Airport screeners for the first time will begin roving through airports taking chemical swabs from passengers and their bags to check for explosives, the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday. The program, already tested at five airports after the attempted Christmas Day bomb plot on a U.S.-bound airliner, begins nationwide in a few weeks, TSA spokeswoman Sterling Payne said. Screeners will push carts with bomb-detection machines around airport gates and checkpoint lines to randomly check passengers' hands and carry-on bags for explosive residue.
Metal detectors now used at checkpoints can't spot materials such as the powdered explosives that bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly hid in his underwear to get through a checkpoint in Amsterdam's airport.
Abdulmutallab is accused of trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit, where it landed safely.
"Had Abdulmutallab been subjected to a (chemical) inspection, there's a high probability it would have picked up the explosives," RAND Corp. security analyst Brian Jenkins said. "The machines are extraordinarily sensitive."
Shortly after the Dec. 25 incident, the TSA ran a 17-day test at the five airports to see whether bomb-sensing equipment could be rolled on carts to check random passengers.
The microwave-oven-size detectors are usually stationary and are a common sight at airport checkpoints, where screeners swipe a small swab along a bag or a passenger's hand. The swab is then run through a reader that can detect minute amounts of explosives.
The machines are so sensitive that alarms can sound for passengers who have recently taken heart pills containing nitroglycerin, or if they have recently fired guns, Jenkins said. The machines also are used on checked luggage.
The TSA plans to spend $40 million next year to buy 800 new briefcase-size bomb sensors that are even more portable, according to the 2011 budget.
The TSA's Payne called the sensors "flexible screening technology" that can be used on passengers "throughout the airport."
Using the sensors randomly on passengers as they wait to board airplanes or in security lines will "create increasing uncertainty for the adversaries, which is always positive," Jenkins said.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which strongly opposes screening machines that create images of passengers under their clothing, does not object to the sensors. "That's less invasive," ACLU policy counsel Mike German said.
Airline passengers have noticed the sensors used increasingly at checkpoints.
Michael Nugent, 65, of Rochester, found it annoying when a screener tested his shoes for explosives last month at Dayton International Airport after they went through an X-ray machine. Screeners are "reactive because of what happened on Christmas Day," Nugent said.
When photographer Margaret Bowles of Houston went through security at Newark International Airport last month, a screener checked each lens and camera body in her bag.
"Usually they just swipe the edge of the bag," Bowles, 57, said. Checking each item "is a little more inconvenient, but I don't really blame them for being more thorough given what happened."
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