Home > Why’s a Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel on the "No-Fly" List?

Why’s a Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel on the "No-Fly" List?

by Open-Publishing - Sunday 26 February 2006
3 comments

Democracy Attack-Terrorism USA

The federal officials who are busy assuring Americans that they’ve got their act together when it comes to managing port security are not inspiring much confidence with their approach to airline security.

When Dr. Robert Johnson, a heart surgeon who did his active duty with the U.S. Army Reserve before being honorably discharged with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, arrived at the Syracuse airport near his home in upstate New York last month for a flight to Florida, he was told he could not travel.

Why? Johnson was told that his name had been added to the federal "no-fly" list as a possible terror suspect.

Johnson, who served in the military during the time of the first Gulf War and then came home to serve as northern New York’s first board-certified thoracic surgeon and an active member of the community in his hometown of Sackets Harbor, is not a terror suspect. But he is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, who mounted a scrappy campaign for Congress as the Democratic challenger to Republican Representative John McHugh in 2004 and who plans to challenge McHugh again in upstate New York’s sprawling 23rd District.

Johnson, who eventually made it onto the flight to Florida, is angry. And, like a growing number of war critics whose names have ended up on "no-fly" lists - some of them prominent, many of them merely concerned citizens - he wants some answers.

"Why would a former lieutenant colonel who swore an oath to defend and protect our country pose a threat of terrorism?" he asked, in an interview with the Plattsburgh Press-Republican newspaper.

So far, he’s not getting satisfactory responses to his questions.

No one at the Syracuse airport would tell him why he was on the list.

Nor has the federal Transportation Security Administration, which compiles the "no-fly" files, been forthcoming - except to say that names are added to the watch lists on the "recommendations and information received from federal agencies, including intelligence and law-enforcement agencies."

The story’s gotten a good deal of media attention in upstate New York, and Johnson is speculating with reporters about whether his name ended up on the list because he ran against McHugh as a veteran who boldly declared that: "I know the ravages of war and I know the sacrifices that have to be made when a war is in our national interest. This war is not in our national interest."

McHugh’s office denies any wrongdoing by the Republican congressman, a senior member of the powerful House Armed Services Committee who brags about working closely with the Pentagon and intelligence agencies.

Johnson’s not backing off his call for an explanation.

The physician-candidate told the Plattsburgh paper that the secrecy surrounding his name’s addition to the "no-fly" list, and the prospect that it might be there because of his anti-war views, is outrageous.

"This is like McCarthyism in the 1950s," says Johnson.

COMMENTS

Posting a comment requires registration. Click here to register.

"who mounted a scrappy campaign for Congress"

That’s "Nation Code" for...."lost"...right?

Posted by MASK 02/24/2006 @ 2:37pm | ignore this person

Yes, he lost...

Really digested the salient points of this article, didn’t you?

Posted by MIKERM 02/24/2006 @ 2:42pm | ignore this person

actually, MIKERM....this stuff been around for THREE years now.

Remember, TED KENNEDY was put on a "no fly" list once.

This is just a "filler" story by Mr Nichols....pops up whenever there’s a "lull" in one of the "***-gates". You won’t hear anymore about it for four or five weeks, when Johnson starts campaigning against McHugh....IF he polls within 10% that is!

Posted by MASK 02/24/2006 @ 2:51pm | ignore this person

Yeah Mask.........he must belong on the no fly list because he lost his congressional race. Furthermore, we should start domestically spying on him because he must be a terrorist if he doesnt support the war. Then we should cut his military benefits because he wasnt smart enough to get five deferrments. Maybe we could place him in military custody, and when he starts to complain because he hasnt been charged with a crime, we can torture him until he tells us what we want to hear.

Posted by JPOLSTON 02/24/2006 @ 2:55pm | ignore this person

so MASK, why was he on the list? maybe he is evil...

Posted by IBBLEBLIBBLE 02/24/2006 @ 2:56pm | ignore this person

My guess is that the folks managing the no-fly lists are probably political appointees, more of these recent-college-grad types, drafted directly from collegiate young Republican organizations with no qualifications except a diehard loyalty to the GOP. (Remember our friend from NASA, and the many good people initally involved in the reconstruction effort in Iraq?)

They probably get bored and think "who can we hassle today?" If they choose generic names, like Edward Kennedy or Robert Johnson, it’s easy enough to tell the poor guy who’s accused of being a terrorist that it was a case of mistaken identity, they were looking for someone else with the same name.

Whoops.

Posted by BREASONABLE 02/24/2006 @ 3:14pm | ignore this person

WAIT A MINUTE, I WAS JUST GETTING STARTED ON THE "BUM RAP" DEAL! WHAT HAS THIS GOT TO DO WITH SLAPPING CHEEKS!

Posted by RIO BRAVO 02/24/2006 @ 3:17pm | ignore this person

I thought TED KENNEDY was just on the NO DRIVE YOUNG WOMEN list!

Posted by RIO BRAVO 02/24/2006 @ 3:21pm | ignore this person

The Professional trolls like Mask are just useless. This is your failed Neo-Con anti=terror program- Its just designed to screw over anyone and everyone who doesn’t kiss Dubya’s ass on all things. Its a Soviet Union type scam that doesnt do anything to prevent terror.

Posted by FADE 02/24/2006 @ 3:26pm | ignore this person

Read all of the comments and post a reply.

Forum posts

  • Remember last year when Bush held hands with Crown Prince Abdullah? Maybe the prince TRADED BODIES with Dubya. You can’t prove it didn’t happen.

  • George Bush will have handed America its biggest humiliation IN ITS HISTORY.

    Not to mention enshrining War of Choice, Torture, Secret Rendition, Warrantless Spying and Concentration Camps as part of the American Pageant.

    There’s something terrible in the realization that I will be in my grave before America redeems its good name in the rest of the world.

  • It’s like the quack doctor, explaining a patient’s deteriorating condition by claiming that it’s just a sign his medicine is really working well and that it only needs more time.
    Politicians, Lawyers, CEO/CFO/CIO’s, Religious Extremists, and News Reporters should all be sent to a marooned desert island so they can STFU and let the rest of the world live in peace and quiet. The Homeland Security Department said it was legally impossible under the committee’s rules to reconsider its approval without evidence that DP World gave false information or withheld vital details from U.S. officials. The 30-day window for the committee to voice objections has ended, the department said.They told us the deal was done a week ago. That is why this was classified, so as to get it through without the American public knowing, because they knew there would be backlash from this.

    Can someone please find a way to send all the neocons back through the looking glass into their own world where they belong? I’ve tried to figure out what planet or what dimension these benighted and misbegotten people must come from — and I’ve finally arrived at the inescapable conclusion that they must have come through the mirrors somehow. That’s the only place in which everything is exactly the reverse of what it should be in reality…

    Ever since Bush first took office, I feel as though I’ve been living in one long, interminable, and seriously creepy episode of “The Twilight Zone” or “Tales From The Darkside”.

    Lou Dobbs just read an email that said You invade a country that had nothing to do with 9-11 and sell our ports to another that did, …. the white house is losing its teflon and right quick….

    no trolls? whatzup - getting harder to defend the indefensible? Or have not got your talking points yet from
    ol’ Karl huh?

    Aren’t these desperate insurgants the same “deadenders” that we were told 3 years ago that we didn’t have to worry about? Didn’t we have purple fingers at the State of the Union address in 2005 that proved we were winning? When Baghdad is flattened and the mullahs from Iran are running the country, will that be seen as a sign that Bush’s “Strategy for Victory” is proceeding brilliantly? Why can’t we all go to Willy Wonka’s factory?

    Cnn is so unworried about any fantasy that it has even a shred of integrity left, that they actually put this mouth breather on?

    i’ll go a step further: the attack on the shia shrine is definitive evidence that we have won the war, and as a result, we have passed germany in the medal count of the winter olympics.
    Probably the most incompetent bunch of clowns
    to ever run this country.
    The good news, the insurgency is in it’s last throes. The bad news is the civil war is in it’s first throes. The army War college had one but as usual Bush, Cheney and Rummy knew more than the professional military,
    the paper is called;

    Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post Confilct Scenario

    Written in February 2003

    and the paper looks at the historical perspective and acurately predicts much of what happened in Iraq,

    but just like the hurricane exercise labeled PAM that predicted the problems in New Orleans they ignored both examples prepared by people who’s job is to know, and the americans and iraqi civilians paid the price and continue to do so

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/... http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/... The golden dome of BushCo is bursting too. Should be an interesting week ahead.

    It doesn’t matter what actually happens, Republicans are like those Sheep in Animal Farm, no matter what you say they just bleet louder.
    Remember the “Arab Spring” that was supposed to come from the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq? Well, let’s see: Hamas is officially in charge of Palestine, Iraq is having a civil war (that is what you call it when one half of the country is fighting the other half), Afghanistan is run by drug cartels (aka militias) and Iran is -not actually breaking any law –but uncowed by the violent rhetoric of a country that just lost two wars and failed to catch the guy that they say blew up two or three of their buildings.
    No Spring here. More like a Looooooong hot summer. BUT
    GE & lockheed marting will sell plenty of weapons, the US oil princes can gouge Americans as much as they want and half of the country is wetting their pants scared and going fundamentalist on us. Another Republican success! PPU TMOUTT = poor people unite theres more of us than them I don’t know why, but this one, instead of enraging me, has filled me with a deep sadness. Is it that I sense that the worst is yet to come ? Gawd, I really hope not. Perhaps to Bushco, it is considered a positive when they start turning on each other, and our soldiers are forgotten for a moment. Horrific that they would put a “smiley” face on this. But so very predictable, nonetheless. And now Bush wants 72 million,in an “emergency supplemental”, to promote freedom and democracy in Iran. What color is the sky in his world ?!?

    do the math.

    1984 = 2006.
    1970, Vietnam: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
    2006, Iraq: “We had to plunge Iraq into civil war in order to save it.”

    speaking of this comment, read the executive orders that have been signed, if you do you will see.Before Bush ever invaded Iraq he signed an executive order which claimed that anything which had belonged to Saddam was claimed as property of the United States Treasury. In a dictatorship, everything belongs to the dictator. In other words, Bush claimed the oil in Iraq as part of the US Treasury. In 2003. The spin is that it is the property of the Iraqi people, and, just as soon as Iraq is ready (by Bush’s standards) we’ll be giving those oil fields right back to the Iraqis. Just as soon as they are ready. Any minute now. As soon as those last death throes of the insurgency die down. Pretty soon. Almost any day.

    Unless, of course, they never are ready.

    When the oil wells run dry, Iraq will belong to the Iraqis again, ready or not.
    DIVIDE ET IMPERA!…Ave George!………2000 years later…same old sh..!….oh well…. This whole mess reminds me of a Dr. Demento song, “Mediocre Mamma”. This is the chorus: “You’re my mediocre mamma, if you’re good, then I can’t tell, you don’t do nothin’ special, and you don’t do it well.” Kinda captures the essence of the whole miserable situation.
    of course they think it helps bush, it does, a civil war would ensure total war. follow the money, who planned the attack? Pentagon-Controlled Iraqi National Guard Implicated in Samarra Mosque Bombing

    http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=244 I appreciate your post. It is well-written and supported by researchable data.

    I did a search on Gen. Lynch and found the “official web-site of the multi-national force - Iraq”

    http://www.mnf-iraq.com/Daily/Feb/0...

    Sadly, much of the news in Iraq never gets out, good or bad. And it is difficult to judge the accuracy of what does make it into the media, as each side slants the news to support its cause.

    One bit of data on official website I find disturbing:

    In other news, approximately 95 security detainees were released from theater internment facilities in Iraq over the last several days. The Combined Review and Release Board reviewed their cases and recommended release.

    The Iraqi-led CRRB was established in August 2004 and consists of members from the Ministries of Human Rights, Justice and Interior, as well as officers from the Coalition.

    To date, the board has reviewed the cases of more than 28,500 detainees, recommending more than 14,900 individuals for release.

    About half the detainees have been recommended for release. What we don’t know, and likely will never know, is how many of those released detainees were treated inhumanely? How many of those trainees have decided to become our enemies because of their incarceration? How do their families and friends feel?

    How would you feel if it happened to you?

    While I believe we all hope and pray things get better, events just do not seem to be heading in that direction.

    When will we pass the worst of this nightmare and begin to heal?

    to quote Dylan, “How many deaths will it take ’till we know, too many people have died?”

    OK. A quick scan of the comments did not show me one link to show CNN how you feel.
    Do you want us to just b*tch amongst ourselves, or actually inundate CNN with emails such as “I’m mad as Hell, and I won’t take it, or Wolf, anymore!”
    Fine. Talk all you want. But, dammit, email CNN and tell them enough is enough.
    We all complain that our elected officials aren’t vocal enough.
    Get vocal yourselves.
    I have already written a polite but quite to the point letter.
    Sorry for the tone, but it took me all of 2 minutes to get the email to CNN’s ear.
    Email, everyday, til they get the point. That’s the only way we’re going to get ANYWHERE.
    We need to voice ourselves or else we’re sunk.

    http://www.cnn.com/feedback/
    http://www.cnn.com/feedback/