Yes We Are Safer

Last week, the nation marked the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in solemn fashion, focusing on memorials and reflection, rather than on point scoring. Too bad Richard Clarke couldn’t manage to do the same.

Clarke, the official in charge of antiterrorism efforts before 9/11, commemorated the anniversary of the attacks by publishing a finger-pointing screed in U.S. News and World Report.

Clarke’s argument went something like the following: Here we are, seven years after 9/11. We haven’t been attacked. But we could be. Al Qaeda still exists, Bin Laden remains at large, and terrorists still commit terrorism. We’re backsliding, and no safer now then we were then. On the home front, our borders are still porous, we’re still not screening people, and security grants are too much about pork and not enough about real risk.

Clarke is mostly wrong.

In fact, we are safer today than we were seven years ago. We haven’t been attacked since 9/11 in part because we have destroyed al Qaeda’s headquarters, enhanced our intelligence assets across the globe, captured and killed terrorists on nearly every continent, and partnered with our allies on information sharing and other security-related efforts.

Today, al Qaeda no longer has a state sponsor. Contrary to Clarke’s claims, most of its original leadership has been captured or killed. It is losing in Iraq -- thanks to the surge and to the Awakening movement among the Sunni tribes--and its savage attacks on innocents have reduced its popularity there and across the Muslim world. Muslim scholars and clerics are increasingly condemning its beliefs and behavior as a desecration of Islam.

This progress has come because we abandoned the practice of treating terrorism solely as a criminal matter – exactly the kind of September 10 policy that Clarke celebrates in his article.

Closer to home, the Department of Homeland Security has made clear progress that belies Clarke’s claims.

At the border that Clarke thinks is so porous, DHS has built hundreds of miles of fence and will double the size of the Border Patrol. We’ve also deployed fingerprint-based screening and radiation portal monitors at all of our border entry points.

To protect against a repeat attack, DHS has built nearly two dozen layers of security into our aviation system, and it has developed comprehensive security plans for other critical infrastructure.

Clarke claims that the executive branch has proved incapable of managing new terrorism programs to success. Tell that to US-VISIT – a massive government IT project that compares fingerprints of travelers to a database of millions and does it in 30 seconds for officials all across the country and the world. We got it up and running from scratch, despite the doubters. And it’s so successful that we’re expanding it to collect all ten prints and to compare them to prints found in terrorist safe houses around the world. We’ve done all that since Dick Clarke left government – and without a word of support from him.

Despite his claims of backsliding, it’s DHS that has been battling complacency, and Clarke who seems to have been sitting on the sidelines.

We’re the ones who’ve been fighting for the carefully targeted, risk-based homeland security grants he favors. It’s Congress that has added billions and made them less risk-based. Has Clarke criticized Congress or praised DHS for our risk based approach? If so, I missed it.

On our southern border, DHS’s fence-building and increased border enforcement have been hampered by local NIMBY (“not-in-my-backyard”) forces and advocates for illegal immigration. Did Dick Clarke speak out against them? Not so I’ve noticed.

To secure our northern border, we’re implementing tougher document standards, and we were ready to require all travelers to produce a passport or passport-equivalent by the end of this year. Where was Dick Clarke when Congress decided to push back that deadline to mid-2009? I don’t remember an op-ed then complaining about how porous this would make our Canadian border.

Clarke says that terrorists who look European have been trained by al Qaeda and may have European Union passports and clean identities unknown to intelligence agencies. He thinks such people could enter the United States almost as easily as did the 9/11 hijackers. It’s indeed true that during Dick Clarke’s tenure, Europeans could come to the US without any opportunity to screen them before they were in the air. As of this January, though, no foreign travelers other than Canadians will be able to come to the US without supplying -- in advance -- the information we need to screen them. At last, we’ll have the time and information we need to investigate risky travelers (and to prepare a rude surprise for terrorists who try this route). That’s all happened since Dick Clarke left government, and without any support from him.

There’s no question that Dick Clarke contributed to strengthening our national security, but his recent assertions are not only incorrect, they disrespect the work of many national security professionals he once called colleagues. That is indeed unfortunate.

Stewart Baker
Assistant Secretary for Policy

Exit Strategy

Among its many recommendations to improve the security of our nation, the 9/11 Commission also recommended the Department “complete, as quickly as possible, a biometric entry-exit screening system” to record the entry and exit of visitors at our ports of entry, identify potentially dangerous people, and process lawful travelers more efficiently. In the Commission’s words, our ports of entry are “a chance to establish that people are who they say they are and are seeking access for their stated purpose, to intercept identifiable suspects, and to take effective action.”

Congress also mandated an entry-exit system, though it may surprise you to learn they did so more than a decade ago – in 1996. Initial efforts to get this system up and running encountered strong resistance from border communities, which effectively killed the plan. As a result, years later our immigration authorities lacked a valuable tool that might have prevented some of the 9/11 hijackers from entering our country.

The good news is the entry portion of this system, known as US-VISIT, is now deployed at all U.S. ports of entry. Every day, US-VISIT checks thousands of visitors’ fingerprints against integrated criminal, terrorist, and immigration watch lists and databases in real time, and it has kept thousands of criminals from entering our country.

Combined with our use of advance passenger data as well as recent reforms to the Visa Waiver Program that will require travelers under the program to submit information electronically prior to arrival in the United States, we have created a formidable barrier against the entry of terrorists, criminals, and immigration violators while expediting safe and efficient travel for everyone else.

Today we are taking another major step forward to develop the capabilities of our border management system. We are announcing a proposed rule that mandates the collection of digital fingerprints from most non-U.S. citizens departing the United States by air or sea – a key underpinning of the recent legislation authorizing an expanded Visa Waiver Program.

Why is having an exit system important? It will allow us to positively confirm through biometrics that an individual has, indeed, left our country. By knowing who departed on time and who overstayed the terms of their admission, we can better manage our borders and build more integrity into our immigration system.

Of course, we need to overcome some technical challenges before we can fully deploy an exit system, including building the necessary infrastructure to capture and transmit the fingerprint data as people leave our country while minimizing the impact to travelers.

That is why our rule proposes to build upon the role commercial air carriers and vessel owners and operators already play. Today, carriers collect and transmit biographic information electronically and submit paper I-94 forms to our Department for passengers departing the United States. The introduction of biometrics into that process will require commercial air carriers and vessel owners and operators to collect additional information and make sure it is protected under rigorous privacy standards.

For this reason, we are seeking comments over the next 60 days from industry partners as well as the general public as we plan to integrate new exit procedures into the international departure process. We are looking for creative ideas and real world solutions. The proposed rule is available on our website and it will be published in the Federal Register later this week and open for comments.

Eventually, our goal will be to require international visitors departing from any airport or seaport with international departures to provide biometric data before leaving the country. We will address land border exit procedures in a future rulemaking. We welcome your input as we address this critical 9/11 Commission recommendation and add yet another important layer of security to our nation.

Michael Chertoff

Biometrics: Unmasking Terrorists and Criminals

US-VISIT is a DHS program that collects fingerprints from visitors and biographical information in order to establish and verify identity, prevent fraud, and stop dangerous people from entering the United States. Collecting this information from international visitors is one of the best ways to maximize security while ensuring maximum privacy.

Since US-VISIT was added to the immigration inspection process in 2004, almost two thousand criminals and immigration violators have been prevented from entering this country. We’ve been successful because fingerprints are unique. Unlike names and dates of birth, they cannot be easily altered. Unlike documents, they cannot be forged. Digital fingerprints – also known as biometrics -- are revolutionizing our ability to keep legitimate travel moving while barring the entry of dangerous individuals.

We’re now improving this process by collecting all 10 fingerprints, instead of just two, from almost all non-U.S.-citizen visitors to our country. State Department consular officers already collect 10 fingerprints at almost all of its visa-issuing posts in order to make visa determinations before people can even travel to our shores. In November, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers began collecting 10 fingerprints from visitors at Washington Dulles International Airport. During the next year, this capability will expand to all air, sea and land ports of entry. CBP officers use this information to help them determine whether a visitor should be admitted to the United States.

The most visible benefit of transitioning from two- to 10-fingerprint collection is that we can actually improve the travel process by more accurately and efficiently identifying legitimate visitors. This means that we can focus our resources on those who pose the greatest risk.

But perhaps the most important and least obvious benefit is how this change helps us fight terrorists and criminals.

Terrorists thrive on their ability to move undetected around the world, but they do leave a trail of clues behind. For example, every day full or partial fingerprint images are left behind at crime scenes, terrorist safe houses, and even on bomb fragments or other battlefield debris. The defense and intelligence communities are collecting these latent fingerprints. US-VISIT adds these fingerprints to and checks them against our watch list of known or suspected terrorists, criminals and immigration violators and our database of immigration information.

Collecting a visitor’s full set of fingerprints instead of just two provides dual benefits: 1) Now, should we collect any part of a fingerprint at the scene of terrorist activity or any other crime and that same person applies for a visa or arrives at a U.S. port of entry, we could stop him or her; and 2) No matter what kind of fingerprint we find, we are more likely to identify the nameless suspect based on their U.S. immigration or criminal history.

This initiative was put to the test in 2005 when latent fingerprints lifted from the steering wheel of a suicide truck bomb detonated in Iraq were sent to US-VISIT for identification. US-VISIT identified the suicide bomber as someone who had once attempted—and been denied—entry to the United States. The suicide bomber was no longer anonymous. Removing this anonymity from terrorists helps us unravel their networks, disrupt their operations, and ultimately derail their plans to do us harm.

Robert Mocny
Director, US-VISIT Program