Letters to the Editor

Flying the friendly skies?

I am responding to Audrey Hudson’s article “Scouting jetliners for new attacks” (Page 1, Thursday). We are shocked by this article. It only reflects paranoia verging on the point of hysterics. The woman mentioned most prominently in this article, Annie Jacobsen, is an advocate of ethnic profiling who survived a horrendous ordeal: a flight with 14 harmless Syrian musicians.

After this ordeal, and despite the fact that she reached her destination safe and sound, she “spread 3,000 bigoted and paranoid words across the Internet,” as Salon.com put it.

Your reporter failed to mention that the only “crimes” these professional musicians were accused of committing were going to the lavatory, eating McDonald’s food and talking to one another.

The fact that they have performed in the past six months in places such as the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Center and the Juilliard School did not prevent Mrs. Jacobsen from saying, “[C]ouldn’t 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?”

The reporter for The Washington Times should have informed her readers that the whole story was a case of a group of talented musicians going to Los Angeles to play music, as simple as that.

IMAD MOUSTAPHA

Ambassador of Syria

Washington

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