights was reported by the Wall Street Journal November 19. The paper reports that the FBI has established a "watch list" called "Project Lookout," in which the federal cop agency has distributed a list of hundreds of names of what it deems "suspected terrorists" to scores of private corporations across the country.

"Some companies fed versions of the list into their own databases and now use it to screen job applicants and customers," according to the Journal. Some individuals have unsuccessfully sought to remove their names from this blacklist. Three brothers with the surname Atta--which happens to be the name of one of the alleged September 11 hijackers--had their names officially removed from the FBI list, but still found themselves identified as "potential terrorists" on other lists that circulate widely among corporations. The FBI told them the matter was out of its hands.  
 
 
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