Passenger screening is a process by which screeners inspect individuals and their property to deter and prevent an act of violence or air piracy, such as the carrying of any unauthorized explosive, incendiary, weapon, or other prohibited item on board an aircraft or into a sterile area. Screeners inspect individuals for prohibited items at designated screening locations. TSA developed standard operating procedures for screening passengers at airport checkpoints. Primary screening is conducted on all airline passengers before they enter the sterile area of an airport and involves passengers walking through a metal detector and carry-on items being subjected to X-ray screening. Passengers who alarm the walk-through metal detector or are designated as selectees—that is, passengers selected for additional screening—must then undergo secondary screening, as well as passengers whose carry-on items have been identified by the X-ray machine as potentially containing prohibited items. Secondary screening involves additional means for screening passengers, such as by hand- wand; physical pat-down; or, at certain airport locations, an explosives trace portal (ETP), which is used to detect traces of explosives on passengers by using puffs of air to dislodge particles from their bodies and clothing into an analyzer. Selectees’ carry-on items are also physically searched or screened for explosives, such as by using explosives trace detection machines. Federal agencies—particularly NCTC and the FBI—submit to TSC nominations of individuals to be included on the consolidated watchlist. For example, NCTC receives terrorist-related information from executive branch departments and agencies, such as the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the FBI, and catalogs this information in its Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, commonly known as the TIDE database. This database serves as the U.S. government’s central classified database with information on known or suspected international terrorists. According to NCTC, agencies submit watchlist nomination reports to the center, but are not required to specify individual screening systems that they believe should receive the watchlist record, such as the No Fly list of individuals who are to be denied boarding an aircraft. NCTC is to presume that agency nominations are valid unless it has other information in its possession to rebut that position. To decide if a person poses enough of a threat to be placed on the watchlist, agencies are to follow Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) 6, which states that the watchlist is to contain information about individuals “known or appropriately suspected to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism.” HSPD-24 definitively established the “reasonable suspicion” standard for watchlisting by providing that agencies are to make available to other agencies all biometric information associated with “persons for whom there is an articulable and reasonable basis for suspicion that they pose a threat to national security.” NCTC is to consider information from all available sources and databases to determine if there is a reasonable suspicion of links to terrorism that warrants a nomination, which can involve some level of subjectivity. The guidance on determining reasonable suspicion, which TSC most recently updated in February 2009, contains specific examples of the types of terrorism-related conduct that may make an individual appropriate for inclusion on the watchlist. The White House’s review of the December 25 attempted terrorist attack noted that Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father met with U.S. Embassy officers in Abuja, Nigeria, to discuss his concerns that his son may have come under the influence of unidentified extremists and had planned to travel to Yemen. However, according to NCTC, the information in the State Department’s nomination report did not meet the criteria for watchlisting in TSC’s consolidated terrorist screening database per the government’s established and approved nomination standards. NCTC also noted that the State Department cable nominating Mr. Abdulmutallab had no indication that the father was the source of the information. According to the White House review of the December 25 attempted attack, the U.S. government had sufficient information to have uncovered and potentially disrupted the attack—including by placing Mr. Abdulmutallab on the No Fly list—but analysts within the intelligence community failed to connect the dots that could have identified and warned of the specific threat. After receiving the results of the White House’s review of the December 25 attempted attack, the President called for members of the intelligence community to undertake a number of corrective actions—such as clarifying intelligence agency roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities to document, share, and analyze all sources of intelligence and threat threads related to terrorism, and accelerating information technology enhancements that will help with information correlation and analysis. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has asked us, among other things, to assess government efforts to revise the watchlist process, including actions taken related to the December 25 attempted attack. As part of our monitoring of high-risk issues, we also have ongoing work— at the request of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs—that is assessing agency efforts to create the Information Sharing Environment, which is intended to break down barriers to sharing terrorism-related information, especially across federal agencies. Our work is designed to help ensure that federal agencies have a road map that defines roles, responsibilities, actions, and time frames for removing barriers, as well as a system to hold agencies accountable to the Congress and the public for making progress on these efforts. Among other things, this road map can be helpful in removing cultural, technological, and other barriers that lead to agencies maintaining information in stove-piped systems so that it is not easily accessible, similar to those problems that the December 25 attempted attack exposed. We expect to issue the results of this work later this year. Following the December 25 attempted terrorist attack, questions were raised as to what could have happened if Mr. Abdulmutallab had been on TSC’s consolidated terrorist screening database. We created several scenarios to help explain how the watchlist process is intended to work and what opportunities agencies could have had to identify him if he was on the watchlist. For example, according to TSC, if a record from the terrorist screening database is sent to the State Department’s system and the individual in that record holds a valid visa, TSC would compare the identifying information in the watchlist record against identifying information in the visa and forward positive matches to the State Department for possible visa revocation. If an individual’s visa is revoked, under existing procedures, this information is to be entered into the database CBP uses to screen airline passengers prior to their boarding, which we describe below. According to CBP, when the individual checks in for a flight, the on-site CBP Immigration Advisory Program officers already would have been apprised of the visa revocation by CBP and they would have checked the person’s travel documents to verify that the individual was a match to the visa revocation record. Once the positive match was established, the officers would have recommended that he not be allowed to board the flight. Under another scenario, if an individual is on TSC’s terrorist screening database, existing processes provide CBP with the opportunity to identify the subject of a watchlist record as part of the checks CBP is to conduct to see if airline passengers are eligible to be admitted into the country. Specifically, for international flights departing to or from the United States (but not for domestic flights), CBP is to receive information on passengers obtained, for example, when their travel document is swiped. CBP is to check this passenger information against a number of databases to see if there are any persons who have immigration violations, criminal histories, or any other reason for being denied entry to the country, in accordance with the agency’s mission. According to CBP, when it identifies a U.S. bound passenger who is on the watchlist, it coordinates with other federal agencies to evaluate the totality of available information to see what action is appropriate. In foreign airports where there is a CBP Immigration Advisory Program presence, the information on a watchlisted subject is forwarded by CBP to program officers onsite. The officers would then intercept the subject prior to boarding the aircraft and confirm that the individual is watchlisted, and when appropriate based on the derogatory information, request that the passenger be denied boarding. In a third scenario, if an individual is on the watchlist and is also placed on the No Fly or Selectee list, when the person checks in for a flight, the individual’s identifying information is to be checked against these lists. Individuals matched to the No Fly list are to be denied boarding. If the individual is matched to the Selectee list, the person is to be subject to further screening, which could include physical screening, such as a pat- down. The criteria in general that are used to place someone on either of these two lists include the following: Persons who are deemed to be a threat to civil aviation or national security and should be precluded from boarding an aircraft are put on the No Fly list. Persons who are deemed to be a threat to civil aviation or national security but do not meet the criteria of the No Fly list are placed on the Selectee list and are to receive additional security screening prior to being permitted to board an aircraft. The White House Homeland Security Council devised these more stringent sets of criteria for the No Fly and Selectee lists in part because these lists are not intended as investigative or information-gathering tools or tracking mechanisms, and TSA is a screening but not an intelligence agency. Rather, the lists are intended to help ensure the safe transport of passengers and facilitate the flow of commerce. However, the White House’s review of the December 25 attempted terrorist attack raised questions about the effectiveness of the criteria, and the President tasked the FBI and TSC with developing recommendations for any needed changes to the nominations guidance and criteria.