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TSA's Risk-based Approach to Security

George Naccara is betting that the lift of his risk-based reforms will overcome the drag of politics and bureaucracy. And the test bed for these innovations is Boston's Logan Airport

Castigated by all this (and further motivated by a close-up look at shoe-bomber Richard Reid when his flight was diverted to Boston in December 2001), Logan seemed to repent and to zealously pursue forgiveness in the form of improved credibility. "The terrorists had about a 75 to 80 percent chance of succeeding hereat any airport, reallyand they did," says Tom Kinton, airport director for Massport. "We know there's no silver bullet, but we realized that what we had to do is flip those odds. Make it a 40/60 or 30/70 proposition. Terrorists, like any competitive force, won't go anywhere where success is a 50/50 proposition or worse."

Almost three years to the day after terrorists used it as a launching point, Logan was named the safest airport in America by Airport Security Report. A year after that, Kinton won the coveted Airport Director of the Year award from another trade publication. Perhaps more important than the awards, though, the airport had developed what many call "the Boston reputation" for security. Logan has become something no one could have predicted it would right after 9/11: a successful and creative security innovator and an incubator for new security technology.

Logan volunteers to test whatever new security technology it can. The Terminal A baggage room is one example, but the airport also tried similar technology out front at security checkpoints, under a program called Cobra (Carry-On Baggage Real Time Assessment). Logan tested and now uses the explosives trace portal (ETP), or "puffer machine," at one checkpoint. The ETP shoots several bursts of air at a passenger's body. The jets of air dust up microscopic particles, which are analyzed for traces of explosives.

Taking input from screeners, Logan reconfigured the screening process at the terminals' security checkpoints and increased passenger throughput by 30 percent. Naccara will offer up how he did it to any airport that asks. Few seem to (more about that later). Logan is also the lone airport to mandate training employees and ticket agents in some basic behavioral profiling (think neighborhood watch rather than professional law enforcement), under a program called Logan Watch. The airport just started testing a new system that monitors the exit doors at gates and other restricted areas, looking for people going in through the out door and vice versa. TSA at Logan also wants to launch a broad networking project (wired and wireless) to link up security personnel and devices across the airport.