WASHINGTON, 18 September 2003 — Amid criticism of the government’s past failures to share sensitive counter-terror information, the Bush administration unveiled plans Tuesday for a master database of “known and suspected terrorists’’ that would be used in background checks around the world.
The FBI-run Terrorist Screening Center will cull information from nearly a dozen watch lists held by agencies throughout the federal government to provide “one-stop shopping’’ for US consular officials, airport workers, border agents, local police and some private industries, officials said.
One of the key goals of the project is to avoid the type of communication breakdown that occurred prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, when the CIA placed two of the future hijackers on its own terrorist watch list but failed to immediately notify the FBI and immigration authorities. By the time other agencies were informed in August 2001, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi had already entered the United States. They would later help hijack the flight that crashed into the Pentagon.
The master watch list will be tapped by thousands of federal law enforcement officers and many others — from small-town cops making traffic stops to airport workers screening passengers to personnel managers checking on applicants for jobs at nuclear plants.
Larry Mefford, head of counterterrorism and counterintelligence at the FBI, said during a press briefing Tuesday that the new database “represents an evolution in our ability to identify potential terrorists and stop them before they can do us harm.’’
The move — which came in the form of a directive signed Tuesday by President Bush — was greeted with cautious optimism by many lawmakers and homeland security experts, who had criticized the administration for not creating the database sooner and had raised doubts about the government’s ability to handle the task.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a frequent critic of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, said “having a single watch list is Counterterrorism 101,’’ but said “it’s up to the FBI to demonstrate the technological savvy needed to maintain a list that can be accessed by all the appropriate agencies.’’ A General Accounting Office report released in April found that nine federal agencies maintain 12 separate watch lists that include information about suspected terrorists. The new screening center and its database is the latest in a series of new government entities created by the Bush administration to monitor and thwart suspected terrorists. They include the Terrorist Threat Integration Center — a joint venture of the CIA and FBI — and the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, which is also run by the FBI. The new database is set to be operational on Dec.1.
