"I Fly This Plane!" "I Know Bush!"

By SALLY B. DONNELLY

You know we've reached some kind of watershed in the stressful post-Sept. 11 world of airline security when the public has to decide who's telling the truth, the pilot or the Secret Service agent. That's what happened in the case of a member of President Bush's security detail who was thrown off an American Airlines plane on Christmas Day because of alleged problems with paperwork permitting him to carry a handgun. The pilot says the agent, identified in news reports as Walied Schater, got belligerent. Schater, through lawyers, says he was discriminated against because he's of Arab descent. Whoever is right, the event may increase calls for something the airlines have pressed for since Sept. 11: the ability to identify just who is getting on their planes. "This case lends support to our calls for some kind of government-approved profiling," says Michael Wascom of the Air Transport Association. "If we had more information about this man, who was carrying a weapon, we could have avoided any problems."

--By Sally B. Donnelly