Dec 8th, 2003, 10:05 AM
SAY, WE SHOULD HAVE A CABINET LEVEL POST TO DEAL WITH THIS!
Terrorist risk lists leave gap, even now
By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Nearly two years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, key federal agencies have not consolidated a dozen separate "watch lists" intended to keep terrorists out of the country, even though sharing that kind of information might have caught two of the suicide hijackers before they carried out their plot.
The Department of Homeland Security says it is working to combine lists of potential security risks maintained by at least nine agencies, but it has no timetable for finishing the job. Officials say critics underestimate the complexity of the task, especially technical problems involving computers and databases not designed to share information. They add that it is important to verify accuracy among lists that often name the same person with different spellings, birth dates or hometowns.
If federal agencies had been sharing information and using a master watch list, "then 9/11 might not have happened," says Ivo Daalder, a homeland-security expert at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. "I find it criminal that it hasn't happened yet."
Making all lists of people-to-watch accessible to all the intelligence agencies became a priority after Sept. 11 revealed critical lapses in information-sharing between the FBI and CIA.
Last month, a congressional report criticized the CIA for waiting until August 2001 to give the FBI detailed information about Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi. The two men, who were hijackers on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, were placed on a watch list. But by then they had lived for several months in San Diego.
Watch lists are used by consular officials abroad who check names of those applying for visas to enter the USA, agents who check those crossing U.S. borders and airline workers who check people making flight reservations.
"The administration is getting closer to the end of its planning process," says Gordon Johndroe of the Homeland Security Department. "But this is a very complicated issue, and we're not going to rush something out that isn't completely effective."
Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democratic leader on homeland security in Congress, says the lack of progress is "an intolerable failure that exposes the American public to unacceptable risk."
Lieberman, who is running for president, has called on President Bush to sign an executive order requiring consolidation of the lists by the end of the year. In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge last week, he demanded a timetable for when the work would be done.
Bush and Ridge have not responded directly to Lieberman.
The task is daunting. "It's a huge problem," says Roger Kay, a technology analyst with IDC, a market research company in Framingham, Mass. Some companies that have merged have taken years to combine databases not nearly as complex. But if the government made integrating the systems a priority, it could put as much money as needed into the project and hire the world's best experts and get it done, Kay says.
"It's not a surprise that with 12 different lists held by nine different agencies that there have been difficulties in consolidating those lists," says Asha George of the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security.
"On the other hand, it's been two years."
Contributing: Contributing: Toni Locy
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