The Syrian musicians who behaved in such a disturbing way aboard Annie Jacobsen’s now-famous Northwest Airlines flight that they were pulled aside and screened by FBI and immigration after landing, were traveling with expired visas—and not one of the investigators even thought to look at the dates: ‘Scarborough Country’ for July 22. (Hat tip: Brenda Walker.)

SCARBOROUGH: With me now is WNBC reporter investigative report Scott Weinberger.

Scott, FBI member and immigration people sat down with these men. They questioned them. And, of course, afterwards they said, hey, everything checked out. But everything didn’t really check out. These people missed something as simple as visas that were expired. How did that happen?

WEINBERGER: Well, Joe, let’s talk about what we know happened right before the plane landed. We know that several of the passengers talked to the flight attendants and gave them information. That information was then given to the pilot. The pilot called ahead and told authorities that when the plane lands, they need help. They need people to come to the aircraft and take care of the situation.

When the aircraft landed in Los Angeles, it was met by several agents of the JTTF, joint terrorism task force, as well as ICE, which is Immigration Customs Enforcements. They took the gentleman off the plane. They did what they called an interview. It was not an interrogation. There was no criminal activity, not a reason to do the interrogation part of it. But they interviewed them all individually.

And it went on, Joe, for probably almost two hours. Now, they looked at the big picture. Is this a situation of terrorism? Are these people at all possibly connected with any form or links of terrorism? They went through various lists that they have in a database which is stored in all the major law enforcement computer.

After going through all those things, now, Joe, looking at the big picture of terrorism, something like a visa would be an easy question to ask. We know and my sources are telling me that each individual member that they talked to, these 12 people or so, the 14, they took their visa and made copies of them and put them as part of an investigative file.

But my sources are telling me that the investigators never looked down to check the date. The expiration was three weeks prior to the flight ever taking off.