Lax Screening passport for criminals

From USAToday's editorial page, July 12, 2005

Lax screening becomes a passport for criminals
The federal government is awash in lists of all manner of criminals. Fugitives charged with child molestation or murder. The FBI's 10 Most Wanted. Illegal immigrants. And, most usefully, terrorists.

Two of the 9/11 hijackers — Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Al-Midhar — were allowed to board the jetliner that was flown into the Pentagon, even though both were on a State Department list of 60,000 known or suspected terrorists. The Federal Aviation Administration might have stopped them before they boarded, had it been checking travelers against that list. Instead, it was using its own "no-fly" list of a mere 12 suspects, according to the 9/11 Commission.

Nearly four years have passed since that debacle. Still, the federal government hasn't gotten its information-sharing act together. At times, one arm of government doesn't check lists kept by another. Often, agencies don't even know what they're missing.

The latest revelation of a lapse came last month, when Congress's non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the State Department was issuing passports without systematically checking applicants against FBI lists of fugitives and against a new, consolidated terrorist list.

The upshot? In a GAO test, 20 out of 43 federal fugitives weren't flagged by the State Department's system. One was on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Another had obtained an updated passport 17 months after the FBI listed that person as wanted.

A U.S. passport is considered the gold standard of identity documents. It enables holders to travel freely into and out of the USA and gain visa-free passage into many countries. The State Department says it checks passport applicants against its own database filled with information from many agencies.

State, however, wasn't aware that thousands of federal fugitives known to the FBI weren't included, until the GAO discovered it. The department lacked data from the terrorist watch list because it wasn't routinely receiving that information, according to the GAO.

A department official said last week that the agency will get the watch list in coming weeks, and it has a deal with the FBI to get data on more fugitives.

Despite some strides in sharing information, the lapses at State are emblematic of problems that remain across agencies. The Transportation Security Administration, for example, still doesn't scrutinize every government list in its screening of passengers. Concern about sharing intelligence information with private airlines, which still handle the checks, is one of the reasons, the 9/11 Commission found.

For decades, U.S. agencies worked alone on their individual missions. They seldom looked across the government for help. That mindset is tough to change, but 9/11 certainly should have provided the impetus, and the 7/7 bombings in London last week underscored the continuing terrorist threat.

Come next year, Americans will suddenly need passports to travel by air or sea from the Caribbean, Bermuda and other places where passports have not been required. Mexico and Canada will be added later.

The goal is more secure borders. By then, it would be nice if the State Department could ensure that anyone getting a passport is not a fugitive or terrorist known to some other arm of the U.S. government.



Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-07-11-our-view_x.htm