PerspectiveDistrust of Media Doesn't Give Government Permission to Harass Journalists
In an unsettling, patently ridiculous exchange at Dulles International Airport Thursday, Ben Watson, a news editor at Defense One was held by a passport screening official and repeatedly questioned whether he wrote “propaganda.” The CBP officer refused to return the passport to Ben Watson until Watson responded, “For the purposes of expediting this conversation, yes,” to the question of whether he was writing “propaganda.” Watson had to repeat that answer several times before he was waved through.
In an unsettling, patently ridiculous exchange at Dulles International Airport Thursday, a news editor was held by a passport screening official and repeatedly questioned if he wrote “propaganda” before finally being released.
The unwarranted ambush has rightly prompted a formal complaint to be lodged by the journalist, Ben Watson of the national security news publication Defense One, with the Department of Homeland Security.
Joe Concha writers in The Hill that according to Watson, the unnamed U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer held his passport in what appeared to be a routine check that, one we’re all accustomed to going through in the post-9/11 era, before it took a bizarre turn.
Here’s how things went down, per Watson’s account in a Defense One story.
CBP officer, holding Watson’s passport: “What do you do?”
Watson: “Journalism.”
CBP officer: “So you write propaganda, right?”
Watson: “No.”
CBP officer: “You’re a journalist?”
Watson: “Yes.”
CBP officer: “You write propaganda, right?”
This went on for a while, until Watson responded. “For the purposes of expediting this conversation, yes.”
He had to repeat that answer several times before the CBP officer gave him back his passport and waved him through.
In a statement provided to The Hill, the award-winning journalist, whose work has included reporting from the front lines in Afghanistan, says he’s received “overwhelming private support” for reporting on the exchange.
“What happened was not normal, irrelevant to the matter of re-entry into the U.S., and seemingly part of a pattern of hectoring journalists in America at the border,” Watson says in an email. “Looking back, I’m enormously encouraged by the overwhelming private support I’ve received for speaking out and for doing what we felt was the right thing in these circumstances.”
