9/11 - Obama's Inconvenient Rememberance

Like most of my fellow countrymen, I remember exactly what I was doing on 9/11 just as my mother and father remembered what they were doing on December 7, 1941.

It was evening in Manila and I had just emailed a completed assignment to a client in New York City when my fiancée called from the other room to say that something was going on in New York. I told her I’d be there in a minute and sent an email off to the client asking if they’d received the report with no problems.

A couple of minutes later the client emailed me back and said that the attachment had made it just fine but that they were closing the office and going home immediately because something had happened in the lower end of Manhattan. She didn’t answer my follow-up email so I turned on the television to watch CNN International.

I remember the scene that greeted me when the TV came fully on. A reporter was on a rooftop quite some distance from the Towers and I could see black smoke pouring from one Tower. He was talking about a plane hitting the tower and my mind flashed back to a story I’d read in a history book about a B-25 crashing into the Empire State Building decades before.

As I watched, something swept into the picture moving from right to left on the screen. It was far away so I couldn’t make out what it was on my television but it was small and moving fast like a swallow behind the talking reporter. Then it hit the second Tower and there was a tremendous explosion that I could only see but couldn’t hear. Still, I felt the equivalent of a savage punch to my body. One plane could be an accident. Two was an attack.

I had left the government 5 years before to try my hand in the private sector in the Far East. There were good times and bad but I was happy and close to my children who were living in Thailand with their mother and step-father. While I had been a DEA Special Agent I had come into contact with narco-terrorism on a regular basis but I knew this was something else. I also knew that I was 52 years old and no longer part of the government that would answer this attack. I felt an overwhelming desire to get into the game but knew that, at my age there was little chance that I could do anything more than cheer the troops from the sidelines. I don’t think I ever felt more inutile in my entire life. So I prayed.

Some weeks later I got an email from a group called the “Goodfellows.” It was and is a loose group of former DEA Special Agents and employees who kept each other abreast of current developments. The email said that the Government was looking for older Special Agents who had left the government but hadn’t retired as they were needed in the build-up of a new organization called the Department of Homeland Security. I again prayed for guidance and threw my name into the hat that same evening. In June of 2002 I returned to government service as a Federal Air Marshal. I was older and grayer than the others but also had a lot of experience that I could pass along. Nevertheless, I was impressed with the overall caliber of the men and women that I was working with. More importantly to me, I was in a position to contribute to America’s defense—retribution if you will—against Islamic Terrorists who were sworn to destroy the United States based on a perverted, evil, interpretation of Islam. Their goal was, and remains, the destruction of the American way of life. And not because we attacked them, but because we weren’t “believers.” That we allowed others to worship freely in our nation, wasn’t enough. If we were to be spared, we would have to subjugate ourselves completely and that, as the Sergeant once said, “Just ain’t gonna happen!”

I felt I was blessed to be again serving my country despite my age. Providing security for the nation’s air carriers was not as fulfilling as being back in the Infantry, but it was making a solid contribution to the national defense. And, frankly, I grew to be very proud of the FAMS organization. Providing that security was something we took seriously for we knew that on every flight we were assigned it was our personal responsibility to ensure that the flight arrived safely and that 9/11 never happened again. We traveled incognito; but when necessary to assist the crew and ensure the safety of the passengers, we would break our undercover role and take normal law enforcement action. One such incident happened on a coast-to-coast flight to San Francisco. A flight attendant saw a passenger in the rear of the plane with a knife, which is a felony under federal statute. We broke cover, took control of the knife and the passenger and I stood in the aisle blocking the path to the flight deck for the remainder of the flight.

As much as I remember the details of 9/11/01—it is etched permanently in my memory—I also remember the the subsequent confrontation with an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) in San Francisco after that arrest in 2003. When we deplaned we were met by a host of security personnel including a young FBI Special Agent (SA). The FBI SA quickly advised that she had already talked to the on-duty Assistant U.S. Attorney and they had determined that the case, which involved a foreign national with a knife on board our aircraft, did not meet the standards for prosecution in San Francisco. A younger person with less experience in federal law enforcement might have shrugged, but I was immediately incensed. This case belonged to my partner and me and the FBI had no right or authority to make representations to an AUSA before we presented the case. It was after that presentation that they gained jurisdiction. Not only that, it was just plain rude and unprofessional for an uninvolved SA to make representations on a case without a correct appreciation of the facts of the case.

The FBI SA went on to advise that she had “8 years experience with the San Francisco FBI Office’s Violent Crime Task Force” and that there was no way she would take the case. I gritted my teeth and instead of screaming said to her, “I made my first federal felony arrest in 1978. What were you doing that year?” She looked at me stunned and wide-eyed and repeated that she’d talked with the AUSA. I looked back and asked her for the AUSA’s number.

The San Francisco Police Department officers that were helping us escort the prisoner to the lock-up were extremely professional throughout this exchange and managed to stare straight ahead with only a hint of a smile. While my partner took care of lodging the prisoner in the lock-up, I got on the phone with the AUSA that had already declined the prosecution to the FBI. I explained the facts of the case—something that the FBI SA didn’t have—but still met with resistance as there was an obvious synergy between the FBI SA, who was after all a local Law Enforcement Officer, and the AUSA. I remember, however, one part of the call more distinctly than any other. I said to the AUSA, “You should remember 9/11!”

The AUSA shouted back, “I’ll have you know I was on a 9/11 flight!

“Really?” I rejoined.

“Well, just the day before.” she replied.

I shouted back, “Then you should remember what happened the day after your flight! I see the hole at Ground Zero almost every day!”

She hung up.

Five minutes later she called back, said that it was unfortunate that we were disconnected, and advised that she would accept the case for arraignment the next morning but that she would not commit to any further prosecution. Having won the battle for the arraignment and knowing that the FBI would gain their jurisdiction after that regardless, I said, “Thank you.”

It was clear to me then, and even clearer now, that the “Left-Coast” liberals who were not confronted on a daily basis with Ground Zero except in the occasional newscast looked upon 9/11 as an unfortunate distraction from their daily, self-important lives. While I know that the young FBI SA was not representative of the FBI as a whole or even of the FBI’s San Francisco Office, she was clearly susceptible, as was the AUSA, to the liberal mentality that permeates Speaker Pelosi’s district and, indeed, every other liberal leftist stronghold in America to include Chicago.

Thus I am not at all surprised about the cavalier attitude of our President as he tries to dilute what should be a solemn day of remembrance of those who died in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania as a result of series of evil attacks by evil men. He wants us to go out to plant trees, clean the environment and “perform community service” in support of his greening of America.

Excuse me, but “Community Service” is something to which people are sentenced by a court of law as penance for having done wrong. The foreign national with the knife didn’t even have to perform community service as the charges against him were eventually dismissed as he left the United States regardless that he had violated the law. America has done no wrong; but clearly our President does not believe that. He wants us to perform the penance of community service.

He doesn’t want us to remember that on 9/11 we were attacked by thugs who used their religion as an excuse and motivation for the slaughtering of thousands of innocent human beings.

He doesn’t want us to remember that it was the liberal, "progressive" Democrats with their Pollyanna world-view that opened us to that attack because they hadn’t responded to prior attacks except as “law enforcement” issues.

He doesn’t want us to remember that his spiritual mentor of 20 years, the Reverend Wright, announced the Sunday after the attack that 9/11 was America’s “…chickens come home to roost!”

He doesn't want us to remember that he has continually apologized for the United States since the day he became President.

He doesn’t want us to remember that he bowed to a foreign potentate.

He doesn’t want us to remember.

But I shall never forget.