Terroriists in your lunchroom?

Workforce, March, 2003 by Carroll Lachnit

As the country's terrorism alert level jumped to orange and people stocked up on duct tape, employers got a frightening bulletin of their own to ponder. On February 12, the FBI and the National Infrastructure Protection Center warned critical industries, including energy, telecommunications, and banking and finance, to check out their employees in case they might be terrorist sleeper-cell operatives "who may have been working there for years, waiting for the signal to strike," as the Associated Press put it.

But two security and screening consultants warn employers not to overreact. It's not a good idea to start rifling employee files in search of clues pointing to a terrorist past, they say.

"Please give me a break," says Michael G. Cherkasky, CEO of New York-based Kroll Inc., which provides a variety of security-consulting services to organizations. "We think you have to have adequate background screening," he says. But companies should measure their actual risk, and for most employers, the biggest worry is not that terrorists are lurking in the lunchroom.

Surreptitious checking-up could be a legal problem for employers, too. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, employers must have signed consent from employees before background-checking firms can look into their past, says Eric Boden, CEO of HireRight, an Irvine, California-based background-checking company. There are also EEOC considerations, he says. "You can't use racial profiling, such as an Arab surname," as the basis for background checking.

While Boden wouldn't be drawn into a comparison between the employer alert and the concurrent duct-tape frenzy, he questioned the working-terrorist premise. "My understanding was that most of the 9/11 terrorists weren't working," he says. "They had money being funneled to them from Al Qaeda and other sympathizers. They weren't working at Burger King to fund their project."