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From Los Angeles Times

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TSA launching behavior-detection program at Boston airport

As part of a pilot program, screeners will engage passengers at Logan International Airport in conversation in an effort to detect suspicious behavior.

by Andrew Seidman, Washington Bureau

August 17, 2011

Reporting from Washington

For the next two months at Logan International Airport in Boston, passengers will be casually greeted by Transportation Security Administration officials. But the officers aren't there for a friendly "hello" — they're trying to deter and detect passengers who pose a risk to aviation security.

As part of the TSA's new behavior-detection pilot program that started this week, screeners are engaging each passenger in Terminal A in casual conversation in an effort to detect suspicious behavior. After passengers provide their boarding pass and ID, they have to answer a few questions from TSA officers who have received two weeks of training.

"It's one layer of security that will allow us to provide additional screening and concentrate on passengers who may pose a higher risk," TSA spokesman Greg Soule said.

The program is an evolution of the TSA's Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT, Program, which started at Logan in 2003 and has expanded to 160 airports. It has helped arrest 2,000 criminals, but none has been charged with terrorism.

Under the SPOT program, TSA screeners interrogate individuals only after they have been identified as suspicious. Now, at least at Logan, everyone is a target. After 60 days, the TSA will decide whether to expand the program to other airports.

Paul Ekman, professor emeritus at UC San Francisco, who helped develop the SPOT program, said his research indicated that talking to passengers "loosens things up," increasing the chances that they will show signs that they're concealing something. The subject matter of the discussion is irrelevant; all that matters is that the passenger is speaking.

"If all you're doing is watching people standing in line, that's better than doing nothing, and they've had quite a bit of success," Ekman said. "But I would expect that by asking a few fairly innocent questions — 'What's the purpose of your trip?' — that will increase accuracy."

Ekman said that when typical federal employees were asked to detect deception, they failed miserably. That all changes with "an hour's training," he said. Ekman added that the TSA would continue to use a tool developed for the SPOT program that allowed officials to identify "micro-expressions" — facial expressions that occur in 1/25 of a second that are designed to conceal emotion.

Others are skeptical that a run-of-the-mill TSA official can develop the detection techniques necessary to spot suspicious behavior.

Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and an outspoken critic of the TSA, said that although some people were capable of detecting deception, it was much more difficult to teach the art.

"If you're a TSA screener, if you ever meet a terrorist at all, it will be the only one you meet in your whole career," Reynolds said, noting that terrorists are difficult to identify to the untrained eye. In contrast, "if you're a cop on the beach, you deal with drug dealers all the time," making it easier to identify a drug dealer.

Soule said the TSA was working with experts in the field who used behavior detection as part of their job.

It remains unclear whether a short conversation can produce any meaningful information. At Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv in Israel, every passenger is questioned at length before boarding a plane. The difference, Ekman noted, is that 50,000 people board planes in Israel each day, compared with 2 million in the U.S.

"Asking a few questions is better than asking none," Ekman said. "If you could ask many questions, it might be better than a few, but we don't really know that."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tsa-logan-20110818,0,105977,print.story

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ATF denies it promoted Fast and Furious supervisors

The agency says three officials involved in the guns scandal were moved laterally to jobs in its Washington headquarters.

by Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau

August 17, 2011

Reporting from Washington

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Wednesday that three supervisors in its controversial Fast and Furious gun-trafficking investigation were transferred to lateral jobs, not promoted.

"They did not receive salary or grade increases, nor did they assume positions with greater responsibility," the agency said in a short statement.

The Times reported Tuesday that William G. McMahon, William D. Newell and David Voth, three key supervisors in the Phoenix-run investigation that went awry, were promoted to management positions at the ATF's Washington headquarters.

After that report, the House committee investigating Fast and Furious asked the ATF to explain the new jobs and clarify whether the men had been promoted. On Wednesday, the agency's acting director, Kenneth E. Melson, told the Oversight and Government Reform Committee staff that the jobs were not considered promotions because no one got a raise. Then the ATF issued its statement.

Operation Fast and Furious was intended to identify Mexican drug cartel leaders and gun-smuggling routes across the border. The ATF allowed straw purchasers to buy weapons in the U.S., planning to track the guns to Mexico and drug cartel leaders. Instead, many of the weapons vanished and turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S., including at the slaying of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona last December.

Melson announced McMahon's new job in an email Sunday, citing him for the "skills and abilities" he demonstrated throughout his career.

Three ATF agents, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation, told The Times Monday that they were amazed at what they viewed as promotions to headquarters.

Also Monday, three ATF public affairs spokesmen did not to return calls for comment.

On Wednesday, however, the AFT said in its statement: "Media reports inaccurately characterized personnel changes … as promotions."

The ATF said McMahon, field operations deputy assistant director, was reassigned to a position with the Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations, filling a spot that had been vacant for more than a year. It said the reassignment took place May 13.

The agency also said Newell, who ran the ATF's Arizona and New Mexico field office during Fast and Furious, was reassigned to the Office of Management to assist with congressional and inspector general's investigations into the failed operation.

And it said Voth was reassigned to a headquarters position.

"These transfers/reassignments have never been described as promotions in any of the documents announcing them," the ATF's statement said.

Fast and Furious ran from November 2009 to January 2011. Hundreds of firearms vanished on both sides of the border. Nearly 200 were recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, and the Justice Department said the ATF had told it that weapons also were recovered in at least 11 "violent crime instances" in this country, from Arizona to Texas.

No cartel leaders were ever arrested.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-atf-guns-20110818,0,69185,print.story

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Dugard-inspired bill would keep 'dangerous' prisoners locked up

"Although we can't undo the mistakes of the past, we can make systemic improvements so that all Californians are safer and that victims know government is working to protect them," said Sen. Ted Gaines (R-Roseville), who introduced the bill Wednesday. "Senate Bill 391 is for those Californians who will never become victims because society's most dangerous criminals are kept where they should be -- behind bars."

Phillip Garrido was on federal parole for a 1976 kidnap and rape when he and his wife abducted Dugard as the then-11-year-old was walking to the school bus in her South Lake Tahoe neighborhood. They held her for 18 years in a ramshackle compound in Antioch, where she gave birth to two daughters after being raped repeatedly by Garrido.

The proposed bill would reverse a 2008 state Supreme Court decision that requires the California parole board to look primarily at convicted felons' behavior while in prison and not the crimes that put them there, according to a written statement by Gaines and several other elected officials.

Also this week, the Oakland Tribune reported that police in Hayward interviewed the Garridos in connection with the 1988 abduction of 9-year-old Michaela Garecht. The Garridos, who were each interviewed for more than two hours, maintained their innocence in that crime.

Shortly after Dugard resurfaced in August 2009, law enforcement agents scoured their home for clues to other crimes, but nothing was found.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/08/dugard-inspired-bill-would-keep-dangerous-prisoners-locked-up-.html

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From Google News

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Tampa Bomb Plot Teen's Friend Says He Was 'Just Venting'

A Florida 17-year-old charged with plotting to kill school officials and students with bombs was "just venting anger" and would never have gone through with the attack, a friend of his claims.

Jared Cano wrote a manifesto that detailed his plans for an attack starting at 5 a.m. next Tuesday, the first day of classes at Freedom High School in Tampa, Fla., the school Cano was expelled from in March 2010. The unnamed friend was at the home of Cano when he was arrested on Tuesday.

"He wouldn't go and do something like that. He'd say he's going to in the heat of the moment but that's his way of venting, I guess," Cano's friend told ABC Action News in Tampa. "I think he was just venting anger on a piece of paper."

The two friends would often play video games at the home where Cano lives with his mother, and were planning to do just that on Tuesday when police arrived at the home to arrest t he teenager. The friend said that he initially thought the arrest may have to do with marijuana charges, a drug Cano publicly admits to admire on his Facebook page; he has also been arrested for possession of marijuana in the past.

Cano has an "extensive criminal record," according to police, who confirmed that he had broken into a house and stolen a firearm. The victim of that theft, a convicted felon, did not press charges. Cano had also been charged with the possession of marijuana, carrying a concealed weapon and a taser.

Police said on Wednesday they recovered bomb making material from the home including fuses, timers, shrapnel, accelerant and plastic tubing -- though no firearms were found.

Cano's friend says that he does believe that his friend could have written a manifesto detailing such a plan to kill dozens at his former school, but it would only be a way for Cano to vent his frustration and anger.

"He doesn't know how to vent," the friend told ABC Action News. "I told him, 'Dude, go in your room, scream in your pillow or something.'"

According to Christopher Farkas, Freedom High School principal for the past three years, Cano was suspended from that school in March 2010 for an off-campus incident. Police confirmed that he was expelled from school for his previous burglary.

Police said they have no reason to believe that anyone else was involved in the bomb plot. They reported that the family had been cooperative. Castor said that Cano's mother, who he lives with, didn't know that her son had materials to build a bomb in his room.

Cano has been charged with threatening to throw, project, place or discharge a destructive device. He also faces charges for possession of bomb-making materials, cultivation of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of marijuana.

"The number of casualties they could have caused, the bomb team described it as serious injury including death," Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor said. "He had the ability to do some serious harm at Freedom High School on the first day of school … He had a fuel source, fuel sources; he had shrapnel; he had tubing to make the pipe bombs and he also had fusing and timing devices."

Police said that Cano specified in his manifesto his goal of surpassing the number of students who were killed and injured during the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

Cano's former girlfriend Nicolette French told ABC News that she remembers Cano recently referencing Columbine. Now she wishes that he had been more direct when talking about it.

"I would have helped him get through it instead of him sitting there and actually wanting to harm other people and harm himself," French said.

The arrest on Tuesday came just hours after an anonymous tipster alerted police about Cano's alleged plot. After the tip came into Tampa Police Department's call center that Cano was plotting to bomb the school, detectives immediately called a bomb squad to his apartment.

"Being in this business long enough, it's hard to say that you don't … you can almost expect anything," he said. "It's hard to have surprises nowadays. But the reality is ... No I didn't pick that kid up."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/tampa-bomb-plot-teens-friend-venting/story?id=14330397

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