Broken Wings: The Indignities of Being on the No-Fly List by Jesselyn Radack

Last October, when I flew to a family function in New Mexico, I was pulled aside for a more extensive search than the usual stroll through the metal detector. I didn't think twice about it. I remembered Israeli security forces arresting a young Palestinian woman who was planning to disguise herself as a pregnant woman, with a bomb hidden in her falsely extended belly. It made sense that my being seven months pregnant raised suspicions.

This March, I flew to Georgia for my grandfather's funeral. On the way down, I was singled out for a full-body pat-down search and told that I had been "randomly selected." The screener asked me if I was wearing an underwire bra. I said yes. She said she would be feeling it with the back of her hand for verification. I asked her to please not press too hard because I was breastfeeding and it would trigger my let-down reflex

Meanwhile, my fashionable Medela "Pump In Style" was being sent back and forth through the x-ray machine.

"It's a breastpump," I explained. Attorney General Ashcroft, who ordered the Justice Department to cover the semi-nude statue of the lady Spirit of Justice, may have a problem with the female breast, but surely baggage screeners, many of them women, would be more enlightened.

When I later opened the luggage I had checked, the lock had been broken off and there was a notecard from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) explaining that my suitcase had been hand-searched. A plastic blue "lock" had then been placed on the suitcase as a "courtesy." It seemed invasive, but hey, it was for security's sake.

During the return flight, I was again told that I'd been "randomly selected" for a more elaborate search. "Randomness" was becoming pretty predictable. Randomness, in the true sense of the word, has no specific pattern or objective. Randomness is a phenomenon that does not produce the same outcome or consequences every time it occurs under identical circumstances. Randomness is unsystematic.

Before my next flight less than a week later, I became aware that the airlines administered a "no-fly" list designed to keep terrorism suspects off commercial airlines, which subjected scores of innocent passengers to repeated interrogation, detention and stigmatization. The "no-fly" list is one of two the TSA maintains. The other is the "selectee" list. Those on the "no-fly" list are not allowed to board a commercial aircraft. Those on the "selectee" list must go through more extensive screening before boarding.

When I went through security for my upcoming flight to California, I was again pulled aside for a full-body wand search. With respect to my carry-on bag, they wanted to know why I had a breastpump but no milk and no baby. I explained that was precisely the point: I couldn't bring my infant on the trip, so I was going to collect and store milk for her during my travels. On the way back, the screeners looked at my boarding pass and again singled me out for the dubious distinction of special search.

I specifically asked the screener if I was on the "no-fly" or "selectee" list. She didn't disabuse me of that notion; instead, she just told me she did not know. I had two full baby bottles of breastmilk in the refrigeration compartment of my breastpump. A male screener asked me if I would be willing to take a sip from each.

"Are you serious?" I asked.

I requested to see a copy of the written policy in which passengers are asked to personally sample liquids they take through security. I figured that if there was a policy governing suspect liquids, the screeners would be specially equipped with sterile droppers from which they could take a sample of my breastmilk to make sure it wasn't an organic peroxide, which is a low-power explosive with unusual stability problems. But this screener was obviously not really concerned that my milk was, for example, perchloric acid, an odorless water white liquid that can be dangerously reactive. If he harbored such a concern, he would not have asked me to open the bottle because it would have blown a hole in the building.

There was no scientific basis for the drink-your-own-breastmilk test. Passengers take through security everything from beverages to hand lotion to nasal spray. Knowing there was no lactation policy, I further objected because drinking from the sterile baby bottles would contaminate the milk, the milk was for the baby, I'm lactose intolerant, and it formed, overall, a barbaric request.

At that point, the screener's supervisor said he would check it in a different way, which he did by rubbing a white cloth all over the bottles and the breastpump. I can only surmise that the cloth was meant to pick up traces of chemicals or hazardous material, which of course it did not. I was finally allowed to board.

I'm on the "selectee" list. Of course, I have no way of verifying that for certain, or of getting my name removed. One might think that I'm being overly-paranoid, but not when I explain that I am a former Department of Justice attorney and a whistleblower in the case of the so-called "American Taliban," John Walker Lindh. Because I blew the whistle on misconduct by the Justice Department's ethics office, I have been retaliated against for the past two years.

The Justice Department got me fired from my private law firm, conducted a criminal investigation that has since been closed with no charges ever being brought, and most recently, reported me to the state bars in which I am licensed. The "selectee" list is just the latest in a series of examples in which I have been designated as a suspect without any sort of due process. It is more than an inconvenience. It is political punishment.

Getting stopped twice in less than we week for the extended dance version of the security search seems not like a way to stop passengers who pose a security risk, but more like a way to detain, interrogate, delay, embarrass, and humiliate perceived political enemies. That's what happens when the Bush administration labels dissenters as unpatriotic.

Unnamed government officials have called me a "traitor" and a "turncoat" in The New York Times. They fail to realize that it makes us all less safe to waste so much time and so limited resources on vengeful partisan practices rather than going after people with real terrorist ties.

Jesselyn is a former Department of Justice employee and mother of three young children. She lives in Washington, D.C.