FACT SHEET
The Terrorist Screening Center
Today, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of Homeland Security Tom
Ridge, Secretary of State Colin Powell, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Director
of Central Intelligence George Tenet announced the creation of the Terrorist
Screening Center (TSC) to consolidate terrorist watchlists and provide 24/7
operational support for thousands of Federal screeners across the country
and around the world. The TSC will ensure that America’s government screeners
are working from the same unified set of anti-terrorist informationHBCcomprehensive
anti-terrorist list when a suspected terrorist is screened or stopped anywhere
in the Federal system.
- Better Informed: The TSC will allow federal, state, and local officials
to make better-informed decisions to protect the United States from terrorist
attacks. For example, better access to information will make it easier
for a consular officer posted in another country to determine whether
to grant a visa, or an immigration official at a U.S. airport to decide
whether a person is eligible to enter the United States.
- Building Capabilities: Creation of the TSC marks another significant
step forward in the President’s strategy to protect America’s
communities and families by detecting, disrupting, and disabling terrorist
threats. The TSC builds on improvements to U.S. watchlist capabilities
that began in 2001, immediately following the September 11 attacks, including,
most recently, the President’s creation of the Terrorist Threat Integration
Center (TTIC).
- Consolidating Information: The TSC will receive the vast majority
of its information about known or suspected terrorists from the TTIC after
TTIC has assembled and analyzed that information from a wide range of
sources. In addition, the FBI will provide the TSC with information about
purely domestic terrorism, i.e., having no connection to international
terrorist activities. The TSC will consolidate this information into an
unclassified terrorist screening database and make the database accessible
to queries for federal, state, and local agencies for a variety of screening
purposes.
- The TSC, through the participation of the Department of Homeland Security,
Department of Justice, Department of State, and Intelligence Community
representatives, will determine which information in the Database
will be available for which types of screening.
- For example, The Attorney General’s and the Secretary of
Homeland Security’s representatives to the TSC will decide
which persons to include in those records that may be queried
directly by law enforcement officials through the NCIC database.
Similarly, the State Department representative, consulting with
the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and
Intelligence Community representatives, will determine which information
may be screened by foreign governments.
- Safeguarding Information: The TSC will not independently collect any information
on U.S. citizens. In fact, the TSC does not collect information at all
- it only receives information provided by the TTIC and the FBI. The TTIC
will provide to the TSC all appropriate and necessary information connected
to international terrorism about any individuals - U.S. citizens or not
- that TTIC partner agencies hold pursuant to their own authorities, and
the FBI will provide to the TSC appropriate and necessary information
concerning domestic terrorism, regardless of whether it involves U.S.
citizens. If the TSC receives information on U.S. citizens connected with
terrorism, its use of that information is subject to the same legal limitations
to which it would be subject if the information were not included in the
Database. Purely domestic terrorism information will not go through TTIC,
but will be placed directly into the TSC Database by the FBI. The Attorney
General has been directed to implement procedures and safeguards with
respect to information about U.S. persons, in coordination with the Secretary
of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of Central
Intelligence.
- The creation of the TSC does not provide any new law enforcement or
collection powers to any government official; it simply consolidates
information that law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, the
State Department, and others already possess and makes it accessible
for query to those who need it - federal security screeners, State
and local law enforcement officers, and others. The TSC will have
no independent authority to conduct intelligence collection or other
operations.
- All information the TSC maintains will have been collected in accordance
with existing law, and TSC officials will continue to be bound by
any applicable laws and constitutional requirements that restrict
the use of that information and that protect privacy interests and
other liberties.
- Information technology and information handling procedures will be
designed to comply with constitutional and other legal requirements,
and participants will continue to be answerable both to internal agency
oversight and congressional oversight.
- Supporting the Mission: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”)
will administer the TSC. The Department of Homeland Security, the Department
of State, and others will coordinate with and assign operational and staff
support to the TSC.
- The FBI is the appropriate administrator of the TSC’s start-up
operations because of the Bureau’s technical experience in watchlist
integration. Although the FBI will administer the TSC, the TSC will
be an interagency effort. As noted, the Departments of Homeland Security
and State and others will coordinate with and assign operational and
staff support to the TSC. The Principal Deputy Director of the TSC
will be a Department of Homeland Security official. In addition to
the Department of Justice, the Department of State, and the Department
of Homeland Security, the Intelligence Community and other federal
agencies will assign representatives to the TSC. Each of these agencies
will be responsible for specific aspects of the TSC’s work.
The TSC is being phased in via a coordinated interagency effort administered
by the FBI and will be operational by December 1, 2003.
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