Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman Holds a Hearing On the Terrorist Screening System

Political Transcript Wire › August 21, 2009

Linked as:

Extract

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman Holds a Hearing On the Terrorist Screening System

U.S. SENATE HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE HOLDS A HEARING ON THE TERRORIST SCREENING SYSTEM

OCTOBER 24, 2007

SPEAKERS: SEN. JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, I-CONN. CHAIRMAN SEN. CARL LEVIN, D-MICH. SEN. DANIEL K. AKAKA, D-HAWAII SEN. THOMAS R. CARPER, D-DEL. SEN. MARK PRYOR, D-ARK. SEN. MARY L. LANDRIEU, D-LA. SEN. BARACK OBAMA, D-ILL. SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL, D-MO. SEN. JON TESTER, D-MONT.

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS, R-MAINE RANKING MEMBER SEN. TED STEVENS, R-ALASKA SEN. GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, R-OHIO SEN. NORM COLEMAN, R-MINN. SEN. TOM COBURN, R-OKLA. SEN. PETE V. DOMENICI, R-N.M. SEN. JOHN W. WARNER, R-VA. SEN. JOHN E. SUNUNU, R-N.H.

WITNESSES: EILEEN R. LARENCE, DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY AND JUSTICE ISSUES, GENERAL ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

GLENN A. FINE, INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

LEONARD BOYLE, DIRECTOR, TERRORIST SCREENING CENTER

PAUL ROSENZWEIG, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR POLICY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

[*] LIEBERMAN: Good morning. In this hearing, we continue this committee's oversight of our homeland security programs that have been created since 9/11.

Last week we had one on the port security. Yesterday we had another interesting hearing on an aspect that we still need some help on. And today we go to one where we've made some progress, but we still have some questions.

And this is our focus on the terrorism watch list, a critical tool in our battle to keep terrorists from entering the United States and attacking our homeland again as they did on 9/11.

After 9/11, we found as part of the investigation of how that event occurred that lists of suspected or potential terrorists that were in the possession of the federal government, many different federal agencies, were however not shared, and certainly not shared in a way that increased deterrence of terrorist attack.

As a result, we now know that two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, were known to the CIA and NSA and were regarded as dangerous by both. But that information was never shared with the Immigration and Naturalization Service or the State Department.

And therefore, these two terrorists were allowed to enter our country and be part of carrying out the most devastating attack on our homeland in our history.

The Terrorist Screening Center operated by the FBI was created in December 2003, to state it simply, to make sure that nothing like that ever happened again.

Its mission was to pull together all the different lists of potential terrorists into one master list and to make sure that everyone who needed that information to protect our homeland had easy access to it.

The master list is used as the basis for the creation of separate databases used by a number of federal agencies today, including TSA's no-fly list and the State Department's CLASS list or database, which is used to screen visa applicants.

The terrorism watch list is also a vital tool state and local law enforcement can now access, creating a powerful new link to generate leads on potential terrorists within our country, because of the access that hundreds of thousands of state and local law enforcement officers have to that list.

This is a vast improvement over where we were before and on 9/11. And I want to thank the Terrorist Screening Center, the National Counterterrorism Center, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies for the significant progress they have made over the last four years in closing this previous gap in our homeland security.

The Government Accountability Office reports today in a report that we are releasing on this progress. But it also discusses some remaining vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the watch list system which we will want to discuss.

The Department of Justice inspector general is here also appearing before us and has found similar problems in the watch list system in his audits of the terrorism screening center.

Some of the concerns that we're going to discuss stem from the sheer size of the list. It contained 158,000 names in July 2004. That grew to 755,000 names by May of this year. And it now stands at almost 860,000 names.

That's nearly a 500 percent increase in three years. Of course, if there's good reason to have each of those names there, the increase in the size of that list is good news for our homeland security.

But if many of those names are mistakenly there, the credibility of the terrorism watch list and its usefulness will be compromised. So we want to talk about that.

I know the Terrorism Screeni...

See the full content of this document