Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. There’s no hope. I feel like I’ve fallen through the first circle of Dante’s hot place – you know, limbo.
Call me Osama bin Walker.
Like nearly a half-million of my closest friends, I am considered a potential threat to my nation, at least to the flying part of it. Hey, I’m no Cat Stevens; I can’t carry a tune in a bucket and I have no idea what a peace train is.
For the last few years I’ve been on the Terror Watch List, which basically means I can’t use the electronic ticketing kiosks at airports. What a pain.
While everyone else just whisks on through, I have to go up to the ticket counter and an agent has to get on the phone to somewhere – my guess is it’s former FEMA Director Michael Brown’s office – and get an approval for me to get a boarding pass. This has been known to take up to 45 minutes. (Lately, it’s been faster.)
Have you ever tried to get an answer to a question from the federal government? I have two: Why am I on the list and how do I get off?
As to why, who knows? Presidential Directive 6, signed by President Bush in September 2003, according to a senior NCTC official quoted in The Washington Post, calls upon agencies to supply data only about people who are “known or appropriately suspected to be … engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism.” Holy smokes! I’m clean, I swear it.
In fact, I’ve been cleared by the White House to be in the same room with two different presidents (not the current one), and I’ve even been inside the West Wing on official business. No problem there, but let me try to get on a plane to visit in-laws in Alabama and you’d think my middle name is Hussein. (It’s not).
There is a procedure for redress, where you can supposedly get your name taken off the list. I’ve tried. I went to the Department of Homeland Security website a month or so ago to try to do just that. Under something called Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, or TRIP – you gotta love it – I was to submit a copy of my driver’s license and all would be well. I sent the copy.
Well, that was an oops, of course. I got the following e-mail in response: “We have discovered a glitch in the system that issued you an erroneous message to submit only a Driver’s License. To process your request for redress in the absence of a U.S. passport, we will need two additional identity documents to help us distinguish you from other individuals with a similar name.” Then they go on to list things like a passport, birth certificate, driver’s license, etc. Sigh.
I guess I’ll give it a go, but I don’t have any faith that even that will work. A kindly ticket agent at Reagan International in Washington, D.C., as she waited for several minutes on the phone to get my clearance to fly, told me that she had friends on the list who had been trying for years to get off … to no avail.
In the meantime, if you see me at the airport ticket counter while the rest of my family is merrily on its way to security, you’ll know why I’m there. Wave as you go by.
Staff writer Tom Walker can be reached at 303-954-1624 or twalker @denverpost.com.
