See SPOT Run

• By Ralph C. Jensen
• Aug 02, 2007

A television news program had an interesting segment in mid-June that dealt with the government's no-fly list. At one time, the building of this list was the highest of priorities. Experts now believe this list is ineffective and disruptive.

Joe Trento of the National Security News Service said the no-fly list is about as accurate as the intelligence the United States received before going to war with Iraq. Without taking exception to the war, Trento said this is much worse.

"It's awful. It's bad. I mean you've got people who are dead on the list. You've got people you know are 80 years old on the list. It makes no sense," he said.

Here's where the story goes from bad to worst. You wouldn't expect to find the names of any of the 9/11 hijackers on this list, but there they are. Fourteen of the 19 hijackers are named on TSA's no fly list. By the way, they've been dead nearly six years. Convicted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, now serving a lift sentence at a high-security facility in Colorado, appears on the list, as does Saddam Hussein. Neither are likely to check in at a ticket counter soon.

TSA had a monumental task ahead of it in preparing such a document, but it is now more than 540 pages long, and it started with just 16 names. Today, the list includes more than 44,000 names and that doesn't take into account the more than 75,000 people the government thinks should be pulled aside for additional questioning.

The ineffectiveness of the no-fly list rises to new heights when you examine a common U.S. name—for instance, Robert Johnson. This same evening news program found several Robert Johnsons in the United States, brought them together and wondered why they might be on this list. Among them was a politician, a soccer coach, a businessman and a member of the military.

All the Robert Johnsons on the list said they rarely get on an airplane without being searched and interrogated. This sometimes goes on for hours, and yes, they miss their flight once in a while.

The military version of Robert Johnson has a military ID and can get on any base at any time, but he can't seem to fly because of the no-fly list.

Will the real Robert Johnson please stand up? The man TSA has listed is the known alias of a 62-year-old black man who was convicted of plotting to bomb a Hindu temple and a movie theater in Toronto. He served 12 years and was then deported to Trinidad. The problem is airlines ticket agents don't have any of this information on their computer screens. All they have is a name, not even a date of birth.

Donna Bucella, director of the FBI's terrorist screening center, said this is an inconvenience all Robert Johnsons will have to put up with, and worse yet, it won't go away.

"They're gong to be inconvenienced every time they try to go to the kiosk or try to do a curbside check-in because they have the name of a person who's a known or suspected terrorist," she said.

That's not the way it is in every case, however. Take David Belfield, for instance. Belfield, now known as Dawud Sallahuddin, lives in Tehran, Iran. He carried out an assassination in Washington in 1980 on behalf of Ayatollah Khomeini. He dressed up as a mailman, bribed another postal worker for the use of a vehicle and then shot someone. He's allowed to fly.

And, remember the 11 British suspects charged with plotting to blow up 10 commercial airliners with liquid explosives? They aren't on the no-fly list either. However, according to Kip Hawley, TSA director, anyone that turned up in that investigation would not be allowed to actually get on an aircraft. These people had been under investigation for more than a year. Why have their names not been added to the list?

Thank goodness TSA has been diligent in trying to fix some of these problems. The agency has invested in Secure Flight, a program intended to make more information available on suspected terrorists so screeners can tell the difference between you and me, and a group of suspected terrorists. As taxpayers, what have we gotten for the $144 million spent on Secure Flight? Nothing tangible yet.

Where are we today in securing airlines and planes? A little over a year ago, TSA implemented another program—Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT). This program uses non-intrusive behavior observation and analysis techniques to identify potentially high-risk passengers. Designed to detect those who might be a threat to aviation or transportation security, SPOT is a derivative of other successful behavioral analysis programs employed by law enforcement in the United States and worldwide.

TSA said there is an element of unpredictability in the screening process that is easy for passengers to navigate but difficult for terrorists to manipulate.

SPOT seems to be working. Officers in Minneapolis nabbed a man who was deported to Mexico in 2000 after being charged with a double murder. In May, TSA officers helped free a woman who had been beaten and kidnapped by her father on their way from Newark-Liberty International Airport back to India. In June, officers at Salt Lake City International Airport caught a passenger who was charged with 20 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.

None of these three people were on the no-fly list, but once they were taken aside, agents began the diligent work of putting screening into its proper context. The no-fly list seems to be a government nightmare to say the least, but the staff and officers in the field appear to be spot on.