Airport Security, Israeli Style

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LIANE HANSEN, host:

This is NPR's WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.

The revelation of the terror plot to blow up airliners flying from Great Britain to the United States has tightened airport security again. The list of items no longer allowed onboard has expanded to include liquids and gels. At one point, the British didn't let passengers carry anything onto an aircraft except their wallets and identification.

The Transportation Security Administration in this country has been testing a program called SPOT. It stands for Screening Passengers by Observation Technique. The idea is to catch potential terrorists by watching the way they act at the airport, a sort of psychological profiling.

Rafi Ron is the former director of security at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport. He now runs a consulting firm in the U.S. called New Age Security Solutions, and he's in the studios.

Thanks a lot for coming in.

Mr. RAFI RON (New Age Security Solutions): Thank you very much for having me.

HANSEN: Well, of course the Israelis have been doing this kind of psychological profiling for a long time now. So how well is it working?

Mr. RON: It works very well. I think that the record over 30 years, since this program was originated, has shown that we manage to not only stop terrorists when they're on the act, but also deter them altogether from carrying out serious attempts.

HANSEN: How do you spot someone suspicious? What are you looking for?

Mr. RON: Well, unlike what most people believe, terrorists are far from being perfect. They're people. They're human beings just like us, and they do a lot of mistakes. We fail to focus on those mistakes until now, here in the U.S., as we have been putting 100 percent of our faith in technology and avoided going into the human domain. What we're looking for is the person who has different agenda than the rest of the passengers around him and is not a legitimate passenger onboard.

HANSEN: Let's go through the process, though. Let's say an agitated person is spotted. Waiting in line to get on an airplane in an airport is - will agitate the most calm people. So there has to be a second step and that of asking questions. But then what happens next? What if the questions are eliciting an answer that deserves to be followed up?

Mr. RON: We need to move to the next level, and that next level, we call a targeted conversation. Since we believe that 99.9999 percent of the people that will be approached would probably end up as legitimate people and they are not terrorists at the end of the day, so first of all they have to be treated respectfully, not like criminals. Secondly, we strongly believe that treating them in a friendly manner would also be very important in recruiting their cooperation. And their cooperation is critical for the success of the process.

But the conversation, which is friendly as it is, is very well structured and very well aimed in a certain direction, that will help us reach conclusions, whether we should dig further or not.

HANSEN: How do you dig further and who is qualified to do that? In American airports, what happens next?

Mr. RON: Yeah. That's a - once again I think that we're looking at something that we will need to improve in order to use these programs successfully. One thing we should also keep in mind is that our TSA screeners do not have the same power that the full sworn-in law enforcement officers in this country have. We can only go back to the Richard Reid, the shoe bomber example, which taught us quite a lot on terrorist behavior, as well as on our failures.

HANSEN: Just to recap. He was questioned in Paris at the Charles de Gaulle International Airport. But he was allowed to board a flight to the United States. And it had to do with that interview being done by law enforcement officers, and at the time a certain lack of these analytical skills in the targeted conversation, as you put it.

Mr. RON: Yeah. Actually, Richard Reid, he went through two different interviews on his way to the aircraft. And after two hours, the French police failed to recognize the fact that Richard Reid is not only a terrorist but also wearing a bomb through this interview, and released him as clean as a baby.

I think that one of the problems that we face here in this country is that we're not spending enough in developing the skills of our law enforcement officers to identify terrorism when they come across one. Now, the fact that somebody is carrying the device, the fact that is a suicidal attack, of course it introduces new aspects and new tactics that perhaps are more difficult to fight against, but it's not impossible.

HANSEN: Rafi Ron is the former director of security at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport. And he now runs a consulting firm in the United States called New Age Security Solutions.

Thanks so much for coming in.

Mr. RON: Thank you for having me.

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