[Infowarrior] - Behind the Scenes, Crafting the US No-Fly List

Wed Mar 24 12:31:50 UTC 2010

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=10058645

Behind the Scenes, Crafting the US No-Fly List
A Delicate, High-Stakes And Imperfect Effort By EILEEN SULLIVAN The  
Associated Press
WASHINGTON

It starts with a tip, a scrap of intelligence, a fingerprint lifted  
from a suspected terrorist's home.

It ends when a person is forbidden to board an airplane — a decision  
that's in the hands of about six experts from the Transportation  
Security Administration.

The no-fly list they oversee constantly changes as hundreds of  
analysts churn through a steady stream of intelligence. Managing the  
list is a high-stakes process. Go too far in one direction and  
innocent travelers are inconvenienced. Go in the other direction and a  
terrorist might slip onto an airplane.

It could take minutes to put a name on the list. Or it could take  
hours, days or months.

That's because the list is only as good as the nation's intelligence  
and the experts who analyze it. If an intelligence lead is not shared,  
or if an analyst is unable to connect one piece of information to  
another, a terrorist could slip onto an airplane. Officials allege  
that's just what took place ahead of the attempted Christmas Day  
attack on a Detroit-bound jet.

In the months since the arrest of Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab,  
the no-fly list has nearly doubled — from about 3,400 people to about  
6,000 people, according to a senior intelligence official. The list  
expanded, in part, to add people associated with al-Qaida's Yemen  
branch and others from Nigeria and Yemen with potential ties to  
Abdulmuttalab, a counterterrorism official said.

The no-fly list has been one of the government's most public  
counterterrorism tools since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Adding more  
people to the list could make Americans safer when they fly. But it  
could also mean more cases of mistaken identity.

Current and former intelligence, counterterrorism and U.S. government  
officials provided The Associated Press a behind-the-scenes look at  
how the no-fly list is created. They spoke on condition of anonymity  
to discuss sensitive security issues.

Despite changes over time, the list remains an imperfect tool,  
dependent on the work of hundreds of government terrorism analysts who  
sift through massive flows of information. The list ballooned after  
9/11 and has fluctuated in size over the past decade. In 2004, it  
included about 20,000 people. The standards for getting on the list  
have been refined over the years, and technology has improved to make  
the matching process more reliable.

There are four steps to banning a person from flying:

—It begins with law enforcement and intelligence officials collecting  
the smallest scraps of intelligence — a tip from a CIA informant or a  
wiretapped conversation.

The information is then sent to the National Counterterrorism Center,  
a Northern Virginia nerve center set up after 9/11. There, analysts  
put names — even partial names — into a huge classified database of  
known and suspected terrorists. The database, called Terrorist  
Identities Datamart Enterprise, or TIDE, also includes some suspects'  
relatives and others in contact with the suspects. About 2 percent of  
the people in this database are Americans.

Analysts scour the database trying to make connections and update  
files as new intelligence flows in. Abdulmutallab's name was in TIDE  
before the Christmas Day attempt, thanks to a warning his father gave  
the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria about the alleged bomber's extremist ties  
in Yemen.

But much of the information coming into the center is incomplete. This  
is one reason analysts didn't connect Abdulmutallab's father's warning  
to other fragmented pieces of information. Because of this, analysts  
did not send his name to the next tier of analysis at the Terrorist  
Screening Center, another Northern Virginia intelligence center,  
staffed by analysts from federal law enforcement agencies across the  
government.

—About 350 names a day are sent to the Terrorist Screening Center for  
more analysis and consideration to be put on the government-wide  
terror watch list. This is a list of about 418,000 people, maintained  
by the FBI.

To place a name on that list, analysts must have a reasonable  
suspicion that the person is connected to terrorism. People on this  
watch list may be questioned at a U.S. border checkpoint or when  
applying for a visa. But just being on this list isn't enough to keep  
a person off an airplane. Authorities must have a suspect's full name  
and date of birth  as well as adequate information showing the suspect  
is a threat to aviation or national security.

—Once armed with information for those three categories, about a half- 
dozen experts from the Transportation Security Administration who work  
at the screening center have two options. They can add a suspect to  
the "selectee list," a roster of about 18,000 people who can still fly  
but must go through extra screening at the airport. Or, if analysts   
determine a person is too dangerous to board a plane, they can put the  
suspect on the no-fly list.

The names on each list are constantly under review and updated as the  
threat changes.

In 2007, officials removed people who were no longer considered  
threats. Some were inactive members of the Irish Republican Army, a  
former law enforcement official said. And in 2008, the criteria was  
expanded to include information about young Somali-American men  
leaving the U.S. to join the international terrorist group al-Shabab,  
the senior intelligence official said. If a person on the no-fly list  
dies, his name could stay on the list so that the government can catch  
anyone trying to assume his identity.

At times, officials have allowed passengers to fly even if they are on  
the no-fly list, the former law enforcement official said. In some  
cases, this is to let agents shadow suspected terrorists while they're  
in the U.S. Before this happens, FBI agents and TSA experts consult  
with each other. If it is decided a suspected terrorist should be  
allowed on the flight, he and his belongings might then go through  
extra screening, he might be watched on camera at the airport, and  
more federal air marshals might be assigned to monitor him during his  
flight, the former official said.

As the government takes on more responsibility for checking names  
against the lists, officials hope the number of mistaken identity  
cases will dramatically decrease. And since Dec. 25, national security  
officials have been looking at ways to change and improve the  
standards for placing people on it.

One thing is for sure: Another incident like the Christmas Day near- 
miss will cause more re-examinations of a system still far from  
foolproof.

———

Associated Press writer Matt Apuzzo in Washington contributed to this  
report.

———

On the Net:

http://www.nctc.gov/docs/Tide—Fact—Sheet.pdf

http://www.fbi.gov/terrorinfo/counterrorism/tsc.htm

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