During an interview with USA Today Monday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the department’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will be looking at “the whole system of screening at [airports] in the next month … to see if we can maybe make a couple of significant changes to remove some of the burden [on passengers during the security screening process]."

"We may be able to make some significant changes to the system that may actually be welcomed by the travelers," he said.

Chertoff’s comments tended to indicate that the Department’s review is designed to look for ways to better focus on people rather than things, which is the time-tested and proved model used by Israel at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, and which will be the subject of an in-depth report in the May issue of HSToday.

The HSToday report will point out that the frontline of defense at Ben Gurion rests with a cadre of security screeners who’ve been carefully trained to detect threats by scrutinizing what people say, how they say it, how they act, and how they’re dressed – rather than concentrating on “things” like TSA does.

HSToday’s exclusive, behind the scenes look at Ben Gurion security will show how and why the Jewish state has successfully thwarted aviation terrorism for so many years.

Similarly, Chertoff acknowledged that TSA has been able to increase its focus on people because some US screening requirements have been rendered unnecessary because of improvements in the physical security components of aviation security.

TSA has deployed hundreds of Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) screeners at airports across the nation to scan crowds looking for people who exhibit suspicious behavior and thus may pose a security threat - just like what's done at Ben Gurion airport.

Additionally, as part of TSA's growing effort to have its screeners examine passengers' identification documents and boarding passes to make sure they are legitimate, Sam Bucy, assistant federal security director of TSA in Huntsville, Alabama, recently told the Huntsville Times TSA officers also are taught how to detect suspicious behavior and how to conduct interviews to spot passengers who might merit additional screening.

TSA said 27 passengers were arrested due to suspicious behavior or fraudulent travel documents last week.

At Ben Gurion, all security-related personnel are trained in suspicious behavior pattern recognition, which has allowed the Israeli’s to focus on people instead of things.

People-focused security was pioneered at Ben Gurion. It involves singling suspicious people out of airport crowds based on specific facial expressions, body language, behavior, speech … even attire … and then asking them questions. It’s all been methodically designed to identify suspicious conduct that even TSA acknowledges can be related to surveillance or pre-attack behavior traits.

They are questions specially designed to identify “anything out of the ordinary, anything that does not fit,” a Ben Gurion undercover screener explained to HSToday.us in early February in lengthy briefings on Ben Gurion security during a behind-the-scenes tour of the airport.

All of Ben Gurion’s security personnel, overt and covert, are trained in “security profiling,” or behavior pattern recognition, said Nahun Liss, Head of Planning, Control & Projects Dept., Ben Gurion Security Division.

Raphael “Rafi” Ron, Ben Gurion’s security director for five years, has said Israel’s advantage is that it long ago came to terms with the human component of terrorism. In other words, terrorism is carried out by people. People he says Ben Gurion’s security has clearly demonstrated can be found and stopped by an effectively robust security methodology that is focused on … people!

The multi-layered security approach at Ben Gurion focuses on people’s behavior, rather than things like scissors, small pocket knives, and no more than 3 ounces of nearly all personal toiletry items that can be crammed into one, quart-size, zip-top, clear plastic bag.

Similarly, Chertoff told USA Today he has directed TSA secretary Kip Hawley to "look at the system" of passenger screening and determine whether there "are ... things we can do to reduce hassle,” including changes like those made in late 2005 when TSA began allowing passengers to carry small tools and scissors on board aircraft.

"I've been arguing for years" that we need to be looking at people, USAF Col. (Ret.) Randall Larsen told HSToday.us. "I was saying this when they were first creating TSA ... base it on people, not technology - absolutely."

Larsen is founding director of the Institute for Homeland Security, the National Security Advisor to the Center for Biosecurity, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and co-host of the public radio program, Homeland Security: Inside and Out. Larsen also is a guest lecturer at the National Defense University, where he developed America’s first graduate course in homeland security in 1998.

Still, TSA's overall security approach remains focused on things.

TSA's Hawley assured lawmakers in November though that he has confidence in SPOT and said its use will increase commensurate with funding. But under a Democratic Congress ideologically opposed to anything reeking of impinging on civil rights, that funding may not soon be forthcoming – never mind the Israelis’ proven track record – according to some Capital Hill observers.

Claims that the Israeli model is nothing more than racial profiling are terribly off-base, in so far as I could see. Instead, Israel has refined a behavioral profiling process to identify potentially suspicious conduct that once detected triggers a progressive ratcheting up of an inquisitiveness that has been effectively designed and refined over many years to ultimately isolate outright lying and deception – for whatever reason – the goal of which is to determine if a person is an actual threat. Nothing more, nothing less.

The threat of private planes from abroad 

DHS also has begun to study the security risks of private jets entering the US from overseas, Chertoff said in his USA Today interview.

Chertoff said DHS intends to impose stricter rules this year on private planes from overseas to try to prevent a terrorist from sneaking "a nuclear bomb or dirty bomb or biological weapons" into the country.

To protect against private planes from overseas, DHS will be issuing new rules to require the crews and passengers of private aircraft bound for the US to provide their names, birth dates, and other personal information one hour before departure for the States.

In March 2005, HSToday.us reported that that January a small private plane that originated in Norway had entered US airspace from Canada and managed to fly all the way to a general aviation airport in downtown Oklahoma City without anyone noticing or asking questions – at least not until the plane was already on the ground.

Indeed. It wasn’t until after the plane had landed that federal authorities were contacted and an investigation was launched.

Larsen, who has been flying for more than 40 years, told USA Today that, "OK, Bono and Bill Gates would be prevented from smuggling a nuke into the US, but a terrorist with a nuke in a Gulfstream who takes off from a remote airfield in Africa or Latin America, like the drug runners, with no flight plan, would have no problem getting it to DC," adding, “let's just hope the terrorists fly out of Heathrow."

Chertoff dismissed Larsen’s concern.

Chertoff told USA Today that “without being cleared into the nation's airspace by authorities, you will not make it into the US without being greeted by a couple of F-16s."

“You know what, I wished Chertoff was right,” Larsen told HSToday.us.

"You can put a challenge in your article, that if Chertoff wants to bet some real money, I’ll demonstrate how to get an airplane into the United States … I’d be willing to bet Secretary Chertoff a hundred-thousand dollars that I can fly a Gulfstream into the United States – and I’m a Gulfstream pilot – without being detected," Larsen told HSToday.us

“I’m glad [Chertoff] is very confident we” can detect private planes before they enter US airspace, Larsen mussed, adding, “I’m just telling you, I’ve been flying airplanes since 1965 – everything from helicopters to 757s – and I do not believe it would be a significant challenge to sneak an airplane into the United States,” Larsen said.

Indeed. As the earlier HSToday.us report revealed, private planes from abroad have gotten into the US without being noticed and, as Larsen correctly pointed out, criminals regularly fly into the country undetected – something any counternarcotics officer will tell you happens all the time.

Classified materials provided to HSToday.us show even though counternarcotics agencies and intelligence services have routinely had intelligence indicating private aircraft would be flying drugs into the US, they were not always able to detect the planes.