Recently went through this at AMS on a NW flight - by the time I made it to interrogation, the general line was actually shorter than the elite line so I went general.

I'd like to point out that the "interrogation" administered by the security folks is exactly what we should be doing in the US, rather than this mindless "take off your shoes so that we can stare slack-jawed at the xray screen" approach favored by the TSA. Someday we'll figure out that shoes don't hijack/bomb aircraft, people hijack/bomb aircraft.

The 1:1 interview, with the interviewer picking up on body language that
something weird is going on, is the way to go in my experience. Our American focus on technology rather than on the people is going to get us every time.