Terror database gets plenty of hits

In this morning’s Washington Times:

The Terrorist Screening Center has detected more than 40,000 people trying to gain entry into the U.S. who either associated with terrorist groups or were known terrorists themselves, and the database is only going to get better, says the agency’s chief.

“The country is undoubtedly much safer today as a result of the work at the Terrorist Screening Center,” said Director Leonard C. Boyle, who added that his agency is working to fix problems with the database identified by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General.

Mr. Boyle told The Washington Times that a memorandum of understanding was signed last month by very “high ranking members” in all federal law-enforcement agencies to assist the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) — the nation’s primary center for helping government officials identify and apprehend terrorists — in removing names that should not be there and increasing the accuracy of the names that should.

“We can more directly determine whether a person who is on a watch list should be on the watch list,” Mr. Boyle said of the memorandum, which took effect immediately, although he did not provide a copy of it. “This memorandum of understanding is to be principally responsible to redress the determination.”

As of April 2004, the database contained more than 700,000 entries. The list is developed through the intelligence community responsible for foreign targets being placed on the list, while the FBI is responsible for placing domestic terrorist threats to the list.

It is not certain, however, how many of the more than 40,000 actual terrorist hits were stopped from entering the U.S. by the agencies accessing the database.

Although the FBI’s worldwide screening center was successful in detecting positive terrorist matches worldwide, the center is not responsible for stopping their entry into the U.S.

Perhaps after he finishes propping up a phony story about Rush Limbaugh, Congressman Mark Udall (D-CO) will introduce a resolution praising the efforts of the Terrorist Screening Center.

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