Last October you saw Joe Trento on 60 Minutes telling viewers all about the Transportation Safety Authority’s bloated “No-Fly List,” a topic covered in his and Susan Trento’s book Unsafe at Any Altitude. This is a list of 44,000 people designated as “security threats” who cannot board U.S. airplanes. Many of them – such as the 9-11 hijackers – are dead and don’t present much of a threat to anyone. Others are unfortunate enough to share a common name with a real or suspected terrorist. Still others will never know why their names showed up on this list. After the 60 Minutes broadcast it seemed that lots of people were talking about the No-Fly List.
The No-Fly List was a good premise for an episode of Boston Legal, the popular television show, in January 2007. A prominent lawyer, portrayed by William Shatner on the show, was unable to board a flight because his name was on the No Fly List. He sued, and testifying on his behalf were a dozen other people with the same name as his, all with the same problem: they couldn’t get on a plane in the U.S. since 9/11 because of their “shared” name.
In February the book’s authors, Joe and Susan Trento, were invited to the annual meeting of the National Air Disaster Alliance Foundation, an organization of survivors of air disasters. The Trentos spoke on a panel about terrorism at the conference and were honored with a “Triumph Award,” given by NADAF to those citizens who do the most to improve air safety and security.
When the Washington Post ran a front-page story on Sunday, March 25 about the mushrooming size of the U.S. terrorist database, journalist Karen DeYoung tweaked the Terrorist Screening Center in her last paragraph by reminding readers that the 60 Minutes program about the No-Fly List had made the TSC, the TSA and other Homeland Security agencies look bad.
