alcohol + drugs + mean faces = terrorist act

POLITICO CLICK: Bass: I was tired, medicated - Erika Lovley#

David Bass ? the Washington P.R. executive charged with a federal felony for alleged drunken behavior on a flight into Washington Reagan National Airport ? says he was ?out of it? on allergy medication and did nothing more than demand a glass of wine.

?They refused to serve me wine because they said I appeared drunk,? Bass told POLITICO Thursday morning as news that he?d been charged under the U.S. Patriot Act rolled through Washington.

Bass said he wasn?t drunk on the flight, but rather had been taking Benadryl for an allergic reaction.

?I didn?t see any reason why I couldn?t get a glass of wine,? he said. ?I was extremely sleep deprived. I have a bad history of traveling south.?

?The last thing I would ever be is a threat to anyone on a plane,? Bass said.

Police met Bass?s flight when it landed at Reagan. In a sworn affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, FBI Agent David Wiegand said that Bass had appeared drunk and abusive on the flight, demanding alcohol and refusing flight attendants? orders to sit down.

According to Wiegand, a flight attended ?stated that Bass refused to obey the instructions issued by the flight attendants and ?disrupted everyone? in as much as he entered the aircraft's galley several times and crawled over the person seated next to him in order to access the overhead storage compartments and the aircraft's lavatory. [The flight attendant] said that Bass?s behavior was so disruptive that [she] moved the passenger seated next to Bass to a different seat.?

Among other things, the affidavit stated that Bass made ?mean faces? at flight attendants.

?I don?t know what a ?mean face? is,? Bass told POLITICO. ?I make mean faces to my five-year-old all the time.?

Bass was questioned at the airport and subsequently charged with a provision of the Patriot Act that equates interfering with flight crews with a terrorist act ? a felony punishable by as much as 20 years in federal prison.

Bass appeared in court Tuesday and was allowed to remain free pending further proceedings. His next court date is Oct. 27.

In a telephone interview with POLITICO, Bass said he had been in Honduras on a business trip and hadn?t slept for three days before boarding a Continental Airlines flight from Houston to Washington on Friday.

?I was groggy . . . have you ever been sleep-deprived? It makes you kind of wacky,? Bass said.

While the FBI agent?s affidavit said that Bass had assumed an ?aggressive posture? with police at the airport, Bass said the incident was not confrontational at all.

?The officers were actually very nice. I had been joking a little bit, talking to them,? he said. ?It didn?t seem like reality to me.?

Bass said he offered to take a blood-alcohol test when he got off the plane, but he said officers declined.

In a statement attached to the FBI agent?s affidavit, one of the flight attendants said that Bass ?stared at me the whole flight . . . didn?t listen to anyone and argued everything and appeared unsteady on his feet, upsetting everyone in first class, including me.?

Another flight attendant said the crew agreed that Bass should not be served alcohol on the flight.

?I told Mr. Bass to take his seat as he was interrupting the [flight attendants] from their duties by [repeatedly] getting up, standing in the aisle . . . asking for drinks, staring at [the other flight attendant], making mean faces. Even on landing, he was staring at her. I could see she was intimidated by his stares.?

Bass, whose criminal case was first reported in the Washington Examiner, appears frequently as a political commentator on television and recently founded Raptor Strategies, a public relations firm with energy, media and insurance clients. The firm?s slogan: ?New Times Demand New Strategies.?

?My clients know me better than this,? Bass said. ?[My friends] would probably say ?Bass was joking a little more than he should have been.??

Bass provided some consulting services for POLITICO?s parent company, Allbritton Communications, during the publication?s start-up phase.

====================================================

this will make you think long and hard before acting even the slightest bit rude or demanding to a flight attendant. i've never been refused booze before on a flight...they always seem more than willing to get you good and snockered. he must have been off the charts