TSA creates watchlist of suspicious travelers

WASHINGTON — The Transportation Security Administration has created a new secret watchlist to monitor people who may be targeted as potential threats at airport checkpoints simply because they have swatted away security screeners’ hands or otherwise appeared unruly.

A five-page directive obtained by The New York Times said actions that pose physical danger to security screeners — or other contact that the agency described as “offensive and without legal justification” — could land travelers on the watchlist, which was created in February.

“An intent to injure or cause physical pain is not required, nor is an actual physical injury,” according to the directive that was issued in March by Darby LaJoye, the agency’s assistant administrator for security operations.

According to the directive, people who loiter suspiciously near security checkpoints could be put on the watchlist. So could those who present what the document vaguely described as “challenges to the safe and effective completion of screening.”

But on its own, the watchlist cannot be used to prevent passengers from boarding flights, nor can it impel extra screening at security checkpoints, according to the document.

On Thursday, lawmakers demanded more details about the watchlist.

“What I don’t want — what I think no American would want — is an excuse for unfair, secret profiling that doesn’t even offer a chance for people to contest their name appearing on such a list,” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., said during a House homeland security subcommittee hearing.

So far, the names of fewer than 50 people have been put on the watchlist, said Kelly Wheaton, a TSA deputy chief counsel.