The State Department and the FBI’s terrorist screening
center will begin sharing information on Americans on
the terrorist watch list after signing an agreement
coinciding with a Senate hearing looking into
vulnerabilities in the passport system.
A Government Accountability Office report released at
the hearing detailing how passport fraud is committed
and describing the challenges facing the State
Department says that department has not received
information on U.S. citizens listed on the federal
government’s consolidated terrorist watch list.
The report also found that State does not routinely
receive the names of criminals and fugitives wanted
by federal and state law enforcement agencies — and
that a test of the department’s name-checking
system failed in most test cases, including checks
for a suspect on the FBI’s ten-most-wanted list.
“The failure to share the names on the terrorist
watch list means that a known or suspected terrorist
could easily slip through one of our first lines of
defense in protecting the country against terrorism
— they could obtain a passport and travel freely in
and out of the country, under the radar of law
enforcement and border officials,” said Sen. Susan
Collins, R-Maine, chairman of the Senate Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
According to a committee statement, 69 percent of
passport fraud cases detected last year were carried
out using fake birth certificates and other false
identification.
State’s efforts to detect and prevent passport
fraud are weakened by “insufficient staffing,
training, and oversight, as well as a lack of
investigative resources,” the report said.
The committee also noted that in addition to the
information-sharing agreement, FBI and State are
making arrangements to better share names on a
fugitive database — and State is also stepping up
efforts to detect fraud, enhance oversight and put
more resources toward fraud investigations.
