Post 9/11, secret scrutiny of air traveller behaviour afoot

Washington: Nine years after hijacked planes destroyed the World Trade Center and crashed into the Pentagon, undercover police officers quietly began scrutinising the behaviour of people in airports and aboard airplanes.

Using recently developed technology to track travel patterns and classic gumshoe observation, they took things one step further than the familiar uniformed Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents at airport checkpoints.

Called ‘Quiet Skies,’ the programme originated in 2010 under then-TSA Administrator John Pistole, a former FBI deputy director who changed the TSA from an agency that simply screened travellers at checkpoints into one that made greater use of information gathered by intelligence sources to identify possible terrorists.

“We looked at whether we could use our existing resources in more effective, efficient way,” Pistole recalled on Monday. “Really, we were looking at how we can buy down risk, mitigate those risks, through a common sense application of our resources.”

He pointed to the hijackers who commandeered four commercial planes on Sept. 11, 2001 to illustrate the type of travel patterns that might draw the TSA’s attention. “The 19 hijackers on 9/11 did some pre-operational flights to assess security,” Pistole said.

He said the agency utilised the FBI’s terrorist screening database to single out those people who were still permitted to fly. It also stationed plainclothes personnel in airport terminals and as in-flight air marshals to observe passengers.

“For the unknowns, it was just based on their behaviour, their activity,” he said. “Shame on us if we’re doing pre-operation surveillance on the flight, but they weren’t on anybody’s radar.”

Safety over privacy

Pistole said he consulted with legal counsel at the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security before launching the programme. Congress was unaware of Quiet Skies until reports surfaced over the weekend in a story broken by the Boston Globe and confirmed by The Washington Post.

“It’s one thing to provide additional security screening at the checkpoint, but shouldn’t we be able to do something more during the flight, just to make sure that we’re buying down risk the best way we can?” Pistole said. “We were trying to be forward leaning and a little more predictive in what the threats might be.”

The TSA screens more than 2 million passengers daily at 440 airports, employing a security force of 43,000 people.

Several members of Congress said on Monday that they were seeking more information on Quiet Skies. “We were not previously aware of the programme,” said Drew Pusateri, Democratic communications director on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “We’ll try to seek some answers from the administration.”

Republicans on the committee released a statement that said: “The Committee has been in contact with TSA leadership and requested additional briefings so our members and staff can get answers to critical questions regarding [federal air marshals’] policies and procedures regarding this programme.”

The programme raises questions about Americans’ willingness to sacrifice privacy to ensure safety, as they go about routine air travel within the United States and abroad.

TSA undercover agents are trained to observe passengers waiting to board flights and those already on the plane, using a lengthy checklist of behaviours that officials say collectively suggest the person might be a terrorist.

“It’s a programme where we identify people who have irregular travel patterns or exhibit behaviours that we know known terrorists have exhibited, so they come up as someone who is worth additional attention,” TSA spokesman Jim Gregory said.

He declined to provide details because “we’re not excited about putting more information out about a programme designed to catch bad people.”