It’s all a vicious game of ‘Let’s pretend’

By now most folks have likely heard about the case of Nigerian-American Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi, 24, also known as Seun Noibi.

On June 25, Virgin America Flight 415 from New York's JFK International Airport to Los Angeles was two hours into its journey when passengers in the upscale "Main Cabin Select" section complained that the man seated in 3E reeked of body odor, the Los Angeles Times reports.

A flight attendant asked the man for his boarding pass and was surprised to see it was from a different flight and in someone else's name. She alerted authorities; Noibi went back to sleep in his black leather airline seat. When the plane landed, authorities interviewed Noibi but chose not to arrest him, not seeing any need to make a fuss about the fact he'd obviously stolen hundreds of dollars worth of air travel. Instead, they allowed him to leave the airport ... and try the same trick again, five days later.

On June 29, Noibi was arrested trying to board a Delta flight out of Los Angeles. Once again, our smiling clown had managed to pass undetected through security with an expired boarding pass issued in someone else's name. Authorities found on his person at least 10 other boarding passes, none of which belonged to him.

Noibi was again able to move past multiple checkpoints -- at the security screening areas and at the gates -- with his expired boarding pass and an expired Michigan university identification, despite the fact college IDs are not sufficient for boarding, according to Transportation Security Administration guidelines.

At one point, it was reported, he got through simply by asserting "They told me to go through here." Law enforcement sources told the Times they suspect Noibi has used expired plane tickets to sneak on to flights in the past. On his website, Noibi describes himself as a "frequent traveler."

Noibi appears to be a smiling, cherub-faced young man. Presumably there was also some fear, in today's politically correct environment, of being accused of racism for getting tough with a black man with a discernible foreign accent -- though, in fact, young black and Arab men with foreign accents fit precisely the profile of would-be terrorists. Unlike, say, 95-year-old white leukemia patient Lena Reppert, who had to get up from her wheelchair to have her adult diaper searched in a humiliating hour-long ordeal at Northwest Florida Regional Airport on June 18.

I actually heard a lady call a national radio talk show, arguing the Noibi incident proves nothing because it was "just one slip-up," while the system has "worked successfully tens of thousands of times."

No it didn't, unless by "worked successfully" you mean that tens of thousands -- nay, millions -- of times the TSA offended the dignity of Americans and legitimate foreign visitors who didn't have the slightest intention of doing any harm, shredding the Fourth Amendment "right of the people to be secure in their persons ... papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," unless served with a proper and specific warrant, etc.

We're told visitor volume is up at McCarran International Airport, here in Las Vegas. That's great. Yet the Southern Nevada tourist economy still appears to be on life support. Why?

I suspect a big part of the answer is that, while businessmen and conventioneers still fly on business, and young honeymooners with a couple hundred bucks in their pocket may still visit Vegas for a long weekend (God bless 'em), the wealthier tourists, especially those from Europe and Asia, have simply stopped coming in a silent boycott of the ruthless and insane antics of our beloved Homeland Security Abteilung and their blue-gloved goons.

The main reason the TSA's misdirected nonsense appears to have "worked," we are left to conclude, is that hardly any serious adults are trying to damage our planes, any more.

Glamorized or not, I believe there's considerable truth underlying the published adventures of Richard Marcinko, who reports on special forces teams sent to test such supposedly "secure" facilities as U.S. embassies overseas, only to determine anyone could sneak in the unlocked door to the smoker's patio and then -- armed with nothing but a convincing-looking uniform, accent and clipboard -- successfully gain access even to the supposedly sacrosanct "code room."

Are we really to believe any such team of professionals, given a couple weeks, couldn't land low-level jobs at any of our busy commercial airports, scope out the sieve-like "security" on the lower levels and load up the cargo bay of a randomly selected 737 to look like a Hawthorne munitions bunker?

Didn't the Transportation Security Administration announce in June it plans to fire 36 workers, including two high-ranking officials, for failure to properly screen tons of baggage at Honolulu International Airport?

For that matter, anyone wishing to cripple U.S. commercial aviation needn't get through a single security checkpoint or anywhere near a plane. Simply wheel an explosive carry-on into one of those serpentine lines forming outside our security checkpoints, wait till you're in the middle of the room, then leave your bag behind after telling the person behind you that you really, really have to go use the bathroom.

After Osama bin Laden was killed, most American news broadcasts were careful to stipulate, "Of course this doesn't mean we should expect the airport searches to end."

Why? And who told them to say that? Wouldn't it be more appropriate for an independent "news" organization (as opposed to a government propaganda outlet) to aggressively ask why this shouldn't mean an end to the blue-gloved goons?

When our bloated federal government hits the wall and is forced to lay off half its drones, watch and see how quickly the TSA starts to be identified as what it actually is -- a jobs program, without which tens of thousands of highly paid, federal union employees with lavish benefits and few other identifiable job skills will be thrown on the dole. Oh, the humanity!

By the way, Jean Weber of Destin, Fla., who herself was intensively frisked at Northwest Florida Regional Airport on June 18 for the offense of bursting into tears at the way her 95-year-old mother, leukemia patient Lena Reppert, was being treated, calls the TSA's claim about not removing her mother's adult diaper "a lie."

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal, and author of the novel "The Black Arrow" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com.