Want to bypass security at Logan? Become an assistant Chatham harbormaster

The Herald reports on an incident involving a part-time Cape harbormaster who got treated like a federal agent - to the point of being whisked around security checkpoints by a state trooper - because airline workers and a trooper mistook his harbormaster ID card as something more important.

Stephen Grant, a fulltime medical-equipment salesman in Rockland, is now being brought up on a federal charge of impersonating a federal officer for the incident, which happened last year, and for which he paid a $4,000 fine. The feds charge he intentionally misrepresented himself as an armed Homeland Security agent; he claims it was all a misunderstanding and doesn't understand why he's being charged now.

The FBI affidavit against him, however, says he began masquerading as a Homeland Security agent before he tried to get on a plane to San Diego on Jan. 1, 2007; to the point of wearing a DHS shirt in a photo for a Rockland handgun license. The affidavit claims that, at Logan, Grant filled out an American Airlines "flying while armed" form and listed his agency as "DHS (port security)." A state trooper then looked at his form, his assistant harbormaster ID card and took him around the security checkpoints - and was allowed to get on the plane early with a couple of U.S. marshals. Then, on a return flight, the FBI alleges, he sat in first class:

According to Glauser, she said hello to him and then patted her hip and mouthed the words, "Are you armed?" Grant nodded, which Glauser took as a yes.

Later, he told the captain he worked for both DHS and the Massachusetts State Police, the Transportation Safety Administration charges. When he was unable to provide paperwork, the captain and other airline workers became suspicious, but let him stay on the flight because they did not feel he was a security risk (the captain himself was armed). At Logan, he was questioned by actual law-enforcement types and, eventually, he had his Rockland gun license taken away.

Read the TSA affidavit.

Innocent, etc.