Dear friends,

Who are the real terrorists in our world? Below are many highly revealing excerpts of important terrorism articles from the mainstream media
which raise serious questions on this key topic. The key sentence or two in each summary is highlighted for those with limited time.
Links are provided to the full articles on their major media websites
for those who want to investigate further. If any link should fail to
function, click here.
And don't miss the "What you can do" box beneath all of these
informative summaries. By choosing to educate ourselves on these
important issues and to spread the word, we can and will build a brighter future.

With best wishes,
Fred Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team
Former language interpreter for Presidents Bush and Clinton

Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?
2005-01-11, Los Angeles Times
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/11/opinion/oe-scheer11

Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda ... as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist? To
even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is
heretical. Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain's
leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this. "The
Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" ... argues
coherently that much of what we have been told about the threat of
international terrorism "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and
distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread
unquestioned ... around the world." Why have we heard so much
frightening talk about "dirty bombs" when experts say it is panic rather
than radioactivity that would kill people? Why did Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda
controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British
and U.S. military forces later found no such thing? The film
... directly challenges the conventional wisdom by making a powerful
case that the Bush administration, led by a tight-knit cabal of
Machiavellian neoconservatives, has seized upon the false image of a
unified international terrorist threat to replace the expired Soviet
empire in order to push a political agenda. "The nightmare
vision of a uniquely powerful hidden organization waiting to strike our
societies is an illusion. Wherever one looks for this Al Qaeda
organization, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the 'sleeper cells'
in America, the British and Americans are chasing a phantom enemy."

Note: If above link fails, click here. This highly revealing film by one of Britain's most respected documentary makers is available for free viewing on the Internet. For
the link and lots more on this amazingly revealing documentary, click here. For an excellent review of the film in one of the U.K.'s leading newspapers, click here.

U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba
2001-05-01, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662

In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S.
cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Code
named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible
assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the
high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even
orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans were developed
as ways to trick the American public and the international community
into supporting a war to oust Cuba's ... Fidel Castro. America's top
military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties,
writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame
Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful
wave of national indignation." The plans had the written approval of all
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's
defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently
were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for
nearly 40 years. The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential
death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an
American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba. Should the
rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is to provide
irrevocable proof … that the fault lies with the Communists." The scary
thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after.

Note: Many military and political leaders tend to look at the world as a chess board. Sacrificing pawns (innocent civilians) is sometimes necessary to capture the queen. Is it beyond comprehension that this might have been the case with 9/11?
And why was ABC the only major news source to report this highly
revealing story? To read the shocking declassified documents, click here.

Why I Resigned From the CIA
2004-12-05, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-scheuer5dec0...

Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA, wrote "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror." Between January 1996 and June 1999 I was in charge of running operations against Al Qaeda from Washington. When it comes to this small slice of the large U.S. national security pie, I speak with firsthand experience (and for several score of CIA officers)
when I state categorically that during this time senior White House
officials repeatedly refused to act on sound intelligence that provided
multiple chances to eliminate Osama bin Laden — either by capture or by
U.S. military attack. I witnessed and documented, along with
dozens of other CIA officers, instances where life-risking
intelligence-gathering work of the agency's men and women in the field
was wasted. I was never charged with deciding whether to act against Bin
Laden. That decision properly belongs solely to senior White House
officials. However, as a now-private American citizen, it is my right to
question their judgment; I am entitled to know why the protection of
Americans — most selfishly, my own children and grandchildren — was not
the top priority of the senior officials who refused to act on the
opportunities to attack Bin Laden provided by the clandestine service.
Each of these officials have publicly argued that the intelligence was
not "good enough" to act, but they almost always neglect to say that
they were repeatedly advised that the intelligence was not going to get
better and that Bin Laden was going to kill thousands of Americans if he
was not stopped.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. For many other serious questions around the 9/11 attacks, click here.

Brainwash victims win cash claims
2004-10-17, London Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-1313808,00.html

Hundreds of mentally ill patients who were subjected to barbaric CIA-funded brainwashing experiments ... could be entitled to compensation following
a landmark court ruling. Doctor Ewan Cameron, who became one of
the world’s leading psychiatrists, developed techniques used by Nazi
scientists to wipe out the existing personalities of people in his care.
Cameron ... was recruited by the CIA during the cold war while working
at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He carried out mind-control
experiments using drugs such as LSD on hundreds of patients, but only 77
of them were awarded compensation. Now a landmark ruling by a Federal
Court judge in Montreal will allow more than 250 former patients, whose
claims were rejected, to seek compensation. Last week, Alan Stein, of
Montreal law firm Stein and Stein ... confirmed he was in the process of
contacting former clients who could now renew their appeal. “There are
about 200 people still due compensation,” he said. Using
techniques similar to those portrayed in the celebrated novel the
Manchurian Candidate, it was believed that people could be brainwashed
and reprogrammed to carry out specific acts. Cameron developed a
range of depatterning “treatments”. Patients were woken from
drug-induced stupors two or three times a day for multiple electric
shocks. In a specially designed “sleep room” made famous by Anne
Collins’s book of the same name, Cameron placed a speaker under the
patient’s pillow and relayed negative messages for 16 hours a day.
Cameron ... rose to become the first president of the World Psychiatric
Association.

Note: If the above link does not work, click here. This article clearly shows that the Manchurian candidate (programmed assassin) is not just fiction. For a powerful two-page summary of
18,000 pages of declassified CIA documents on this disturbing mind
control program, click here. Links to view the original top secret documents are included.

US plans to fight the net revealed
2006-01-27, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4655196.stm

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations". The declassified document
is called "Information Operations Roadmap". It was obtained by the National Security Archive
at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.
Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense,
Donald Rumsfeld, signed it. The operations described in the document
include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs
officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try
to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network
attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks. The military's
psychological operations, or Psyops,
is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary
Americans. "Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media
for much larger audiences, including the American public. Strategy
should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will
'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads. The
document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to
"provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum". US
forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of
globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems
dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum". The fact that
the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of
Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in
the Pentagon.

Connections And Then Some
2003-03-14, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=...

The Carlyle Group [is] an investment house famous as one of the most well-connected companies anywhere. Former president George H.W. Bush is a
Carlyle adviser. Former British prime minister John Major heads its
European arm. Former secretary of state James Baker is senior counselor,
former White House budget chief Richard Darman is a partner, former SEC
chairman Arthur Levitt is senior adviser -- the list goes on. Those
associations have brought Carlyle enormous success. The Washington-based
merchant bank controls nearly $14 billion in investments, making it the
largest private equity manager in the world. It buys and sells whole
companies the way some firms trade shares of stock. But the connections
also have cost Carlyle. It has developed a reputation as the CIA of the
business world -- omnipresent, powerful, a little sinister. Media
outlets from the Village Voice to BusinessWeek
have depicted Carlyle as manipulating the levers of government from
shadowy back rooms. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) even
suggested that Carlyle's and Bush's ties to the Middle East made them
somehow complicitous in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It didn't
help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news
interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here
attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden. Former president Bush, a
fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day.
Bush['s] primary function is to give speeches for Carlyle that attract
wealthy foreigners in places where the former president is especially
revered, such as Asia. The company has rewarded its faithful with a 36
percent average annual rate of return.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. To understand the amazingly powerful role of this low-profile, yet extremely wealthy and influential group, click here to view free a 48-minute documentary shown on Dutch national TV which clearly depicts the depths of corruption and deceit at the highest
levels of government. You will be thankful that you watched this highly
educational film.

9/11 conspiracy theorists multiply
2006-09-08, MSNBC/Washington Post
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14723997

A recent Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll of 1,010 Americans found that 36 percent suspect the U.S. government promoted the attacks or intentionally sat on its hands.
Sixteen percent believe explosives brought down the towers. A Zogby International poll
of New York City residents two years ago found 49.3 percent believed
the government "consciously failed to act." The loose agglomeration
known as the "9/11 Truth Movement" has stopped looking for truth from
the government. The academic wing
is led by [Prof. David Ray] Griffin, who founded the Center for a
Postmodern World at Claremont University; James Fetzer, a tenured
philosopher at the University of Minnesota; and Daniel Orr, the retired
chairman of the economics department at the University of Illinois. The movement's de facto minister of engineering is Steven Jones,
a tenured physics professor at Brigham Young University,
who's...concluded that the collapse of the twin towers is best explained
as controlled demolition. Catherine Austin Fitts served as assistant secretary of housing in the first President Bush's administration. [Robert] Bowman
was chief of advanced space programs under presidents Ford and Carter.
Fitts and Bowman agree that the "most unbelievable conspiracy" theory is
the one retailed by the government. It was a year before David Ray Griffin,
an eminent liberal theologian and philosopher, began his stroll down
the path of disbelief. He wondered why...military jets failed to
intercept even one airliner. He read the 9/11 Commission report with a
swell of anger. Contradictions were ignored and no military or civilian
official was reprimanded. Griffin's book, "The New Pearl Harbor"...never reviewed in a major U.S. newspaper, sold more than 100,000 copies and became a movement founding stone.

Note: If the above link fails, click here.

When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing
1999-02-01, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/dotmil/arkin020199.htm

"Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government." So begins a statement being
delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner. At least the voice sounds amazingly
like him. But it is not Steiner. It is the result of voice "morphing"
technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New
Mexico. Psychological operations ... PSYOPS, as the military calls it,
seek to exploit human vulnerabilities in enemy governments, militaries
and populations to pursue national and battlefield objectives. Covert
operators kicked around the idea of creating a computer-faked videotape
of Saddam Hussein crying or showing other such manly weaknesses, or in
some sexually compromising situation. The nascent plan was for the tapes
to be flooded into Iraq and the Arab world. The tape war never
proceeded...but the "strategic" PSYOPS scheming didn't die. What
if the U.S. projected a holographic image of Allah floating over
Baghdad urging the Iraqi people and Army to rise up against Saddam?
According to a military physicist given the task of looking into the
hologram idea, the feasibility had been established of projecting large,
three-dimensional objects that appeared to float in the air. A
super secret program was established in 1994 to pursue the very
technology for PSYOPS application. The "Holographic Projector" is
described in a classified Air Force document as a system to "project
information power from space ... for special operations deception
missions."

Note: If the above link fails, click here. If you want to understand some of the many hidden capabilities of the U.S. military, this article is a must read. For more on the use of these
"nonlethal" weapons, click here.

Leaked U.S. video shows deaths of Reuters' Iraqi staffers
2010-04-05, Washington Post/Reuters
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/05/AR2...

Classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff, was
released on [April 5] by a group that promotes leaking to fight
government and corporate corruption. The group, WikiLeaks, told a
news conference in Washington that it acquired encrypted video of the
July 12, 2007, attack from military whistleblowers and had been able to
view and investigate it after breaking the encryption code. A
U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed
that the video and audio were authentic. David Schlesinger, Reuters'
editor-in-chief, said the video released by WikiLeaks showed the deaths
of [Namir] Noor-Eldeen and [Saeed] Chmagh were "tragic and emblematic of
the extreme dangers that exist in covering war zones." "The video
released today via WikiLeaks is graphic evidence of the dangers involved
in war journalism and the tragedies that can result," he said. Reuters
has pressed the U.S. military to conduct a full and objective
investigation into the killing of the two staff. WikiLeaks posted the
video at http://www.collateralmurder.com.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. Should the above video disappear, click here to view it on one of our websites. The only reason this event made news is because the two cameramen killed were Reuters reporters. US forces
then fired on an unarmed van with children in it, which was attempting
to bring the dead and wounded out of the combat zone. How many innocent
civilians are killed like this and never make the news? Spread this
important video and help others to wake up and work together to stop the
creulty of some of the US forces. The Pentagon is working hard to shut
down Wikileaks, the organization which secured this powerful video.

Write More About Skull And Bones
2004-10-27, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/10/27/notes102704...

I get this a lot: Hey Mark ... why don't you quit toeing the typical blasé journalism line ... and instead write about the real truths? Like
for example how both Kerry and Bush are members of mega-yuppie Yale
secret society/boys' club Skull & Bones. And why, furthermore, don't you talk about the real truths of 9/11? Haven't you seen that amazing [9/11] video on that Web site? And what about Building 7?
Why did that 47-story tower adjacent to the WTC collapse when it had no
fire and no plane crash? Why isn't the media reporting any of this?
Does this make you laugh? Scoff? It is, after all, incredibly easy to
dismiss conspiracy theories. But you know what? It's not that easy.
These people ... have a point. They are indeed onto something quite
large and ominous and it very much has to do with the media toeing the
line of "safe" information. There is indeed ample evidence that the
U.S. government, long before 9/11, had already discussed the quite
plausible possibilities and strategic benefits of unleashing a "Pearl Harbor"-type event on America. There are plenty of strangely unanswered questions about 9/11, about the stunning inaction of NORAD
and Bush's stupefying nonreaction upon hearing of the attack, not to
mention his administration's incredible attempts to halt any
independent 9/11 investigations. Of course, no one in any major
media will touch this stuff. It is professional suicide to dare
suggest an alternate truth to the one supplied by the Pentagon and
regurgitated by the media. And the truth is, we don't really want
such unstable questions answered. We simply cannot tolerate to have
our world, our leaders, our foundations so questioned. We prefer stasis
to growth, security to true knowledge.

The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket
2004-10-19, Los Angeles Times
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/oct/19/opinion/oe-scheer19

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. "It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being
suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me.
[The] release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month
investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been
"stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by
Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the
Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief. The
official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than
the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11
commission and Congress. "The report found very senior-level officials
responsible." By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has
for holding back such a report is national security. None of this should
surprise us given the Bush administration's great determination since
9/11 to resist any serious investigation. The president fought against
the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example, agreeing only
after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement
led by the families of those slain. And then Bush refused to testify to
the commission under oath. Instead he deigned only to chat with the
commission members, with Vice President Dick Cheney present, in a White
House meeting in which commission members were not allowed to take
notes.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. For more reliable, verifiable information on the 9/11 cover-up, click here.

Transcript: Rice's Testimony on 9/11 (for 9/11 Commissioner Lehman)
2004-04-08, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61252-2004Apr8_4.html

LEHMAN. Were you told that there were numerous young Arab males in flight training? RICE. I was not. LEHMAN. Were you told that the red team in
F.A.A. for 10 years had reported ... that the U.S. airport security
system never got higher than 20 percent effective. RICE. To the best of
my recollection I was not told that. LEHMAN. Were you aware that I.N.S.
had quietly internally halved its internal security enforcement budget?
RICE. I was not made aware of that. LEHMAN. Were you aware that it was
the U.S. government established policy not to question or oppose the
sanctuary policies [which] prohibited the local police from cooperating
at all with federal immigration authorities? RICE. I do not believe I
was aware of that. LEHMAN. Were you aware of a program that was well
established that allowed Saudi citizens to get visas without interviews?
RICE. I learned of that after 9/11. LEHMAN. Were you aware of the
extensive activities [of] the Saudi government in supporting over 300
radical teaching schools and mosques around the country, including right
here in the United States? Were you aware at the time of the
fact that Saudi Arabia ... had in their custody the C.F.O. [Chief
Financial Officer] and the closest confidante of Al Qaeda, of Osama bin
Laden, and that they refused direct access to the United States?
RICE. I don't remember anything of that kind. LEHMAN. Were you aware
that they would not cooperate and give us access to the perpetrators of
the Cobar Towers attack? RICE. I was very involved in issues concerning
Cobar Towers. LEHMAN. Were you aware that it was the policy of the
Justice Department ... to fine airlines if they have more than two young
Arab males in secondary questioning? RICE. No.

Note: Don't miss the full revealing transcript at the link above. Most of the quotes above are towards the bottom of the webpage. Why didn't we hear
lots more about these astounding facts put forward by one of the 9/11
commissioners, yet hardly mentioned in the final report? For lots more, click here.

[9/11] Hijack 'suspects' alive and well
2001-09-23, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1559151.stm

Another of the men named by the FBI as a hijacker in the suicide attacks on Washington and New York has turned up alive and well. The identities of
four of the 19 suspects accused of having carried out the attacks are
now in doubt. Saudi Arabian pilot Waleed Al Shehri was one of five men
that the FBI said had deliberately crashed American Airlines flight 11
into the World Trade Centre on 11 September. His photograph was
released, and has since appeared in newspapers and on television around
the world. He told journalists there that he had nothing to do with the
attacks. He has contacted both the Saudi and American authorities. He
acknowledges that he attended flight training school at Daytona Beach
in the United States, and is indeed the same Waleed Al Shehri to whom
the FBI has been referring. But, he says, he left the United States in
September last year [and] became a pilot with Saudi Arabian
airlines. Abdulaziz Al Omari, another of the Flight 11 hijack suspects
... says he is an engineer with Saudi Telecoms, and that he lost his
passport while studying in Denver. Meanwhile ... a London-based Arabic
daily says it has interviewed Saeed Alghamdi. He was listed by the FBI
as a hijacker in the United flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. And
there are suggestions that another suspect, Khalid Al Midhar, may also
be alive. FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged on Thursday that the
identity of several of the suicide hijackers is in doubt.

Note: Yet these four are all later listed in the 9/11 Commission report as the hijackers. Click here and scroll down a little over half way to see their photos in the official report. For more on this, click here. For an abundance of reliable information suggesting a major 9/11 cover-up, click here.

Obama gives order to kill American imam
2010-04-08, The Times (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article...

The Obama Administration has taken the unprecedented step of authorising the killing of a US citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. The
decision is extraordinary not only because Mr al-Awlaki is believed to
be the first American whose killing has been approved by a US President,
but also because the Obama Administration chose to make the move
public. The Los Angeles Times reported in January that
Mr al-Awlaki’s name had been placed on a top-secret list of targeted
killings. In the past 24 hours, however, a handful of intelligence and
counter-terrorism officials have briefed Reuters and The New York Times
on the decision. The authorisation ... and the decision to make it
public is a high-risk strategy. Tina Foster, of the US-based International Justice Network,
told The Times: “It is shocking that our Government would go to these
extremes, even depriving someone of their life without a legal process.”
The policy of targeted killings is controversial. President Ford issued
an order in 1976 banning political assassinations. Yet Congress
approved the use of force against al-Qaeda after the September 11
attacks.

Note: Obama is the first president to publicly order the assassination an American citizen. Neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney asserted such a
power on the part of the president.

David Kelly death evidence 'to be kept secret for 70 years'
2010-01-25, Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7066383/David-Kelly-death-ev...

A highly unusual ruling by Lord Hutton, who chaired the inquiry into Dr Kelly's death, means medical records including the post-mortem report
will remain classified until after all those with a direct interest in
the case are dead. And a 30-year secrecy order has been placed on
written records provided to Lord Hutton's inquiry which were not
produced in evidence. Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who has
conducted his own investigations into Dr Kelly's death, described the
order as "astonishing". Dr Kelly's body was found in woods close
to his Oxfordshire home in 2003, shortly after it was revealed that he
was the source of a BBC report casting doubt on the Government's claim
that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction capable of being fired within
45 minutes. An inquest was suspended by then Lord Chancellor
Lord Falconer, who ruled that Lord Hutton's inquiry could take its
place. But ... the inquiry focused more on the question of how the BBC
report came to be broadcast than on the medical explanation for Dr
Kelly's death. Lord Hutton's report in 2004 concluded that Dr Kelly
killed himself by cutting an artery in his wrist. But the finding has
been challenged by doctors who claim that the weapons inspector's stated
injuries were not serious enough.

Note: For a cache of illuminating reports on government secrecy, click here.

Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List
2010-01-14, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/nyregion/14watchlist.html

The Transportation Security Administration ... has on its web site a “mythbuster” that tries to reassure the public. Myth: The No-Fly list
includes an 8-year-old boy. Buster: No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch
list. “Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her
8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has
seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a
suspicious person. “It’s not a myth.” Hicks’s mother initially sensed
trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their
flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that
his name “was on the list,” she recalled. The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2.
He cried. After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every
airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly shook
up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more
aggressively on the way home. “Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,”
Mrs. Hicks recounted. It is true that Mikey is not on the federal
government’s “no-fly” list, which includes about 2,500 people, less than
10 percent of them from the United States. But his name appears to be
among some 13,500 on the larger “selectee” list, which sets off a high
level of security screening.

Note: For many reports from major media sources on the extreme loss of liberties brought about by the highly touted "war on terrorism," click here.