Bomb plot spurs a 'new normal' for flying

But some security analysts note that even if such liquid explosive-detection technology were available at every airport, it may not have thwarted the British plot because the perpetrators allegedly planned to use liquids that were innocuous in isolation and only lethal when mixed on the plane.

"A well-trained workforce that has instinct, experience ... and good gut is just as, if not more important, than the technology," says Frank Cilluffo, head of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. "But it's not an either-or proposition. You need both, and to some extent you're always going to be reactive unless you can get in the minds of the terrorists."

Even critics who say that DHS has been slow in exploiting new technologies point to Congress as a large part of the problem. It gave DHS a huge mandate – in some cases even dictating the exact number of employees it could hire and the specifics of what they were to do.

Then it began cutting funds. For instance, in 2003, the TSA had authority and funds to hire 50,000 screeners. Next year, Congress had authorized only 42,000.

"By Congress making the screening tasks more important, it probably prevented [TSA] from going in the direction most of us think they should have, which is focusing on behavioral profiling, looking for suspicious behavior, the way many Europeans and the Israelis do," says Gregory Treverton, a senior analyst at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif.

This week, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff announced that the TSA planned to train more of its transportation security officers (TSOs) in psychological profiling and behavioral detection. Currently, a pilot project called SPOT – Screening Passenger Observation Techniques – is under way at a dozen airports. Five hundred behavior detection officers should be in place at airports around the US by the beginning of next year, says TSA spokeswoman Amy Kudwa. The goal is to replace contract workers that check tickets and IDs with trained TSA behavior detection officers. That would be the largest expansion of TSA's role since it was created in 2003, and it will require more money from Congress.

Officers who work the front lines at airports say the change is a good first step, but still not enough. They've recommended that all 43,000 TSOs be trained in behavior detection.

"At the checkpoint, we're already in your face, we're already in your bag. We're on the front line and should be trained the way they are in Israel," says AJ Castilla, a TSO at Boston's Logan Airport. "What TSA is doing is minimal. [The behavior detectors] are not going to be at every checkpoint, so there will be huge holes, plus they're going to be in uniform so the terrorists will know who they are and will research them and avoid them."

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