http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/09/politics/09nofly.html?oref=loginpagewanted=printposition=
The New York Times
October 9, 2004
Papers Show Confusion as Government Watch List Grew Quickly
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
ASHINGTON, Oct. 8 - The government's list of banned airline passengers has
grown from just 16 names on Sept. 11, 2001, to thousands of people today
amid signs of internal confusion and dissension over how the list is
implemented, newly disclosed government documents and interviews showed
Friday.
A transportation security official acknowledged in one internal memorandum
that the standards used to ban passengers because of terrorism concerns
were necessarily subjective, with no hard and fast rules.
More than 300 pages of internal documents, turned over by the Justice
Department on Friday as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil
Liberties Union, provide a rare glimpse inside the workings of the
government's so-called no-fly list.
Federal officials have maintained tight secrecy over the list, saying
little publicly about how it is developed, how many people are on it or how
it is put into practice, even as prominent people like Senator Edward M.
Kennedy have been mistakenly blocked from boarding planes.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued the federal government last year
under the Freedom of Information Act on behalf of two San Francisco women
who said they suspected their vocal antiwar protests led to their being
banned from flying.
The Justice Department fought the release of information on the no-fly
list on national security grounds, leading a federal judge in San Francisco
to admonish government lawyers for making frivolous claims to justify the
unusual secrecy. He ordered the government to comply with the Freedom of
Information Act, prompting the Justice Department to turn over the internal
documents to the A.C.L.U. on Friday.
Federal officials said they could not discuss the documents Friday because
of the pending lawsuit.
In general, said Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Department of
Homeland Security, we have taken numerous steps to refine the no-fly
system, including better definition of the criteria for the watch list and
putting in place an effective redress system that allows passengers who are
mistakenly put on the list to be removed.
But Thomas R. Burke, a lawyer representing the A.C.L.U., said the documents
raised some very serious concerns about the criteria the government is
using in developing the no-fly list and the internal miscommunication in
implementing it.
In an internal e-mail message in May 2002, for instance, an F.B.I.
supervisor, whose name was deleted, complained that the Transportation
Security Administration had made the F.B.I. responsible for pursuing
possible matches from the list but had failed to inform the bureau about
changes in no-fly security directives.
Despite my best efforts, the T.S.A. just motors along, and I and the
agents are being whipped around the flagpole trying to do the right thing,
the official wrote.
In another internal message in October 2002, an F.B.I. official in St.
Louis cited difficulties in getting suspects put on the no-fly list and in
coordinating different watch lists. The various watch lists are not
comprehensive and not centralized, said the official, whose name was also
deleted. Some people appear on one list but not the others. Some of the
lists are old and not current. We are really confused.
Federal officials have been developing a master terrorist watch list to
consolidate the no-fly list and nine others kept by different agencies. But
a report last week by Clark K. Ervin, the Department of Homeland Security's
inspector general, found serious coordination problems in that effort.
The documents released Friday show that the government's no-fly list as of
Sept. 11, 2001, had only 16 names on it - fewer than the number of
terrorists who hijacked the four airliners that day. Several investigations
have criticized the government's failure to put two of the hijackers on
watch lists even after their terrorist ties became known.
The no-fly list grew drastically after the attacks, and one document in
Friday's material said the number of banned passengers ballooned to nearly
600 within about two months. Another 365 names were put on a secondary list
that allows them to board a plane after getting closer scrutiny. The two
lists had grown to about 1,000 names by December 2002, one document showed.
The documents do not give a current total, but a law enforcement official,
speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday the names on the no-fly and
secondary flight lists total about 10,000, with the no-fly list accounting
for a few thousand. Another government official corroborated that account.
Copyrigh
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