Edition: U.S. / Global

Arab-Americans Protest 'Profiling' at Airports

Published: August 11, 1997

Last May 24, Dr. Hassan Abbass, a Veterans Affairs Department surgeon, and his wife arrived at Hopkins International Airport in Cleveland at daybreak to leave for a long-awaited Caribbean vacation.

At the check-in counter, the couple were pulled aside by a US Airways official and told they would have to submit to a careful search before they could board the plane.

That meant, Dr. Abbass recalled, having their bags opened and all their possessions pulled out in front of the other passengers, who did not have to undergo such a search.

When they arrived in Baltimore after the first leg of their trip, their bags were segregated from the others and left on the tarmac, to be loaded onto the plane to St. Maarten only after they had boarded.

Dr. Abbass said that he and his wife, Julia, were infuriated at being singled out and he was sure of the reason for it. A United States citizen, he was born in Syria, and his United States passport showed several visits to relatives there.

He is one of thousands of Americans of Arab or Middle Eastern heritage who have complained that a secretive and wide-scale ''profiling'' system sponsored by the Government and aimed at preventing air terrorism has caused them to be unfairly selected for extra scrutiny at airports because of their names, birthplaces or ethnic backgrounds.

Profiling, or trying to make an educated guess about who might be a terrorist masquerading as an ordinary traveler, is generally performed by check-in personnel who rely on a confidential written list of characteristics.

The list is one of several tools used by airline security authorities. Others include X-ray machines, metal detectors and a new generation of chemical ''sniffers'' that can detect traces of explosives.

But profiling is the only method that has raised fundamental questions of how a free society balances security considerations with civil liberties and the desire to avoid offensive stereotyping.

The use of profiling at airports has also resulted in angry exchanges on two levels: at departure gates when people feel that they are unfairly being singled out, and between civil rights groups and the airlines over how frequently the practice occurs.

After years of fending off complaints, the Federal Aviation Administration recently decided to require the airlines to move toward a computerized profiling system that officials say does not allow for discrimination based on ethnic background.

The new system, known as Computerized Assisted Passenger Screening, or CAPS, would replace the current method of allowing individual security people at the gate to decide who could be a risk based on written manuals, which allow wide discretion.

The CAPS system, which could take as long as two years to put into effect, was reviewed by the Justice Department to insure that it had no illegal biases, said Rebecca Trexler, a spokeswoman for the F.A.A.

The courts have sent a mixed message about the constitutionality of profiles, allowing their occasional, limited use, mainly in cases involving likely drug couriers and common criminals.

There has been little litigation involving cases like that of Dr. Abbass, who has filed a discrimination lawsuit based on the current system, which has been in place since 1995.

''I can't understand how I am trusted to operate on gulf war veterans at the hospital, but when I go to an airport I'm labeled a security risk,'' said Dr. Abbass, who works at a medical center in Cleveland. ''It's very sad to see how Arab-Americans are singled out in America. Tim McVeigh could have walked through that checkpoint ahead of me.''

As a Russian Jewish emigre, his wife, a fellow physician, was especially chagrined, Dr. Abbass said.

One senior Federal official involved in airport security who insisted on anonymity said the decision to use some indicators that single out Americans with Arab or Middle Eastern associations was unavoidable. The official said that much of today's terrorism was rooted in Middle East politics and that it was logical to include a Middle Eastern association in any program intended to select a segment of passengers.

James B. Weidner, a lawyer with the New York firm of Rogers & Wells who is also an expert on terrorism, said that he understood the unhappiness of Arab-Americans who were singled out for higher scrutiny at airports, but that he believed that it was a necessary burden.

Mr. Weidner, who was counsel to the Federal panel that investigated the bombing of Pan American Flight 103, which exploded over Scotland in 1988, said, ''Society has a right to protect itself against a perceived danger.'' Giving extra scrutiny to people with Middle Eastern connections, even though they are Americans, he added, is a rational and reasonable response.

''We are a free society,'' Mr. Weidner said, ''and terrorists can depend on using that to their advantage. What we have here is an inherent collision between that free society and security needs.''

Nonetheless, officials, sensitive to appearances, try to dismiss or minimize the notion that they emphasize an ethnic component in their current profiling system.