On a Friday afternoon around 330p I get up from a long nap after early morning liveshots at Dulles airport after Scotland Yard made several arrests regarding a plot to blow up airplanes. I check my blackberry and there’s actually several emails that I need to respond to as opposed to the dozens of emails I receive daily that are useless.
One of them is from one of our show producers in NY. There may be a trip to Canada in store for us. The head of CNN had decided on that Friday to make the next Monday “Target:USA” day. We were tasked with finding out how easy it was to get across the border via water.
Bob and I do a little research and the next day we’re on a plane to Syracuse, NY for a two-hour drive to the Canadian border. We are headed to Morristown, NY on the banks of the St. Lawrence River across from Brockville, Ontario Canada, an area known as, “The Thousand Islands” region.
We somehow meet a local judge who pretty much accomodates us in every way. thru him we find a boat and our liveshot location from which you can see across to Canada.
The next day we rent a boat, cross over to Canada and come back. The procedure is to check in when you come back via videophone with homeland security. You tell them your name, social security number, and date of birth. If any red flags come up they tell you to wait and that someone will come out there. It takes about 30 minutes for them to get there. So it’s kind of like the honor system and that was our story.
On Monday night Jon Stewart made fun of CNN for scaring the crap out of the American public, and rightly so: (http://alternet.org/blogs/video/40471/?comments=view&cID=180292&pID=180086)