FBI Plans Counterterrorism Database

The Bush administration, hoping to overcome the government's failures to share sensitive counterterror information, unveiled plans yesterday for a master database of "known and suspected terrorists" that would be used in background checks around the world.

The FBI-run Terrorist Screening Center will cull information from nearly a dozen watch lists held by agencies throughout the federal government to provide "one-stop shopping" for U.S. consular officials, airport workers, border agents, local police and some private industries, officials said.

One of the key goals of the project is to avoid the type of communication breakdown that occurred prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the CIA placed two of the future hijackers on its own terrorist watch list but failed to immediately notify the FBI and immigration authorities. By the time other agencies were informed in August 2001, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi had already entered the United States. They would later help hijack the flight that crashed into the Pentagon.

The master watch list will be tapped by thousands of federal law enforcement officers and many others ? from small-town cops making traffic stops to airport workers screening passengers to personnel managers checking on applicants for jobs at nuclear plants.

Larry Mefford, head of counterterrorism and counterintelligence at the FBI, said during a news briefing yesterday that the new database "represents an evolution in our ability to identify potential terrorists and stop them before they can do us harm."

The move ? which came in the form of a directive signed yesterday by President Bush ? was greeted with cautious optimism by many lawmakers and homeland security experts, who had criticized the Bush administration for not creating the database sooner and had raised doubts about the government's ability to handle the task.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a frequent critic of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, said that "having a single watch list is Counterterrorism 101," but that "it's up to the FBI to demonstrate the technological savvy needed to maintain a list that can be accessed by all the appropriate agencies."

A General Accounting Office report released in April found that nine federal agencies maintain 12 separate watch lists that include information about suspected terrorists, but that technical and bureaucratic problems hindered the ability to share information between agencies even after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The new screening center and its database are the latest in a series of new government entities created by the Bush administration to monitor and thwart suspected terrorists. They include the Terrorist Threat Integration Center ? a joint venture of the CIA and FBI ? and the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, which is also run by the FBI and will be housed alongside the new screening center in offices in Crystal City.

The new database, which is scheduled to be operational Dec. 1, will include names compiled by the FBI, the CIA, the Homeland Security Department and the State Department. State operates a huge watch list known as TIPOFF that contains the names of 110,000 potential terrorists. Officials said they did not yet know how many names would be included on the new list, or even the number of databases from which the names would be drawn.

Officials said the list will be controlled by the FBI rather than the Homeland Security Department largely because of the bureau's long experience in running a nationwide criminal database used by local police.

The Justice Department said in a statement that the master terrorist list will "ensure that America's government screeners are working from the same unified set of anti-terrorist information when a suspected terrorist is screened or stopped anywhere." But Mefford and other officials also acknowledged that many details ? including parameters for who would be included on the list and how to account for variations in names ? have yet to be determined.

I. Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor who heads the Center for Health and Homeland Security there, said the number of agencies involved increases the possibility of mistakes in administering the huge database.

"As a concept, it's certainly something that's been long needed ... but it could be a real Rube Goldberg solution," Greenberger said. "There have been so many false starts and inept implementations in homeland security that trying to predict success based on an initial press conference is foolhardy."

Some civil liberties advocates, pointing to numerous cases of mistaken identity following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, also said they are skeptical of the government's ability to compile accurate information.

"Our greatest concern is that innocent people might be wrongly labeled as terrorists, with little or no recourse to clear their names," Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. "The government must tell us how it plans to keep this watch list from turning into a blacklist that will inevitably ruin innocent lives."

Several Democratic presidential candidates have sharply criticized the Bush administration for not acting sooner to create a centralized anti-terrorist database. "Everyone agreed these lists needed to be consolidated, from the president on down," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) "The administration fumbled for two years, but I'm pleased it has finally begun to consolidate the watch list information immediately."