"As some day it may happen that a victim must be found"

Whatever my past quibbles with Associated Press may have been, I think it is important to thank their staff writers, Michael J. Sniffen and Eileen Sullivan, for providing an excellent introductory piece, mostly in question-and-answer form, about the lists that our government maintains in its efforts to screen for known or likely terrorists. Here is how they introduce the topic:

Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the government has stepped up its screening of travelers to try to find possible terrorists. The key weapon has been the watch list, and it's barred hundreds of suspected terrorists from entering the country. Federal officials combined a dozen different lists into one unified terrorist watch list and the number of names on it soared from 12 on Sept. 11, 2001, to more than 880,000 today. That contributed to the extra questioning of Democrats Kennedy of Massachusetts and Lewis of Georgia and the wife of Stevens, an Alaska Republican.

Most important are the matters that pertain to the maintenance of this list:

Q: Who is on the terrorist watch list?

A: There are about 300,000 people on the watch list who the government knows or suspects may have links to terrorism. Less than 5 percent of these people are U.S. citizens or foreigners legally living in the country. Some confusion and problems stem from the fact that these 300,000 individuals are represented by 880,000 different names on the list, because a separate record is created for each alias or alternate ID. Even different spellings can create a separate record.

Q: How does someone get on the list?

A: Any agency can nominate a person to the list, but the FBI and CIA screen all nominations and make the final decisions. The FBI has said if there is enough evidence against a person to open a preliminary FBI investigation because of suspected terrorist links, that name will be placed on the list. An anonymous phone call about someone isn't enough by itself. The CIA has said its standards are somewhat subjective.

Q: How does someone get off the list?

A: If an FBI investigation determines a person has no link to terrorism, that name will be removed from the list. The CIA has refused to tell congressional investigators its standards for removal.

Q. Who operates the list?

A. The FBI's Terrorist Screening Center maintains and distributes the list, or parts of it, to other federal agencies that use it to screen travelers and even to 750,000 state and local police who can access it to check people they stop.

Most telling from this is the fact that, in spite of our efforts to take a more integrated (connect-the-dots) approach to "homeland security," this particular "instrument of protection" is essentially a joint (but not coordinated) effort of the FBI and the CIA, with the CIA being more opaque about its practices. (It does not seem too far-fetched to assume that, if they are deliberately opaque in dealing with the Congress, they are probably just as opaque in dealing with the FBI.) Thus, while the buck may stop at the FBI Terrorist Screening Center, the CIA still plays an influential role, most of which is concealed from just about anyone who is not directly involved within the CIA.

As we slouch our way towards the next Presidential election, we are likely to see an increase in discourse around two critical post-9/11 questions:

1. Is our country any safer from terrorist attack than it was on September 10, 2001?
2. Do we feel safer from terrorist attack than we did on September 12, 2001?

Sniffen and Sullivan have made a valuable contribution to this discourse by providing us all with a basic understanding of that "little list/Of society offenders who might well be underground." It is a small step in shifting the conversation from shrill rhetoric to cooler logic. Let us hope it is the first of many such steps.