BY JOHN J. LUMPKIN, The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A center that will consolidate a multitude of terrorist watch lists began operations this week, but it will be months before it will provide security personnel the promised “one-stop shopping” to identify suspected terrorists, Bush administration officials said.
The Terrorist Screening Center in Crystal City, Virginia, began operations Monday night, officials said. It has an initial watch list but has not yet consolidated all the lists from the FBI, CIA, State Department, Homeland Security Department and elsewhere in the U.S. government.
The FBI informed police around the country this week that the center had begun initial operations, Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Tuesday.
The Bush administration announced the center in September, after the federal government acknowledged failed efforts to track two eventual Sept. 11 hijackers who had been in the United States since early 2000. A top FBI counterterrorism official said a consolidated watch list could have prevented their entry into the country.
The screening center is run by the FBI and will draw staff from Homeland Security and other agencies.
A State Department announcement said the center would have “a single, comprehensive, anti-terror watch list that will be operational by December 1, 2003.”
A Bush administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Tuesday it will be a few months before the center has every watch list implemented.
The center will function around-the-clock and will allow police, airport screeners, embassy consular officers and other government security personnel to call and check a name and other data against the lists. Previously, nine government agencies maintained a total of 12 different lists, raising the prospect that a potential terrorist would be missed if the wrong list were checked.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, issued a statement Tuesday criticizing the Bush administration for not yet having the center fully operational.
“We are two years, two months and counting since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and yet one of the best defensive mechanisms that we could muster, a consolidated watch list of terrorists to keep them out if they try to get in or to identify them if they do slip in, is still not in place,” he said.