Saturday, May 06, 2006

Porter who? Terror terror terror

NEWARK, N.J. (MSNBC)-- Law enforcement officials, under orders to find & secure some means of knocking the Goss resignation and its attendant hookers-and-gack scandal out of heavy news rotation in time for the Sunday morning talk shows, boarded an American Airlines flight at Newark Liberty International Airport Saturday and detained five foreign-born passengers who had been acting suspiciously like Islamofascist jihadi suicide bombers from Iraq.

A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because his family thinks he runs cockfights for a living, said a crew member noticed at least one of the men reading "aviation manuals" and notified the pilot.

The pilot of Flight 1874 from Dallas then radioed ahead and asked law enforcement officials to meet the flight at Newark airport to determine whether American Way, the airline's in-flight magazine, really qualifies as an "aviation manual."

The five alleged potential haters of liberty were detained by Transportation Security Administration officials shortly after the plane touched down at 3:15 p.m. and were being "interviewed," TSA spokeswoman Jessica Altschul said.

Other passengers were also being interviewed, she said, to ensure that there was no collaboration between the alleged potential sworn enemies of freedom and normal-looking folk like you or me who might enjoy Nascar racing or a summertime barbecue at the Rotary Club.

Altschul said the cockpit was not breached, which is one of the only things that saved the brave travelers from dying horribly in a flaming weapon of mass transportation.

"No weapons or anything like that were present," American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith said in a statement. "Thank God we were able to stop them before they armed themselves and conspired to commit terrorism."

The plane was bound from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport when an air marshal notified authorities of five men he considered foreign, Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, told The Associated Press.

The five men remained in custody at the airport Saturday evening, eating vending-machine nachos and watching Jeopardy. The FBI had been notified and was expected to take over the investigation in the event the Goss story hadn't played out by prime time, LaVorgna said. Two of the detainees are believed to be of Angolan descent and one may be of Israeli descent, according to a senior government official well-versed in the art of racial profiling.

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