Timelines for consolidation of terrorist lists conflict

A dozen watch lists of suspected terrorists will be unified into one database by the end of this year and made accessible immediately to federal, state and local officials, according to the official who heads the center overseeing the consolidation.

"We are currently in phase three, which concludes before the end of the year," Donna Bucella, director of the Terrorist Screening Center, said in written testimony to a joint hearing of subcommittees for the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees. The center houses the watch lists under the management of the FBI.

Bucella's comments appear to conflict with recent testimony by FBI Director Robert Mueller and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge -- both of whom repeatedly have told lawmakers that the project would be completed by this summer. "Our expectation is that that will be completed this summer," Mueller told a congressional panel last week.

Before the hearing on Thursday, Bucella said Mueller and Ridge referred to "a different phase" of the project. According to her testimony, the "third phase," the final step, would "create a more dynamic database and use a single, integrated system for ensuring [that] known or suspected terrorists' identities are promptly incorporated into all appropriate screening processes."

The director said Mueller and Ridge had referred to the "second phase," an unclassified database with information of known or suspected terrorists, but did not mention one unified database. And according to her testimony, that phase "occurred" from Dec. 1, 2003, to March 1, 2004.

The push for a unified watch list has become a hot-button issue this year, with Democrats criticizing the Bush administration for missing deadlines. Two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee said in a report on the watch lists, the Bush administration has failed to develop a unified system.

The prospect of a unified database aims to allow police officers or airport inspection officials to run names immediately against one list of suspected terrorists. But Homeland Security Department officials have said the task has proven difficult because the 12 lists from nine different agencies were incompatible and contained overlapping but different information.

They also argue that law enforcement officials can contact the Terrorist Screening Center to run names through the separate lists.

At Thursday's joint hearing, Jerry Berman, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, outlined the problems that have plagued the process.

"Improving these watch lists is not simply a matter of putting them all together into a single list of names," said Berman, adding that government-wide guidelines are needed to define the criteria for adding or removing names, as well as for how information is shared among agencies and how they react to a "hit" on the list.

Berman also said the center must adopt standards on the quality of data in the database. "Little information is publicly available about how U.S. watch lists are compiled and maintained, but numerous reports have suggested that current watch lists are deeply flawed," he said.