[Infowarrior] - Foreign Aid Groups Face Terror Screens

[Richard Forno]

Foreign Aid Groups Face Terror Screens

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 23, 2007; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/22/AR2007082202
847_pf.html

The Bush administration plans to screen thousands of people who work with
charities and nonprofit organizations that receive U.S. Agency for
International Development funds to ensure they are not connected with
individuals or groups associated with terrorism, according to a recent
Federal Register notice.

The plan would require the organizations to give the government detailed
information about key personnel, including phone numbers, birth dates and
e-mail addresses. But the government plans to shroud its use of that
information in secrecy and does not intend to tell groups deemed
unacceptable why they are rejected.

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The Federal Register notice said the program could involve 2,000 respondents
and "will become effective on August 27," the last day that public comments
about it are to be submitted. Harry Edwards, a spokesman for USAID, said
yesterday that the agency may not stick to that starting date, but he said
the agency would not discuss the origins or any details of the program until
the comment period concludes.

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The information is to include name, address, date and place of birth,
citizenship, Social Security and passport numbers, sex, and profession or
other employment data. The data collected "will be used to conduct national
security screening" to ensure these persons have no connection to entities
or individuals "associated with terrorism" or "deemed to be a risk to
national security," according to the notice.

Such screening normally involves sending the data to the FBI and other
police and intelligence agencies to see if negative information surfaces.

The new system would also require that the groups turn over the individuals'
telephone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses, another indication that
those numbers would be checked against data collected as part of a terrorist
screening program run by the U.S. intelligence community.

Until now, under an earlier Bush administration initiative, nongovernmental
organizations had been required to check their own employees and then
certify to AID that they were certain no one was associated with individuals
or groups that appeared on applicable governmental terrorist listings.

The far broader proposed vetting program would involve U.S. intelligence and
law enforcement agencies and could result in the denial of applications for
funding. But AID is also seeking to withhold any of its findings from
disclosure because the decision would be based on "classified and sensitive
law enforcement and intelligence information," according to a second Federal
Register notice seeking exemption for the program from the Privacy Act.

"USAID cannot confirm or deny whether an individual 'passed' or 'failed'
screening," the notice says, to protect "counterterrorism and
counterintelligence missions as well as the personal safety of those
involved in counterterrorism investigations."