Justice Dept. Criticizes Terror Watch List

The Justice Department’s inspector general said yesterday that errors and inconsistencies in the U.S. list of known and suspected terrorists could be leading law enforcement agencies to detain innocent people while overlooking actual terrorists, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, April 4).

Established by the Bush administration in 2004, the watch list has grown by about 20,000 records each month.  As of April, it contained 720,000 entries.

About 270 million people are checked against the list each month, and those named on the list can be stopped from flying on airplanes or detained during normal traffic stops.

Inspector General Glenn Fine said the U.S. Terrorist Screening Center’s management of the list “continues to have significant weaknesses” resulting in frequent errors and slow response to complaints.

Justice Department auditors found errors that the center’s quality assurance division had not reported in 38 percent of records from a 105-entry sample.  Their report added that some errors could have originated in the FBI, which is allowed to enter international terrorist information directly into the database without scrutiny by the Terrorist Screening Center or the National Counterterrorism Center.

The auditors added that opportunities to nab terrorists could be missed because two versions of the watch list database were maintained without efforts to ensure that their contents matched, the Post reported.

About half of initial results in searches for specific names on the list were worthless, Fine said, suggesting that the government place a higher priority on preventing and addressing misidentifications.

The auditing team also found that screening agents such as Border Patrol officers, visa application reviewers and local police did not have access to 20 records in the sample.

“It is critical that the [Terrorist Screening Center] further improve the quality of its watch list data because of the consequences of inaccurate or missing information,” Fine said in a statement.  “Inaccurate, incomplete and obsolete watch list information can increase the risk of not identifying known or suspected terrorists, and it can also increase the risk that innocent persons will be stopped or detained.”

“The FBI remains committed to ensuring the timely and accurate collection of watch listing data,” FBI National Security Branch Executive Assistant Director Willie Hulon said in a replay to Fine. 

Hulon said the center placed high importance on ensuring the list was “accurate, correct and thorough,” adding that the office in July had finished vetting the Transportation Security Administration’s no-fly list, cutting it to about half its original size (Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, Sept. 7).

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