TERRORISM Truckers become extra eyes for police

Truckers who want to volunteer go to a seminar.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Gary Prewitt doesn't much look like the next line of defense in the fight against terrorism.
At 62, he is an over-the-road truck driver far removed from his days with the U.S. Army in Vietnam. But Prewitt is one of more than 10,000 truckers nationwide who have joined the anti-terrorism movement through a federally funded program called Highway Watch.
Prewitt hopes the voluntary endeavor, in which he and others in the program are asked to constantly be on the lookout for suspicious activities, might someday prevent the kind of tragedy that struck on Sept. 11, 2001.
"Truckers are the eyes and ears of everybody in America," said Prewitt, of Independence, Mo. "We see everything out there."
So the federal government decided to tap the industry.
In March, the Transportation Security Administration -- which is under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security -- awarded a $19.3 million contract to the American Trucking Associations and asked it to beef up its existing Highway Watch program.
The goal is to enlist and train as many as 400,000 people by March and as many as 3 million over the next several years.
Not only truckers
The participants won't just be truckers. They will be construction workers, tollbooth operators, bus drivers and people representing all walks of the highway sector.
"It's a program designed to put as many eyes as possible on the nation's highways," said George Burruss, president and chief executive officer of the Missouri Motor Carriers Association.
What they are looking for is anything odd or suspicious that might be the root of terrorist activity: "broken-down" trucks parked near schools or malls, wires hanging from the sides of fuel tanks, people taking pictures of warehouses or power plants.
"Truckers are very good observers," said Mike Russell, vice president for public affairs with the Virginia-based American Trucking Associations. "Doing this is really just adding a facet to what we're doing anyway: Keeping an eye on what's in front of us."
"We can be millions of extra sets of eyes and ears for law enforcement."
Watch program
The Highway Watch program started in May 1998. Originally, it was purely safety oriented and did not have a security or anti-terrorism component. Truckers were instructed to properly report crashes, bad weather, aggressive drivers and other safety concerns.
Almost immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, the security and anti-terrorism component was added. Now, on the heels of the contract with the Transportation Security Administration, Russell said the American Trucking Associations is ready to make Highway Watch an even greater priority and "do our very best to see that a truck is never used as a weapon."
Here is how the program works:
Truckers who want to volunteer attend a two-hour seminar put on by law-enforcement officials or former FBI agents such as Jeff Beatty.
Beatty, who also spent six years in the CIA's counterterrorism center, likes to begin his presentation by showing captured footage of terrorists plotting and practicing attacks on highways.
"That's a good attention-getter," he said recently by phone.
Identifies activities
Beatty identifies activities that could be suspicious, such as an individual videotaping the underside of a bridge. He warns volunteers against racial profiling, saying terrorist behavior could just as easily come from someone who looks like Timothy McVeigh as someone who looks like Osama bin Laden.
Beatty advises the volunteers to be vigilant without being vigilantes, saying it is not their job to intervene physically.
"The key to this whole thing is good observation," Beatty said. "We need to be ubiquitous.
"People generally feel powerless against terrorism. This takes away some of that powerlessness."
If truckers notice safety concerns or suspicious activity, they use a secret toll-free number to contact the Highway Watch national call center in Kentucky. An operator there verifies the caller's identity -- each participant has a Highway Watch ID number -- and routes the call to a law enforcement agency.
The center fields about 200 calls each month, a number that is climbing steadily. Highway Watch data show that, over the last three months, about 53 percent of the calls have been about road hazards and such activities as wrecks and medical emergencies. About 24 percent have been about abandoned or disabled vehicles.
Only about 5 percent of the calls have been about potential terrorism, but Beatty said there have been calls about people doing what he called "significant suspicious activity."
Though Beatty declined to provide details, he said: "We've been very happy with the response we're getting so far. It gives law enforcement a chance to turn the hunter into the hunted."
So far, the program has attracted more than 400 truckers from Missouri and 270 from Kansas.
George Wood, the safety supervisor for Kansas City, Mo.-based Jack Cooper Transport, drove a truck for 25 years before moving to his current position. He went through Highway Watch training in April 2003 and hopes to persuade at least 10 percent of the company's 1,100 drivers nationwide to join.
"There isn't a whole lot of awareness yet," said Wood, who lives in Parkville. "As much as we'd like to get it on the front burner, it hasn't gotten there yet. But it's a great program."
So much so, Wood said, that driving on the streets and highways isn't the same anymore. It used to be that when he passed a fuel tanker, "It was just another truck."
"Now, I guarantee I've got my eyes all over it."