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Anti-terror training teaches doormen, truckers to be vigilant

http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/nation/12324430.htm

In the last year, about 6,000 doormen, superintendents and other workers at residential buildings have received four hours of training from police officers in the basics of terror-spotting, part of a nationwide trend by unions, trade groups and homeland-security agencies to beef up anti-terror defenses with citizens' brigades. A similar effort to train Chicago doormen began this year, and truck drivers, recreational boaters and school bus drivers are among the other groups signing up to keep watch.

Another group being called upon to serve as extra eyes and ears is the nation's 3.2 million truck drivers.

The American Trucking Association runs a training program called Highway Watch, which has instructed 115,000 drivers in the basics of spotting a terror plot in the making and how to report it. In a one-hour session at truck terminals or in hotel meeting rooms, drivers learn to be on the lookout for people casing a truck terminal or asking suspiciously detailed questions.

If truckers see something suspicious, they are instructed to call a hotline. Most of the calls have been about accidents or hazardous road conditions, but in several instances, calls have been forwarded to the association's information-analysis center, whose staff includes former employees of federal intelligence and law-enforcement agencies.

In one case, an instructor at a Michigan truck-driving school who had been through the Highway Watch training program became suspicious of 10 men who claimed to have worked as truckers and had been sent to the school by a trucking company for evaluation.

But they lacked basic truck-driving skills, and their credentials, including their commercial driving licenses, could not be confirmed. The instructor contacted the call center.

The resulting FBI investigation found that many of the men had immigration violations, and several of their names appear on a terrorist watch list although the trucking association says some of the names are common and may refer to other people.