http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB109658864511433243,00.html The Wall Street Journal October 1, 2004 PAGE ONE Effort to Create Terror Watch List Is Falling Behind, Report Finds By ROBERT BLOCK and GARY FIELDS Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL October 1, 2004; Page A1 A government report concludes that efforts to protect U.S. borders and better identify terrorist suspects by compiling a single consolidated watch list -- from more than a dozen currently in use by federal agencies -- have badly foundered. The inspector general of the Homeland Security Department, in the sometimes scathing report, cites poor cooperation among many agencies and says his own agency failed "to play a lead role" in oversight. The report has been delivered to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and congressional leaders. Compiling a viable, unified list of terrorist suspects was mandated by Congress and ordered by President Bush after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Such a list is considered by law-enforcement agents as the most basic tool in their arsenal and vital for protecting the country. But now dozens of agencies, from the Federal Aviation Administration to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, continue to use different lists that sometimes contain outdated or incorrect information and even contradict each other. That can hamper the sharing of vital data and identifying of suspects -- and make it easier for terrorists to slip through cracks in the system, officials say. "The watch list is the poster child for information sharing for all our intelligence and government agencies," said Daniel B. Prieto, research director for the Homeland Security Partnership Initiative at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. "It has been the one project that is the most straightforward; the most defined, the most politically accepted idea, supported by every investigative commission since 9/11. If they can't get this one right, then shame on them." Mr. Prieto is a former Democratic congressional staffer who monitored the watch-list issue. An edited version of the inspector general's report is to be publicly released on Sunday. A copy was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The findings come amid an intense debate about improving intelligence in the wake of the 9/11 Commission's damning findings about government failures before and after the Sept. 11 attacks. Congress is wrestling over the creation of a new intelligence czar to better coordinate government counterterrorism efforts. Intelligence changes also have become a campaign issue, with the Bush administration asserting it has dramatically improved information-sharing among law-enforcement agencies. In the first presidential debate last night, Sen. John Kerry said the president had failed to support police, firefighters and other programs, saying, "This president thought it was more important to give the wealthiest people in America a tax cut rather than invest in homeland security. Those aren't my values. I believe in protecting America first." REPORT EXCERPTS Below is an excerpt of the draft report to be issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General on challenges in consolidating terrorist watch list information. Results in Brief DHS is not playing a lead role in consolidating terrorist watch list information. Instead, these consolidation activities are generally administered by the entities that were responsible for collecting and disseminating terrorist information prior to DHS's formation. DHS officials said that the new department lacked the resources and infrastructure to assume leadership for the consolidation. While this contention has merit, DHS can still play a more robust role than at present by overseeing and coordinating watch list consolidation activities across agency lines. Such oversight would help DHS fulfill the role required by the Homeland Security Act and better ensure that the past ad hoc approach to managing watch list consolidation is not continued. Stronger DHS leadership and oversight would also help improve current watch list consolidation efforts. Although some progress toward streamlined processes and enhanced interagency information sharing has been made, the consolidation is hampered by a number of issues that have not been coordinated effectively among interagency participants. Specifically, in the absence of central leadership and oversight for the watch list consolidation, planning, budgeting, staffing, and requirements definition continue to be dealt with on an ad hoc basis, posing a risk to successful accomplishment of the goal. A number of additional challenges, such as identifying links between violent criminals and terrorism, privacy, and duplicative federal activities related to watch list programs, could be pursued in the context of a centrally coordinated approach to watch list management. In response, the president said his administration had tripled spending on homeland security to $30 billion, worked with Congress to create the Homeland Security Department and added protection and guards to the nation's borders. "We're doing our duty to provide the funding," he said. In reference to American military action overseas, he added, "But the best way to protect this homeland is to stay on the offense." (See a related article3.) The inspector general's report notes that arguments over who is in charge of consolidating a terrorist database have dogged the creation of the watch list almost from the start. "While the requirement to consolidate the multiple watch lists was clear," it says, "the approach to accomplish it has not been so. Responsibility for consolidating multiple databases of watch lists has shifted among various federal organizations..." It further notes, "The manner through which the watch list consolidation has unfolded has not helped the nation break from its pattern of ad hoc approaches to counterterrorism." Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin says the law creating Homeland Security in 2002 gave the agency prime authority in the matter, and that subsequent presidential decrees, including one creating a Terrorist Screening Center under the FBI's purview, supplement, rather than supplant, the agency's authority. But a department spokesman rejects that conclusion, saying that the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation have the primary responsibility for creating the watch list, not Homeland Security. "It's the FBI that is charged with the lead role, not us," said Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roherkasse. The FBI declined to comment. The report also states that a number of organizations involved in the watch-list consolidation were "conducting a number of data mining activities without central oversight" to make sure they were not violating any policies or laws governing personal privacy. Data mining, or the analysis of large amounts of commercial and other data to extract new kinds of information useful to law enforcement, is very controversial and opposed by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. Mr. Ervin, a Texas Republican who is known for his unfailing politeness, came to Homeland Security from the State Department, where he served the same role after following President Bush to Washington in 2001. Mr. Ervin also worked in the White House from 1989 to 1991 under President George H.W. Bush. Mr. Ervin has issued several reports criticizing various efforts at Homeland Security. Last week, he released one on Transportation Security Administration screeners that found they did a poor job finding guns, knives and potential bombs smuggled through security checkpoints by covert testing from July to November 2003. A White House spokesman said the president appointed Mr. Ervin and appreciates his service. Law-enforcement agencies have long considered the creation of automated information or "watch lists" of potential or known terrorists and criminals as a vital tool to help protect the country. Names on the list are checked against the names of foreign nationals attempting to enter or already present in the U.S. The government's need for a unified, accurate and meaningful terrorist list first surfaced after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Investigators learned that two of the bombers, Sheik Rahman and Ali Mohammed, were on an FBI watch list but still got visas because the State Department and the old Immigration and Naturalization Service didn't have access to FBI data. After Sept. 11, a single watch list was considered vital to keeping terrorists from gaining access to the U.S. as well as to coordinate the fight against al Qaeda. But in April 2003, the investigative arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office, now known as the General Accountability Office, found that efforts to create such a list were going nowhere and said that the lack of a single master list was constraining efforts to protect and control U.S. borders. Part of the problem has been confusion over whose job it is to take the lead. In his 2003 State of the Union speech, President Bush called for the creation of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. The effort was meant to unite the heads of the FBI, Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense in developing a single entity for merging, analyzing and disseminating terrorist-threat information. The Threat Center, which answers to the director of the CIA, opened on May 1, 2003, two months after the Department of Homeland Security opened its doors. Less than five months later, on Sept. 16, 2003, Mr. Bush signed a directive calling for the creation of another body, the TSC, to take the work of the Threat Center and other government departments with terrorist information and produce a unified database that could be accessed and shared by all law-enforcement officials in the nation, from border guards in Arizona to detectives in New York City. Mr. Ridge, Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-CIA director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft signed a memorandum of understanding that the TSC would be run by the FBI and use the State Department's terrorist watch list as the backbone of a new database that would integrate all other existing data. TSC operatives would supposedly weed out duplications and obsolete data and remove people who in the past had been wrongly identified as terrorists or who had shared the same name as suspects. The TSC also was to work with new technologies to include identifying features such as fingerprints, distinguishing scars and birthmarks, as well as credit-card accounts and other data, to distinguish real suspects from others. The inspector general's report states that there has been some progress in the effort, noting that as of March 12, 2004, the database contains more than 100,000 names. It also says that the TSC has brought together representatives from the FBI, State Department, Homeland Security, Secret Service, Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection to help in consolidating the information into a form useful to share with law enforcement. However, the report finds there also have been problems in creating a technological system that meets the competing requirements of the different agencies contributing information. The head of the terrorist screening center, Donna Bucella, reported to Congress earlier this year that she was having problems getting some agencies, particularly at the Department of Defense, to provide the screening center with its terrorist information. The reason, in part, was that they were not satisfied with the security of the screening center's computer system. An FBI official familiar with the continuing problems over the Terrorist Screening Center and the consolidation of a terror watch list said there continues to be compatibility problems with the various databases the FBI is trying bring together. Some issues revolve around various computer systems being unable to communicate electronically. Other problems arise because of different criteria for placing someone on the list in the first place. The report comes on the heels of several high-profile snafus caused by proliferating watch lists. British singer Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, recently was stopped from traveling in the U.S. because his name was on one list -- but not the Transport Security Administration's official "No-Fly List." Similarly, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, Mass.) and Rep. Don Young (R., Alaska) have said they at times have been mistaken for terrorists at airline counters because of namesakes on the watch list. -- ----------------- R. A. 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