This is right out of a comedy like Harold and Kumar but... lol... it's real...Daniel Rubin: Arabic flash cards got him detained at airport
By Daniel Rubin
Inquirer Columnist
A federal agent sizing up Nick George might peg him as Most Likely To Be Recruited By The CIA. He's a physics major at a top college, he minors in Middle Eastern studies, speaks Arabic, has lived in Jordan and is adventurous enough to have backpacked through Sudan and Egypt.
At Philadelphia International Airport last August, his interest in the world got him handcuffed.
The Wyncote native was detained for five hours after Transportation Security Administration screeners grew suspicious about something in his pockets.
Arabic-language flash cards.
George, who was 21 at the time, and about to fly back for his senior year at Pomona College in Claremont, Ca., says he answered every question to the best of his abilities, and figured he'd be quickly sent on his way.
But what questions...
According to a federal suit filed Wednesday on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union, a TSA supervisor asked him, "How do you feel about 9/11?"
He said he hemmed and hawed a bit. "It's a complicated question," he told me by phone. "But I ended up saying, 'It was bad. I am against it.' "
He was asked if he knew who "did 9/11."
He answered, Osama bin Laden.
Then he was asked, "Do you know what language he spoke?"
George answered, Arabic."
The supervisor then held up his flash cards. "Do you see why these cards are suspicious?"
To George, they weren't suspicious at all. He was using them to translate Al Jazeera, whose coverage in Arabic he considers critical to understanding America's place in the world. The 200 cards included words for "terrorist" and "explosion," George said. His interest in the Middle East came not from 9/11 but from watching Lawrence of Arabia with his father, Paul George, a Philadelphia attorney and former public defender.
Nick George says he started taking classes in Middle Eastern history, politics and languages while at Pomona. He spent a semester in Amman. He has applied for a State Department program that encourages the study of Arabic and he has plans to take the Foreign Service exam after college.
He says he did the right thing when questioned.
"My mentality was, 'Do what they say, and pretty soon they'll see this is ridiculous and let you go," he said by phone. "That was my mentality until they put the handcuffs on me. Then it was surreal."
TSA called the Philadelphia Police, who marched him through the airport to a small office where he sat for more than an hour in cuffs, awaiting FBI agents.
cont...
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20100210_Daniel_Rubin__TSA_suspicious_of_an_interest_in_the_world.html
