A Minnesotan Marine was
prevented from boarding a plane yesterday because his name showed up in the terrorist watch list.
He was in uniform, had his orders, his i.d., and was with several other Marines dressed the same.
Staff Sgt. Daniel Brown and other members of his military police unit had gotten as far as Los Angeles when Brown was stopped Tuesday before he could board the plane.
He said it should have been clear to anyone that he was a serving Marine.
"They still made me dump my stuff," he said. "We all had military uniforms. We were on orders and had ID cards," he said.
More below.
Before you get all outraged, there is a simple (and obvious once you think about it) explanation for how this happened.
Brown had just finished his second tour in Iraq. The first began in June 2004 when he left the Twin Cities for three months of training before deploying to Iraq for seven months. He said he returned in May 2005 and was home for 30 days before being called up for another tour in Iraq.
That's when his troubles began - while passing through the Minneapolis airport.
"When we went through security they swabbed my bags and found gunpowder residue," he said. "Once that happened they made me dump all my gear. They swabbed all my gear and found gunpowder residue on my boots. I had a lot of gear in Fallujah the first time."
<snip>
Brown said he believes the reason he was the only Marine detained was because he'd had such a short turnaround between tours and had no time to really scrub his gear.
"I'm assuming it all started because I just got back," he said. "Some of the other guys weren't there, others had new boots. I happened to be the one fresh home."
I have a feeling as members of our military face shorter breaks between tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, incidents like this will become more common.
Later in the article we find out he's had the same problems as all the other innocent people on the watch list. He can't get off.
"They informed me that I was on some kind of government watch list and I wasn't allowed to get on the plane and fly back with my guys," he said.
He said he's still trying to figure out who he needs to contact to straighten it out.
Hopefully he gets it taken care of quickly. This kind of thing shouldn't happen to veterans, but at least someone in TSA is doing their job when they find gunpowder residue.
And let this be a note to our friends and family members serving in Iraq and Afghanistan: Make sure you do your laundry!