Pilot’s Concern Keeps Federal Agent Off Flight

An Arab American Secret Service agent en route to protect President Bush in Texas was barred from a commercial flight by an American Airlines pilot who questioned his identity, officials said Thursday.

The armed agent, a seven-year veteran, was asked to leave the Christmas Day flight from Baltimore to Dallas after the pilot found a discrepancy in the paperwork required for traveling with a weapon, an American Airlines spokesman said.

The plane was delayed for about an hour before the pilot decided that the validity of the agent’s credentials could not be determined to his satisfaction. The flight left without the man on board.

The case has raised questions about how someone with the security clearance to guard the president could be deemed too great a risk for a commercial airline flight. Critics also have questioned why it took the airline so long to decide that the agent was who he said he was, even after he reportedly offered to contact his supervisors to assuage the pilot’s concerns.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Thursday he did not know whether Bush had been told about the incident.

“The Secret Service is looking into the matter and ascertaining all the facts,” McClellan said. “There’s nothing to comment on without knowing all the facts.”

American Airlines said the man’s ethnicity played no role in the pilot’s decision.

Others of Arab Descent Have Been Removed

The agent, however, contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations to express concern that he had been treated differently because of his ethnicity.

“He felt that something inappropriate had happened,” said Jason Erb, the council’s director of governmental relations. The agent was not even allowed to return to the plane to retrieve his jacket, Erb said.

In several recent cases, individuals of Arab descent have been thrown off flights, even after clearing heightened security measures, because pilots refused to take off.

And the denial of passage to the Secret Service agent--who Erb said had an Arab appearance and name--came just days after another man boarded an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami wearing shoes that contained explosives powerful enough to have caused a disaster. That man, a British-born convert to Islam named Richard C. Reid, was thwarted by an alert flight attendant and passengers.

The Department of Transportation has warned airlines that they cannot use race or religion to make security determinations, although pilots are given the discretion to deny boarding to any passenger who they believe compromises the safety of the flight.

John Relman, a Washington lawyer whose firm is handling several cases of alleged discrimination by airlines against Arabs and Arab Americans, called the Secret Service agent’s case “flabbergasting.”

“It just crystallizes everything that we’ve been saying and we’ve been worried about in terms of profiling,” said Relman, who in 1994 represented African American Secret Service agents in a landmark discrimination suit against Denny’s restaurants. “Once again, the Secret Service has been the teaching example about discrimination for the rest of America.”

The agent, whose name was not released, had been cleared on an earlier flight Tuesday, but it was canceled because of mechanical problems while it was on the tarmac waiting for departure. The airline then rebooked passengers, including the agent, on other flights. Following standard procedure, the agent had to fill out a second set of papers before boarding the flight he was later asked to leave.

“When he boarded the second flight, upon review the captain noticed an inconsistency in the paperwork from the original flight,” said American Airlines spokesman Todd Burke. “Based on the inconsistency, he was denied passage.”

Burke declined to elaborate on the discrepancy, saying that since it was a security document he was not at liberty to discuss it.

“Really, what this is about is American Airlines confirming that an armed individual is who he says he is,” said Burke, who said that the airline backed its pilot’s decision while apologizing for the agent’s inconvenience.

“But in this time of tightened security, we feel that absolutely nobody is above approved security procedures,” he said.

Critics Call Incident Case of Profiling

Burke said that for armed officials, the pilot’s final approval is part of the normal security regimen. But antidiscrimination advocates called the paperwork discrepancy a “smoke screen” for what was essentially profiling.

“It’s the same as when the police pull over an African American who isn’t breaking the law and then say it was because the license plate wasn’t clear,” Erb said.

The agent flew Wednesday on American to join the detail protecting Bush during the president’s visit to his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

The Secret Service said Thursday that it was investigating.

“Our agent was prohibited from taking the flight. He did take a later flight,” said Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin. “I can only say we are aware of what happened and are looking into it.”

Law enforcement officials said there have been other cases--before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks--where pilots have been uncomfortable with having an armed federal agent on board. In those instances, the pilot has been replaced or the armed individual has been rebooked on another flight, the officials said.

Airline officials said ground personnel, flight attendants and pilots are accustomed to dealing with law enforcement officials required to carry weapons during travel. Normally, the armed officials quietly inform the counter agent of their identity and are escorted past security checkpoints.

The agent had followed these procedures, Erb said.

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Times staff writer James Gerstenzang in Crawford, Texas, contributed to this report.