September 26, 2005 | No Flying Nun

Sister Glenn Anne McPhee, the Church's leading official for education in America, spent 9 months being caught by the No Fly list, until her boss wrote Karl Rove.

Sister Glenn Anne McPhee (C) and Reverend Robert J. McManus at the Congressional Advocacy Days conference of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting with Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

And she's none too happy about it.

Sister McPhee's chronicle of frustration began in mid-October 2003, after she was stopped at Baltimore Washington International airport on her way to Providence, Rhode Island.

Unable to check in using the airline's kiosks, McPhee handed her driver's license and reservation to an airline employee, who keyed her name into the computer system and then disappeared with her license into an internal door.

When he returned an hour later, he was accompanied by two police officers.

The officers flanked the 62-year-old Dominican nun, one standing with his hand on his gun, the other using a cell phone to run a security check.

Three hours later, having missed two planes, Sister McPhee was cleared to enter the security line, where she was wanded from head to toe with a magnometer.

"This was the beginning of nine months of hell," McPhee said.

Before flying back to Washington, D.C., McPhee called a family connection who works at an airline and who had access to the watch lists provided by the government to the airlines.

Sister McPhee was being stopped because the list said that an Afghani man was using the last name McPhee as an alias. The list had no first name for him, and the intensive checks would continue until she cleared her name with the ombudsman at the Transportation Security Administration, according to this family connection.

Full story here.

There's lots of other TSA/Secure Flight news and commentary floating around, mostly about the report I mentioned here on Friday.

Noah's great wrap-up is a fine place to start.

The esteemed security guru Bruce Schneier, a member of that panel, has some words here.

Dan Solove, a smart professor with a good blawg, chimes in here.

And for those who prefer their media paid, rather than volunteer, check out Sara Kehaulani Goo's article in the Washington Post or Leslie Miller's take for the Associated Press.

Posted by Ryan Singel at September 26, 2005 09:59 AM

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