5/25/04

By TOM BAXTER

A candidate for the Libertarian presidential nomination, traveling to Atlanta for the party’s national convention, was briefly barred from his flight at Denver International Airport on Monday when a name similar to his showed up on an airline no-fly list.

Gary Nolan, a radio talk show host based in Cleveland who has suspended his show while campaigning, said an AirTran ticket agent told him he could not get on a flight to Atlanta because his name was on the list used by the airlines to screen suspected terrorists.

Airport police cleared him to make the flight to Atlanta after determining the name on the restricted list was that of a Gary Nolan Craig, Nolan said.

Nolan said, however, that he could not be sure his ancestry and political views weren’t also factors. Nolan is of Lebanese descent and has been an outspoken opponent of the Patriot Act.

He said he was told he would continue to have a problem flying if he didn’t get the matter cleared up.

"Obviously, it’s a flawed system and this is just another example of what could go wrong," Nolan said after arriving in Atlanta on Monday afternoon.

Mike Fierberg, the Denver regional public affairs officer for the Transportation Security Administration, acknowledged there are flaws in the system, but said they aren’t the government agency’s fault.

Fierberg said Nolan was flagged by CAPPS—Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening—a system run by the airlines. TSA and the Department of Homeland Security advocate replacing CAPPS, which was put in place by the airlines in the mid-1990s, with a government-operated system, CAPPS II, which would require more detailed information about airline passengers.

The current system is so broad it produces many "false positives" like Nolan’s, Fierberg said.

Nolan is one of three candidates actively campaigning for the Libertarian nomination, which will be decided at the convention Sunday. His opponents are Aaron Russo, a California film producer, and Michael Badnarik, a gun rights activist from Texas.