From: dst+@cs.cmu.edu (Dave Touretzky)
Newsgroups: rec.aviation
Subject: playing with jackals
Date: 27 Aug 92 00:06:43 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

I want to tell y'all about some things that -- as a pilot and aircraft owner
-- scare the hell out of me.  But first, let me establish some credentials:
(1) I'm a registered Republican; (2) I sent Margaret private fan mail
*before* any of those posts appeared about why she had left rec.aviation,
and well before the current "twinket" flap; and (3) I wish John De Armond
would go away.

Okay, now for the scary stuff:

1. Ten years ago, I and two passengers took a rented 172 to Oshkosh.  One of
the passengers was a friend of a friend who I barely new.  That evening,
after we had landed and set up our tent and had dinner, I found out that
this guy had brought a long a little "dessert":  some hashish, which he
proceeded to smoke.  I was not happy about this, and made it clear to him
that he'd better smoke it all, 'cuz it was not going back in the airplane.

Ten years ago, if we had somehow been caught by the authorities, this guy
would have been arrested and maybe even done some jail time, but nothing
would have happened to me.  After all, I was innocent.

Today that's no longer true.  Since we had used the airplane to tranport the
hashish, the government would seize it and sell it at auction.  It wouldn't
matter that I, the pilot, had no knowledge of the hasish.  It wouldn't
matter that the airplane didn't belong to the drug user.  The law permits
the plane to be seized, and the government is happily seizing aircraft left
and right.  

There was a segment on 60 minutes a while ago about a 135 operator who lost
his Learjet because his passenger's baggage turned out to contain huge
amounts of cash, which the government claimed was drug money.  After years
of legal battles, he finally got his plane back by bidding on it at auction.

I love to watch that TV show "Cops".  On a recent episode, they nailed a guy
on a drug charge, and as they were stuffing him in the paddy wagon, the cops
told him that they were going to keep the pickup truck he had been driving
when they pulled him over.  He said the truck belonged to his brother (who
wasn't present), but the cops said it didn't matter; they could seize the
truck anyway, and they would.

These days, I am a lot more careful about who I allow to ride along in
my airplane.

2. A few years back, a totally innocent private pilot on a VFR flight in a
Cherokee in south Florida came to the attention of a US Customs helicopter
crew.  They thought he was a drug smuggler.  The pilot had no idea he was
under surveillance; he landed at a small airport, and the helicopter swooped
down on him for a raid.  The helicopter's rotor wash flipped the plane over.
Government agents leapt out of the helicopter, and instead of rushing to the
upside-down pilot's aid, they stuck an automatic weapon in his face.
Eventually it was determined that the pilot was innocent, but -- get this --
the government refused to pay for the damage to the Cherokee.  The pilot is
screwed.  This was all reported in AOPA Pilot magazine.

At my last CFI refresher course I sat next to a pilot who flies for the US
Customs Service in Florida, and when I talked to him about this incident, he
said "yep, that was us."  (Not him personally, but his outfit.  He's based
in Miami.)  Although this guy was very friendly and a fine fellow, he didn't
see anything wrong with the government's refusal to pay for the property it
had destroyed.

These days, I try to avoid flying in South Florida, because I'm scared of
Customs and the DEA (and of smugglers too, who love to steal light twins.) I
have put off indefinitely my dreams of taking The Beast to the Bahamas.  I
recently volunteered to do some flying for an ecology group planning a
series of projects in Central America, but I made it clear in my letter to
them that I would NOT take my own plane down there.  I'm not afraid of the
Guatemalan Air Force; I'm seriously afraid of US Customs.

................................................................

If you're still reading this, I've worked my way up to the point I'd like to
make about Margaret vs. John De Armond.  Here it is:

  Although many government agents are decent people, it is also true
  that our government is currently engaged in some totally abhorrent
  practices against its own citizens.  Innocent people can have their
  property seized and/or their lives endangered -- with no recourse
  against their oppressors.

So the take home lesson is this:

* I would report an obvious chemical spill or illegal toxic waste dump site
  if I came across one.

* I would happily assist in the photographic documentation of illegal
  logging practices, the way Margaret does.

* I would be reluctant to take government agents up on a sight-seeing
  flight where they could photograph whatever caught their interest and
  then pursue it later when I'm not around.  Why?  Because I could be
  unknowingly contributing to the persecution of innocent people by
  government agencies that are presently seriously lacking in ethics.
  I would have to know the agency personnel very well (e.g., if some
  were relatives) before consdering them trustworthy enough to merit
  my cooperation.

Now you might think the EPA is less rabid than the Customs Service, but
you'd be wrong.  I won't go into the details here, but there are plenty of
stories of EPA agents wrongfully persecuting private citizens.  I am as
scared of them as I am of the DEA.

I think this is the point John De Armond would have made if he hadn't been
suffering from testosterone poisoning.

-- Dave Touretzky,  CFI-AIM,  Seneca N8147E (``The Libertarian Beast'')
Newsgroups: rec.aviation