Get ready for SPOT checks

Gary Wexler, 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 Los Angeles marketing company, doesn’t mind. Instead, he says, when he heard about the recent jet-bombing plot in London, 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.

From the time you make your El Al reservation 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.

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.

TSA began testing a version of SPOT three years ago at Boston’s Logan International Airport, says agency spokeswoman Ann Davis. It’s 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 attacks.

In the TSA version, Davis says, 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.

If a passenger shows enough suspicious behaviors, she says, 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 says, and screeners should take that into account.

The TSA recently 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, Davis says, adding the program to “the highest-risk airports” – which she declines to name.

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

“Have we caught actual terrorists?” Peppin asks. “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. She says “singling people out who seem to be different” could lead to stereotyping or racial profiling, and she questions whether screeners could be trained to become “behavioral scientists.”

In response, the TSA’s Davis says SPOT is “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 says. For instance, although TSA officers may engage passengers in conversation, she says, “I would not describe the questions as probing.”

El Al declined to describe its security procedures for this story. But Marvin Badler, the airline’s chief of security for North and Central America from 1984 to 1989, says 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 says.

Computer checks on names and addresses would be run, and changes monitored up to flight time, Badler says. At the airport, he says, 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.

El Al travelers confirm that they get plenty of personal attention from the airline’s security staff.

“I look into your eyes; you look into my eyes,” explains 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.”