I really don’t have a lot to say here myself except that it is becoming increasingly clear that the Bush administration obviously has no compunction about exercizing its power to punish its “enemies.”
It seems that James Moore, the award-winning journalist who authored the best-selling book “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” has found himself on the infamous “no-fly” list — a list that is free of oversight and immune from appeal.
Does the Bush administration really consider Moore a terrorist, or is it just that they want to inconvenience him for daring to take on George W. Bush and Karl Rove?
Here is his story in his own words, as posted at the Huffington Post:
I did. She took my Texas driver’s license and punched in the relevant information to her computer system.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “There seems to be a problem. You’ve been placed on the No Fly Watch List.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m afraid there isn’t much more that I can tell you,” she explained. “It’s just the list that’s maintained by TSA to check for people who might have terrorist connections.”
“You’re serious?”
“I’m afraid so, sir. Here’s an 800 number in Washington. You need to call them before I can clear you for the flight.”
Exasperated, I dialed the number from my cell, determined to clear up what I was sure was a clerical error. The woman who answered offered me no more information than the ticket agent.
“Ma’am, I’d like to know how I got on the No Fly Watch List.”
“I’m not really authorized to tell you that, sir,” she explained after taking down my social security and Texas driver’s license numbers.
“What can you tell me?”
“All I can tell you is that there is something in your background that in some way is similar to someone they are looking for.”
“Well, let me get this straight then,” I said. “Our government is looking for a guy who may have a mundane Anglo name, who pays tens of thousands of dollars every year in taxes, has never been arrested or even late on a credit card payment, is more uninteresting than a Tupperware party, and cries after the first two notes of the national anthem? We need to find this guy. He sounds dangerous to me.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I’ve already told you everything I can.”
“Oh, wait,” I said. “One last thing: this guy they are looking for? Did he write books critical of the Bush administration, too?”
I have been on the No Fly Watch List for a year. I will never be told the official reason. No one ever is. You cannot sue to get the information. Nothing I have done has moved me any closer to getting off the list. There were 35,000 Americans in that database last year. According to a European government that screens hundreds of thousands of American travelers every year, the list they have been given to work from has since grown to 80,000.
Let’s publicize this outrage and help James Moore escape this harrassment.