CBS aired the 60 Minutes rerun last night featuring Steve Kroft’s infuriating interview with Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta. I don’t have an exact transcript (and I’m not paying eight bucks to get one), but the interview goes something like this:

Kroft: Is racial profiling ever okay?

Mineta: No.

Kroft: So the fact that all 19 of the September 11 highjackers were of a certain age, a certain religion, a certain complexion, and came from a certain region, none of that should play into how we screen passengers at airports?

Mineta: Of course not. That would be profiling. All passengers should be screened with scrutiny.

Kroft: But you can’t give all passengers the utmost scrutiny.

Mineta: No. We can’t.

Kroft: So how do you figure out who’s more likely to be a threat?

Mineta: We can use other criteria.

Kroft: Like what?

Mineta: Well, for example, we can look for passengers who pay cash only for tickets. Or passengers who purchase one-way tickets. Or both.

Kroft: Did any of the September 11 hijackers pay cash for their tickets?

Mineta: Um….no. They paid with credit cards.

Kroft: I see. Did any of them purchase one-way tickets?

Mineta: Um….no. They all bought round-trip tickets.

The interview gets no less maddening the second time around. Kraft also posited a reducto-ad-absurdum scenario to Mineta. He asked the Transportation Secretary to picture two would-be passengers in an airport (Again, I’m very loosely paraphrasing, here). One is 25, sports a three-day beard, is of Arab descent, and is knelt on a rug praying to the west before boarding the plane. The other is an 85 year-old woman clutching a rosary and a handbag. Mineta said both passengers deserve the same level of scrutiny.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 12th, 2002 at 9:15 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.