FROM THE COMEUPPANCE FILES :

Ex-VP no airport VIP : Gore searched twice during Wisconsin trip (KATHERINE M. SKIBA, June 13, 2002, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Traveling to Wisconsin,...former vice president [Al Gore] was pulled aside for random security screening at Reagan National Airport before boarding the 7:15 p.m. flight to Milwaukee on Friday.

Passengers sharing Flight 406 were startled to hear Gore being told, "Sorry, sir, you have to go through extra screening," and to witness security personnel rifling through his briefcase and suitcase, a witness said.

"You're looking out and seeing Al Gore's unmentionables in his big, carry-on suitcase," said Mark Graul of Green Bay. "You could tell he was thinking, 'This is not happening to me.'

"He did not have a happy look on his face. Basically the whole plane boarded before they got through looking through his stuff.

"He patiently went through it and then took a seat in the front row with, I assume, an aide," Graul said. [...]

On Saturday afternoon, when Gore was leaving Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport, he was taken aside for some extra scrutiny at a Midwest Express gate before boarding a flight to New York, said Gore spokesman Jano Cabrera, who accompanied him during both checks.

Some of life's ironies--like that of a guy who tried using racial profiling as an issue to whip up minority voters getting this treatment because we refuse to use sensible profiling--are so rich, so amusing that one has to believe that God exists and that he has a sense of humor. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 14, 2002 9:51 AM