This One Can't Be Parodied
I could write another parody of an Annie Jacobsen article, but why bother when the originals are so rich?

It turns out that Women's Wear DailyWomens Wall Street has turned the Annie Jacobsen articles into a regular series. So far there are five installments. Here's an excerpt from installment 3, where our crusading reporter has a stimulating intellectual conversation with Dr. Imad Moustapha, the "United States Ambassador of Syria," who wrote a letter to the Washington Times.

I called Dr. Moustapha to ask him if he had some kind of specific information about the "harmless" men on my flight....

After introductory pleasantries, I asked Dr. Moustapha why his letter suggested that these 14 Syrians played at the Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the Julliard School, when according to my research, that's not at all the case.

Dr. Moustapha said Nour Mehana and his back-up band had not played there, but that other Syrian musicians had. I told Dr. Moustapha that his letter to The Washington Times was at best misleading, and at worst, completely misrepresenting the facts. I added that I didn't consider doing so either diplomatic or fair.

Dr. Moustapha told me that I was a paranoid racist.

I asked Dr. Moustapha if, by suggesting that all Syrian musicians are innocent (not to mention talented) just because they are Syrian, wasn't that the same kind of gross generalization he'd accused me of?

Dr. Moustapha told me again that I was a paranoid person and that the men did nothing wrong.

I reminded him that it was the in-flight behavior of the men (which has now been corroborated by other passengers) which caused alarm, not their Syrian heritage....

He said a few more things that aren't fit to print.

I suggested to Dr. Moustapha that we focus on a diplomatic solution, that perhaps he himself could help to locate the 14 Syrian musicians in question so that they could share their side of the story. I waited for an answer, but instead, Dr. Moustapha hung up on me.

In part 4, our interpid reporter goes to a casino in the desert:

On July 22, I went to the Sycuan Casino outside San Diego. I spoke with a woman who works there and who attended the show. She said that Nour Mehana and his back-up band played for a crowd of about 400 people. (Another employee at the casino said it was a small crowd, about 200 people.) She said Mehana sang for two hours and his back-up band played for about half of it. Tickets to the show cost $24-$30 each.

I also learned from one of Mehana's U.S. promoters (not Cullen, but a different promoter who books the band) that the cost to book Mehana for one night is $32,000. (I don't know if this includes travel, room and board for 15 men.) If we go middle of the road and assume $27 per ticket for 350 people, the take at the door for the Sycuan show was about $9,450. That puts someone in the hole for $22,550, plus possibly travel, room and board. Even if we assume the casino made some money on gambling, food and alcohol, that's a big negative outlay for a night of Syrian music. Admittedly, I'm new to this area. So perhaps some of you who follow world music can explain the cost-effectiveness of 15 men flying around for a money-losing proposition.

Amazing revelation - casinos attract customers with entertainment! I'm shocked.

In Part Five, Annie re-interviews the flack from the Federal Air Marshals, Dave Adams:

A few days ago, I put a call in to Dave Adams, the Federal Air Marshal Services (FAM) Head of Public Affairs. Some of you may remember that Adams and I spoke on July 9, several days before my first article was published. He and I did not speak again until a few days ago, on August 9 and August 10, when we had two rather heated phone conversations. During one of them, I asked Adams the question that Billie Jo Rodriguez had asked me: "Exactly how many other passengers on flight 327 have the FAM and/or the FBI been in contact with during the past month?"

Adams said that they had interviewed the Air Marshals on my flight as well as all the flight attendants from flight 327 -- several times.

I told Adams that wasn't my question. I specifically wanted to know how many other passengers the FAM and/or the FBI had been in contact with during the past month.

Adams said my husband and I were the only two to come forward.

I told him that wasn't true, that I now had the corroborative accounts of seven passengers in addition to my husband and myself.

He repeated that no one else had been in touch with him.

I reminded Adams that as law enforcement, he had access to the flight manifest. Then I repeated Billie Jo's question, "How many passengers from flight 327 have you contacted?"

Adams said zero.

I asked him why.

Adams said that the Air Marshals on flight 327 had determined that there was in fact "suspicious activity" on board flight 327 but that they determined it wasn't a "threat." That was it -- I was splitting hairs.

I asked Adams how the Air Marshals on my flight could have seen what was going on in coach class when they were sitting in first class. I explained that it would be impossible for any of the Air Marshals to have seen what we saw in coach, and that his Air Marshal misrepresented the truth to TIME magazine. (Click here to see the Boeing B757/756 seat map.) (Click here to read the TIME magazine article.)

Adams told me the Air Marshal stood up and made an assessment of things in coach. (According to TIME magazine, the Air Marshal said "he watched the men and saw nothing out of the ordinary.") I explained to Adams that I remember that Air Marshal's assessment of the men's activities because I saw it happen. I saw one of the Air Marshals stand by the galley and look back into the coach class cabin for approximately 2.5 minutes. That was it. I even told Adams the color of the Air Marshal's shirt, his skin tone and his waist size. Adams didn't respond.

Sorry, Annie, but you're no Mike Wallace.