U.S. changing airtravelers screening to more 'intel' based

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U.S. changing the way air travelers are screened

Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 2, 2010; 10:25 PM

The Obama administration is abandoning its policy of using nationality alone to determine which U.S.-bound international air travelers should be subject to additional screening and will instead select passengers based on possible matches to intelligence information, including physical descriptions or a particular travel pattern, senior officials said Thursday.

After the attempted bombing of an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight on Christmas Day, U.S. officials hastily decided that passengers from or traveling through 14 specified countries would be subjected to secondary searches. Critics have since called the measures discriminatory and overly burdensome, and the administration has faced pressure to refine its approach.

Under the new system, screeners will stop passengers for additional security if they match certain pieces of known intelligence. The system will be "much more intel-based," a senior administration official said, "as opposed to blunt force."

"It's much more tailored to what the intelligence is telling us, what the threat is telling us, as opposed to stopping all individuals of a particular nationality or all individuals using a particular passport," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On Christmas Day, Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to ignite explosives sewn into his underwear as Northwest Airlines Flight 253 prepared to land, but the device failed and he was subdued by fellow passengers. Abdulmutallab has allegedly said he was trained by an al-Qeada affiliate in Yemen.The case exposed gaps in the government's ability to identify people who might pose a threat.

Days later, the administration ordered a significant increase in secondary searches, requiring all passengers from or traveling through Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen to undergo extra security at the airport. Travelers from countries considered state sponsors of terrorism -- Cuba, Syria, Iran and Sudan -- were subjected to the same screening, including pat-downs and additional bag checks.

Airlines had warned that the measures instituted after the Christmas Day incident would need to be eased before the busy summer travel season. And critics objected that the added scrutiny amounted to a pretext for racial profiling that could potentially affect 675 million people, including American Muslims and religious pilgrims


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