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Thursday, December 18, 2003
Alert agents spare Americans from an interview with Olivia Newton John...
Your Silence Is Appreciated:
Sue Smethurst enjoys traveling. "It's one of the things about my job that I absolutely love," says the 30-year-old Australian, who works as an associate editor for the women's magazine New Idea. She doesn't even mind flying. "It's one of the great pleasures of the world to be able to turn off your cell phone and be where no one can annoy you."
But when her Qantas flight from Melbourne, Australia, touched down at LAX around 8 a.m. on Friday, November 14, Smethurst found herself nightmarishly annoyed -- by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Smethurst was supposed to continue to New York and on Monday interview singer Olivia Newton-John. Smethurst had honeymooned in Manhattan last yearand was looking forward to a long, free weekend "having a good walk through Central Park, getting a decent bowl of chicken soup and going Christmas shopping-- all those gorgeous New York things." Better still, her six-hour layover in L.A. would allow her to have lunch with her American literary agent.
"I had a room booked at the Airport Hilton, where I was going to my leave bags, shower and get a cup of coffee."
But first she had to clear LAX's immigration check-in, which she reached after 20 minutes in line. An officer from the DHS's newly minted Customs and Border Protection (CBP) bureau studied the traveler's declaration form Smethurst had filled out on the plane.
"Oh, you're a journalist," he noted. "What are you here for?"
"I'm interviewing Olivia Newton-John," Smethurst replied.
"That's nice," the official said, impressed. "What's the article about?"
"Breast cancer."
When Smethurst tells me this, she pauses and adds, "I thought that last question was a little odd, but figured everything's different now in America and it was fine." What she didn't know was that her assignment and travel plans, along with the chicken soup and stroll through Central Park, had been terminated the moment she confirmed she was a journalist. Fourteen hours later, she was escorted by three armed guards onto the 11 p.m. Qantas flight home.
...as the professor is fond of saying: go read the whole thing.
(Thanks to Dave in Texas for the link
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