DVD explains signs of terrorist behavior

Is your neighbor a terrorist?

What about your boss, or your co-worker, or maybe the unshaven guy in a baseball cap who's been taking pictures of the power plant with a telephoto lens while hiding in a moving truck full of fertilizer for the past couple of weeks?

Could be. But who's to know? One man's suspicious behavior is another man's typical conduct for a tourist, farmer or handyman. Right?

Not so fast.

Officials at UNLV's Institute for Security Studies have come up with a list of seven signs a terrorist is likely to exhibit. They're included on a new informational DVD that local security officials released Wednesday.

These officials want the public's help in identifying possible terrorists. They're distributing 20,000 copies of the DVD, a slick production that implores viewers to get involved.

"We all have good instincts," says the DVD's narrator, Fox 5 news anchor Shelley Bruner. "If we listen to these instincts, we might just make a difference."

Las Vegas police Lt. Tom Monahan, who heads up the Southern Nevada Counter-Terrorism Center, pitched the idea to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas institute a few months back.

Monahan said local officials have been asking the public to report suspicious behavior since not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But they've done a lousy job, he said, of defining exactly what suspicious behavior is.

The DVD fixes that.

The video, also available in a Spanish version narrated by Univision's Marines Linera, lists the seven suspicious behaviors. It pointedly does not lay out the profile of who might be a terrorist: no mentions of race, appearance or nationality at all.

The officials said that was done purposely. Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, was as American as you can get.

Dr. Dale Carrison, chairman of the Nevada Commission on Homeland Security, said the goal is to get people involved.

"We're very complacent," he said. "We've got more interest in what some movie star's kid looks like than we do in our own security."

Officials plan to mail out 11,000 of the 20,000 copies. The rest are available to anyone who wants them.

The target audience includes meter readers, paramedics and the cable guy, pretty much anyone who interacts with the public, Carrison said.

Rick Eaton, director of the Nevada Department of Homeland Security, pointed out that there are many potential terrorist targets in Nevada. The video, which features state and local law enforcement officials, will be distributed only in Nevada.

The signs that a terrorist might exhibit are pretty straightforward. They include surveillance, planning and rehearsal.

As the video explains, these are the steps a terrorist would typically take in advance of an attack.

He or she would check out an area, gather information, perhaps test the security situation, make specific plans, rehearse those plans, and perform the act.

Real-world examples might be a stranger taking lots of photos of a government building, or a water treatment plant, or a power plant.

The stranger also might be seen by neighbors loading chemical drums into his garage or summoning emergency personnel for minor problems so as to test response times.

But aren't lots of these just normal behaviors? Isn't there a danger of going overboard here, of asking folks to report their neighbors, or just some funny looking stranger, to the cops when they're not doing anything illegal?

Yes, that's true, said Monahan, the local cop.

But a little paranoia, he said, can be a good thing.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.