Now, after her run-in with an overzealous agent, she realizes that reporters do, too.

Sure terrorists lurk in our midst and the nation's capital is on alert against another attack.

But it should be obvious that someone like Gudaitis, a perky graduate journalism student at American University in Washington, poses no threat to anyone.

She was outside the British Embassy in Northwest Washington Thursday morning on a class assignment to visit and describe a particular location. Knowing that authorities might be nervous about someone taking notes outside the embassy, which is next to the home of Vice President Dick Cheney, she went out of her way to introduce herself and let guards know what she was doing.

She explained that she is a first-year journalism student, that her assignment was to stand on the sidewalk, watch the street and write a descriptive paragraph.

The British guard waved her on, but Secret Service Agent J.E. Collinsworth, a very serious G-man, wasn't buying her story. He searched Gudaitis' purse, examined her Ohio driver's license and asked her to wait while he called his supervisors.

As the minutes passed and her deadline approached, Gudaitis sat on the sidewalk, scribbling notes on a sheet of lined paper. She wrote about bugs circling the air, the traffic, the two women walking down the street wearing black spandex pants.

Dangerous? To the fashion police, maybe.

But Collinsworth didn't want her doing even that. Terrorist take notes about government buildings and describe the streets outside them. Too suspicious, too close for his comfort.

"He sad he needed to confiscate my notes," Gudaitis said. "I complied because I didn't want to get into any trouble."

She returned to class, where her instructor, Amy Eisman, was disturbed by the agent's behavior. Eisman, who had been executive editor of the USA Weekend magazine among her other jobs during a 25-year newsroom career, told others in the department about what happened to Gudaitis. The dean got wind of it and faxed a letter of complaint to the Secret Service.

Another Secret Service agent showed up at the school within hours. He apologized and returned Gudaitis' notes.

"They did confiscate her notes, and they should not have done that," John Gill, special agent in charge of public affairs, told school officials, who published his comments on a campus website.

A spokesman for the Secret Service confirmed yesterday the school's description of the incident, but declined additional comment.

Gudaitis, who graduated from Solon High School in 2000, still wants to be a journalist when she finishes the master's program.

"The whole thing has been a learning experience for me," she said. "I understand he was doing his job, but so was I."

"No student journalist---or citizen---should be treated like a terrorist if they haven't done anything wrong," she said.

Gudaitis has learned a lot in her first two weeks of classes. Imagine how much more she will know when she gets out of school and her real-world education begins.

But has the Secret Service learned anything?

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