I was on a school trip flying out of IAD and the TSA guy standing near security looks at me and asks me if I'm feeling ok because I look nervous. I've flown probably over a dozen times in my life at that point and everything up until that question had been a very routine day at the airport so I wouldn't have had any reason to be so. I just looked at him and said no, and he replies back that he was just checking. I think he had just recently sat through a powerpoint on detecting suspicious people by confronting them. I'm guessing the thinking is if they ask someone if they are nervous, the less experienced smugglers and terrorists are going to react even more nervously to that kind of question. But you are at an airport. There are plenty of people flying for the first time and those that are just always apprehensive about flying. Little questions like that can surely help when trying to determine the mood or emotional state of someone (like the Israelis do) but it was a dumb question. Expecting your average, uneducated TSA officer to be able to pull off those sly interrogation techniques is asking a bit much from them.
