TSA screeners being trained to monitor people, not just bags

GARY Wexler of Valley Village, who flies several times a year to Tel Aviv on business, is grilled regularly by the staff of El Al Israel Airlines:

Does he have family in Israel? When did he learn Hebrew? Why?

Then there was this puzzler: “On Passover, how many cups of wine do you drink?”

But Wexler, who owns a marketing company, doesn’t mind. Instead, he said, when he heard about the jet-bombing plot in London this month, he thought, “Thank God I’m flying El Al.”

Call it what you will -- profiling, psychological screening, behavior detection or just nosiness -- it’s the secret to thwarting terrorism at El Al, which is widely regarded as the world’s safest airline, according to security experts and passengers.

From the time you make your El Al reservation, they say, to the time you step off the plane at your destination, you’re being checked out by computer and by the airline’s agents, in uniform and out.

Now this strategy, albeit in a modest form, is coming to U.S. airports, courtesy of the Transportation Security Administration, which has dubbed it Screening Passengers by Observation Technique, or SPOT.

For an agency best known for its catalog of banned baggage items, this program, which trains screeners to watch for suspicious behavior by passengers, would be a sea change in the way the agency operates.

Already opponents are lining up: Civil libertarians worry that screening may slip into racial profiling. Security consultants say we should shift resources to explosives-detecting technology. Congressmen balk at possibly adding TSA personnel.

In fact, TSA began testing a version of SPOT three years ago at Boston’s Logan International Airport, said Ann Davis, the agency’s Boston-based spokeswoman for the Northeast. It is based on a program that Rafi Ron, former chief security officer of the Israeli Airport Authority, helped police at Logan develop after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“It is a derivative of a program by the Israelis,” Davis said.

In the TSA version, she said, uniformed officers in and around security checkpoints scan passengers for “involuntary physical and psychological reactions” that behavioral scientists say may signal stress, fear or deception. (The TSA declined to be more specific about reactions it monitors.)

Officers also “may engage the passenger in casual conversation to observe the response,” she added. If a passenger shows enough suspicious behaviors, Davis said, that person may be sent to secondary screening or questioned by police.

Worried you’ll be pulled aside because you’re an anxious flier?

“We assume people are nervous,” Davis said, and screeners should take that into account.

After Logan, the TSA tested the program in Portland and Bangor, Maine; Providence, R.I.; and Minneapolis-St. Paul. In December, Davis said, it added “a handful of airports,” which she declined to name, citing security.

And last month, the TSA announced it would train more than 500 “behavior detection officers,” exclusively devoted to SPOT, over the next two years.

“We plan to move even faster” in view of the London plot this month, Davis said, adding the program to “the highest-risk airports,” which she also declined to name.

Using the observation techniques, TSA officers have detected suspects who were arrested on such charges as smuggling drugs or possessing fake passports, said Jennifer Peppin, another TSA spokeswoman.

“Have we caught actual terrorists?” Peppin asked. “That remains to be seen.” Many cases are still under investigation.

Among SPOT’s critics is Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office for the American Civil Liberties Union. The program sets “a very dangerous precedent,” she said. “Singling people out who seem to be different” could lead to stereotyping or racial profiling, and she questioned whether screeners could be trained to become “behavioral scientists.”

In response to such concerns, the TSA’s Davis said SPOT was “an antidote to racial profiling” because “we focus solely on passengers’ behaviors. Their race is irrelevant.”

But the real question may be whether SPOT is comprehensive enough. El Al’s passenger-screening program “is quite a bit more aggressive” than TSA’s, Davis said. For instance, although TSA officers may engage passengers in conversation, she said, “I would not describe the questions as probing.”

El Al declined to describe its security procedures for this story. “El Al maintains the highest level of security at all times,” said El Al spokeswoman Sheryl Stein. “Other than that, we just don’t talk about it.”

But some former El Al officials were not as reticent.

Marvin Badler, the airline’s chief of security for North and Central America from 1984 to 1989, said that during his tenure, El Al agents would start screening passengers when they made reservations, asking them how they planned to pay. “Cash is a red flag,” he said. When a passenger was asked if he needed a rental car, the answer “someone is picking me up” would prompt follow-up queries.

Computer checks on names and addresses would be run, and changes monitored up to flight time. At the airport, Badler said, El Al staff would zero in on unusual behavior and might “start a conversation, but they’re psychologically profiling you,” looking for changes in inflection or conflicting answers.

The carry-ons of El Al passengers got special attention too, he said, with stickers affixed to them “so undercover agents can watch you from the terminal to the gate.”

I couldn’t confirm that El Al still takes all these steps, although passenger Wexler’s carry-on at LAX did sport a lurid orange airline sticker.

Other El Al travelers told me fliers get plenty of personal attention from the airline’s security staff. “I look into your eyes; you look into my eyes,” explained Jonathan Duitch, an Israeli tour guide from Jerusalem who has flown El Al scores of times.

“It may seem invasive, but in the effort to save even one single life, I’d take that. Absolutely.”

Jane Engle welcomes comments but can’t respond individually to letters and calls. Write to Travel Insider, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.