A U.S. passport is not only a travel document but also an official verification of the bearer’s origin, identity, and nationality. Under U.S. law, the Secretary of State has the authority to issue passports. Only U.S. nationals may obtain a U.S. passport, and evidence of citizenship or nationality is required with every passport application. Federal regulations list those who do not qualify for a U.S. passport, including those who are subjects of a federal felony warrant. The Deputy Assistant Secretary for Passport Services oversees the Passport Services Office, the largest component of State’s Consular Affairs Bureau. Passport Services consists of three headquarters offices: Policy Planning and Legal Advisory Services; Field Operations; and Information Management and Liaison. Also within Consular Affairs is the Office of Consular Fraud Prevention, which addresses passport, visa, and other types of consular fraud; the Consular Systems Division, responsible for the computer systems involved in passport services and other consular operations; and the Office for American Citizens Services, which handles most issues relating to passport cases at overseas posts. The Bureau of Diplomatic Security is responsible for investigating individual cases of suspected passport and visa fraud. The State Department Office of the Inspector General (OIG) also has some authority to investigate passport fraud. State operates 16 domestic passport-issuing offices, which employ approximately 480 passport examiners who approve and issue most U.S. passports that are printed each year. The number of passports issued by domestic passport offices has risen steadily in recent years, increasing from about 7.3 million in fiscal year 2000 to 8.8 million in fiscal year 2004. Overseas posts deal with a much lower volume of passports by comparison, handling about 300,000 worldwide in fiscal year 2004. The majority of passport applications are submitted by mail or in-person at one of almost 7,000 passport application acceptance facilities nationwide. The passport acceptance agents at these facilities are responsible for, among other things, verifying whether an applicant’s identification document (such as a driver’s license) actually matches the applicant. Then, through a process called adjudication, passport examiners determine whether they should issue each applicant a passport. Adjudication requires the examiner to scrutinize identification and citizenship documents presented by applicants to verify their identity and U.S. citizenship. The passport adjudication process is facilitated by computer systems, including the Travel Document Issuance System, which appears on passport examiners’ screens when the adjudication begins and automatically checks the applicant’s name against several databases. Figure 1 identifies the key computer databases available to help examiners adjudicate passport applications and detect potential fraud. In addition, examiners scrutinize paper documents and other relevant information during the fraud detection process, watch for suspicious behavior and travel plans, and request additional identification when they feel the documents presented are insufficient. When examiners detect potentially fraudulent passport applications, they send the applications to their local fraud prevention office for review and potential referral to State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security for further investigation. State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security investigators stated that imposters’ use of assumed identities, supported by genuine but fraudulently obtained identification documents, was a common and successful way to fraudulently obtain a U.S. passport. This method accounted for 69 percent of passport fraud detected in fiscal year 2004. Investigators found numerous examples of aliens and U.S. citizens obtaining U.S. passports using a false identity or the documentation of others to hide their true identity. In one example, in 1997, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Cuba stole a Lear jet and transported it to Nicaragua. At the time of his arrest in 2003, he was using an assumed identity and possessed both false and legitimate but fraudulently obtained identification documents, including a U.S. passport in the name he used while posing as a certified pilot and illegally providing flight instruction. Seized at his residence when he was arrested were two Social Security cards, four driver’s licenses, three Puerto Rican birth certificates, one U.S. passport, one pilot identification card, numerous credit cards and checking account cards, and items used to make fraudulent documents. In October 2004, he pled guilty to knowingly possessing five or more “authentication devices” and false identification documents, for which he was sentenced to 8 months confinement. In another case, a man wanted for murdering his wife obtained a Colorado driver’s license and a passport using a friend’s Social Security number and date and place of birth. Three and four years later he obtained renewal and replacement passports, respectively, in the same assumed identity. He was later arrested and pled guilty to making a false statement in an application for a passport. He was sentenced to about 7 months time served and returned to California to stand trial for murdering his wife. Applicants commit passport fraud through other means, including submitting false claims of lost, stolen, or mutilated passports; child substitution; and counterfeit citizenship documents. Some fraudulently obtain new passports by claiming to have lost their passport or had it stolen or damaged. For example, one individual who used another person’s Social Security number and Ohio driver’s license to report a lost passport obtained a replacement passport through the one-day expedited service. This fraudulently obtained passport was used to obtain entry into the United States 14 times in less than three years. Diplomatic Security officials told us that another means of passport fraud is when individuals obtain replacement passports by using expired passports containing photographs of individuals they closely resemble. This method of fraud is more easily and commonly committed with children, with false applications based on photographs of children who look similar to the child applicant. Assuming the identity of a deceased person is another means of fraudulently applying for a passport. According to State Bureau of Diplomatic Security documents, passport fraud is often commited in connection with other crimes, including narcotics trafficking, organized crime, money laundering, and alien smuggling. According to Diplomatic Security officials, concerns exist within the law enforcement and intelligence communities that passport fraud could also be used to help facilitate acts of terrorism. Using a passport with a false identity helps enable criminals to conceal their movements and activities, and U.S. passports provide their holders free passage into our country with much less scrutiny than is given to foreign citizens. U.S. passports also allow visa-free passage into many countries around the world, providing obvious benefits to criminals operating on an international scale. According to State officials, the most common crime associated with passport fraud is illegal immigration. For example, one woman was recently convicted for organizing and leading a large-scale passport fraud ring that involved recruiting American women to sell their children’s identities, so that foreign nationals could fraudulently obtain passports and enter the United States illegally. According to the Department of State, the woman targeted drug-dependent women and their children, paying them about $300 for each identity and then using the identities to apply for passports. The woman then sold the fraudulently obtained passports to illegal aliens for as much as $6,000 each. One of the key challenges to State’s fraud detection efforts is limited interagency information sharing. Specifically, State currently lacks access to the Terrorist Screening Center’s consolidated terrorist watch list database, which was created in 2003 to improve information sharing among government agencies. By consolidating terrorist watch lists, TSC is intended to enable federal agencies to access critical information quickly when a suspected terrorist is encountered or stopped within the United States, at the country’s borders, or at embassies overseas. However, because State’s CLASS name-check database does not contain the TSC information, U.S. citizens with possible ties to terrorism could potentially obtain passports and travel internationally without the knowledge of appropriate authorities. Although TSC has been operational since December 2003, State and TSC did not begin exploring the possibility of uploading data from the TSC database into passport CLASS until December 2004. State and TSC have not reached an agreement about information-sharing, though State sent an official proposal to TSC in January 2005. A TSC official told us that she does not foresee any technical limitations, and added that TSC agrees that it is important to work out an agreement with State. We recommended that State and other parties expedite such arrangements, and State said that it and the TSC are actively working to do so. Because the FBI and other law enforcement agencies do not currently provide State with the names of all individuals wanted by federal law enforcement authorities, State’s CLASS name-check system does not contain the names of many federal fugitives, some wanted for murder and other violent crimes; these fugitives could therefore obtain passports and potentially flee the country. The subjects of federal felony arrest warrants are not entitled to a U.S. passport. According to FBI officials, FBI databases contain the names of approximately 37,000 individuals wanted on federal charges. State Department officials acknowledge that many of these individuals are not listed in CLASS. We tested the names of 43 different federal fugitives and found that just 23 were in CLASS; therefore, passport examiners would not be alerted about the individuals’ wanted status if any of the other 20 not in CLASS applied for a passport. In fact, one of these 20 did obtain an updated U.S. passport 17 months after the FBI had listed the individual in its database as wanted. A number of the 20 federal fugitives who were included in our test and were found not to be in CLASS were suspected of serious crimes, including murder. One was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Table 1 lists the crimes suspected of the federal fugitives in our test. State officials told us that they had not initiated efforts to improve information sharing with the FBI on passport-related matters until the summer of 2004 because they had previously been under the impression that the U.S.