TSA: Threat prompted gate-screening program

WASHINGTON -- The Transportation Security Administration is worried about a group of terrorists sneaking weapons components through an airport checkpoint, assembling them after going through security and bringing a weapon on an airplane, an agency official said Friday.

Douglas Hofsass, head of commercial-airport security for TSA, told an airports conference that the TSA recently launched a stepped-up program of screening randomly chosen passengers at airport gates partly in response to that threat.

Under the program, uniformed TSA screeners pull some passengers out of lines as they are waiting to board planes to view their IDs, search their belongings or check them for weapons with a handheld metal detector.

The TSA is "concerned about the ability of multiple people bringing individual items through the checkpoint," Hofsass told about 100 airport executives at a Washington, D.C., conference center.

The decision to launch the gate-screening program was partly driven by "intelligence and threats," Hofsass said.

But the program has generated concern among airport officials who fear passengers will feel harassed by the gate screening.

Hofsass said most questions he has fielded in recent conference calls with airport executives focused on the gate-screening program. Gate screening was done extensively in the year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but was greatly scaled back in 2003.

Hofsass' comments expand on an explanation the TSA gave 10 days ago after USA TODAY obtained a TSA memo describing the new gate-screening program.

TSA spokesman Greg Soule said at the time that the program was not driven by any specific alerts but that the TSA was trying to protect against "insider threats." Airport employees, who do not go through security checkpoints, could bring a weapon to an airport gate and hand it to someone about to board a plane.

At the conference Friday, Krys Bart, CEO of the Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority in Nevada, told Hofsass that passengers at her airport "feel intimidated" and "harassed" by the gate screening.