The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Santa’s big season is behind us now, but it’s Christmas all year round at the FBI, where the jolly elf’s omniscient surveillance powers probably inspired a young J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list debuted on March 14, 1950, complete with cash rewards stuffed into the stockings of informants. The Ten Most Wanted list has played a role in nabbing more than 400 nasty criminals in its 52 years.

“Of course list-making is nothing new to police work,” said Inspector Nick O’Hara in a recent interview with The Rake. O’Hara, who served as special agent in charge of the FBI’s Minnesota field office from 1991 to 1994, remembers the Ten Most Wanted fondly. The list had fallen on hard times in the late 70s, with little attention paid to the cases other than dusting off the ubiquitous post-office mug shots. For a number of years, the list generated just one or two hits per annum. “The Most Wanted became a list of static individuals,” said O’Hara. “They’d been on there so long that the rationale for banging away at the public had been lost.”

As chief of the violent crimes section in the mid-80s, O’Hara said he wanted to take better advantage of the list, and assigned more agents to try some routine police work on the cases. By way of example, he told the story of Charles Lee Herron, who had been on the list for more than 20 years after killing two police officers in Tennessee. A mere six months of legwork netted not only Herron, but his three accomplices. Suddenly, there was an opening for a fresh face on the list.

Like retail inventory, O’Hara said turnover is the key to maintaining public interest. Over the next three years, they found 23 suspects on the Ten Most Wanted, making it popular again as a cultural institution.

Long before 9/11, the Ten Most Wanted had spun off a number of similar lists. A sister list is produced at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. The Ten Most Wanted also mated with the FOX television network, hatching John Walsh’s America’s Most Wanted television show, a strange joint effort of the entertainment industry and a federal law enforcement agency. Keeping in step with the times, the FBI has now created its own most-wanted list focusing on terrorists. Not to be outdone, the CIA reportedly has a list of Al Qaeda members who may be shot on sight, if they show up in public. “Lists are very important,” said O’Hara, clearly proud of these many iterations of a good idea.

“We have found and clearly recognized that lists are useful tools when conducting investigations and gathering intelligence,” agreed Special Agent Paul McCabe in a recent conversation with The Rake. McCabe, a talkative straight-shooter from the Minneapolis field office of the FBI, confirmed the existence of a new Terrorism Watch List. Not to be confused with the Most Wanted Terrorists list which has been made public, the Watch List was originally launched as Project Lookout shortly after 9/11.

Prior to 9/11, compiling the names of suspected terrorists was mostly the domain of TIPOFF. Started in 1987, TIPOFF is now a database of about 85,000 names compiled by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The State Department won’t divulge names on the list. It won’t say what specific use it makes of the list, or tell what the criteria are for getting on the list.

Typical. In fact, secret lists are all the rage now with federal agencies. Where the Ten Most Wanted thrived by being in the public eye, the new generation of lists seems to succeed on the strength of secrecy—though of course there’s no way to be sure they’re being used for anything at all, or if they’re working. To learn more about these secret lists, The Rake contacted half a dozen federal agencies. What the federal government most wants you to know is this: You don’t need to know.Special Agent McCabe was glad to chat, but he was miserly with details about the Terrorism Watch List. It’s easy to accept the need for some secrecy. After all, it’s undoubtedly easier to find a terrorist who doesn’t know you’re looking for her (though Ptech may have taken care of that already). But couldn’t the FBI toss a bone to the press and let us know, say, how many names are on the list?

“I don’t think that’s something we can divulge,” said McCabe.

At the CIA, The Rake got the cold shoulder. Asked about their listmaking activities, Langley press agent Paul Nowack gave a short seminar on how to keep the phone lines open:

“We’re not providing details of what information we do or don’t provide anyone.”

Hoping to seduce him with a possible success story, we read the names of some recently captured terrorism suspects with Twin Cities connections: Ilya Ali, Muhammed Abid Afridi, and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi. Could he find out if they’d been watchlisted prior to capture?

“No.”
“Could I get your name again?”
“The name’s Paul. Surname is Nowack. N. O. W. A. C. K.”
“Mr. Nowack, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Bye.”

We did find out that the CIA is not necessarily sitting on its hands. Perhaps the biggest list of all is the one with the longest name: The State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs’ Consular Lookout and Support System (CLASS). Kelly Shannon, public affairs officer for the bureau, confirmed that the CIA does supply data for the CLASS system. Despite agent Paul Nowack’s reticence on this topic, that’s widely considered a good thing.

“Information sharing” has become something of a fetish in the intelligence community since some high- profile failures have come to light in the wake of 9/11; congressional testimony from the State Department, the FBI and the CIA reveals that they have all gone absolutely gaga over the notion of telling each other everything.

In Minnesota, we know all about information sharing. Our own Colleen Rowley tried to alert FBI headquarters about Zacarias Moussaoui before information sharing had become so fashionable.

Embarrassing intelligence failures don’t end with Moussaoui. The same FBI department that denied Rowley’s request to investigate Moussaoui also declined a request by field agents in New York to search for Khalid Almihdar, who helped crash a plane into the Pentagon less than two weeks later. The Los Angeles Times reported recently that two other 9/11 hijackers were able to enter the United States because the CIA had not added them to TIPOFF, despite CIA knowledge of their connection to the bombing of the U.S. warship Cole one year before. According to the same story, another top Al Qaeda operative was added so late that he may have entered the United States. Linked to the Cole attack and the 1998 west Africa embassy bombings, Tawfiq Attash Khallad remains at large, possibly in the United States.

The U.S.A. Patriot Act now requires “intelligence” sources to add their records to CLASS, according to congressional testimony by Ambassador Francis X. Taylor. The act also mandates that FBI records be added to CLASS, in addition to lists from the State Department, Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (which still runs TIPOFF). All visa applicants who wish to enter the United States must be checked against this database of nearly 13 million names. This is the sort of information sharing, said Shannon, that ought to correct the kind of failures that allowed some of the 9/11 hijackers into the country.

While CLASS adds to its girth from the lists of other agencies, it has also become a clearinghouse of sorts. “We share this with all federal agencies,” said Shannon. On a scale this large, even the most fervent apostles of listmaking anticipate the danger of biting off more than they can chew. One has to wonder how useful such a list becomes, when there are more people on it than off it. For data of any kind to be useful from such a compilation, a little triage is necessary, says agent Paul McCabe: “If the CIA sent us every piece of information they gathered, we’d be brought to a standstill.”

Still in its infancy, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the agency with perhaps the most at stake in winnowing out the important information. While many federal agencies embrace bafflingly wide jurisdictions (such as alcohol, tobacco, and firearms), TSA’s mandate is simple and essential: Keep weapons and terrorists off airplanes. In Minneapolis, that’s Deputy Director Jim Welna’s job.

“We’re trying to find a needle in a haystack,” said Welna. “Anything we can do to reduce the size of the haystack is a good thing.” For this, TSA depends on the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System (CAPPS). Not exactly a list, CAPPS runs passenger names and ticket data through a software program that selects the lucky few to get a high-level screening. Although the flying public seems largely willing to take this medicine for its own good, airport security is the most obvious friction point in the age of Homeland Security. When information travels more freely, citizens might not, and some controversy is inevitable when the pampered American flying class gets a wand in the crotch a few too many times.News reports of some recent airport security incidents have taken on shades of the movie Brazil. Travel writer David Rowell wrote recently in The New Yorker about a 70-something grandmother from New Jersey who had repeatedly found herself on the TSA No Fly List when trying to visit family on Martha’s Vineyard. According to the story, Mrs. Johnnie Thomas’ name was similar enough to John Thomas Christopher, the alias of a genuine fugitive, to get her permanently flagged. Having contacted almost as many federal agencies as we did for this story, Thomas still could not get her name removed from the list, and continued to endure high-level scrutiny every time she traveled by air.

“If your name is Ramzi Yusef and you’re traveling, you are probably going to get stopped,” said Nick O’Hara bluntly of this story. “Or if your name is Bin Laden, you’re going to get stopped. It’s the nature of the beast.”

“I don’t know about that case,” said TSA spokesperson Brian Doyle when asked about Thomas. “But we’ve had some cases where you might have a Bob S. Smith and one might be Bob T. Smith, and every single time they get secondarily wanded. We’re working to get the kinks out of that. It’s not something we’re ignoring.”

Something security officials are not ignoring, but rather categorically denying, is a growing collection of anecdotes suggesting that their lists may have become a political tool for inflicting discomfort and inconvenience on liberals. In November, a story in Salon reported the tales of five left-wing activists who have been screened repeatedly, and, in one case, not allowed to fly at all. In the latter case, North Carolina Green Party activist Doug Stuber said he was interviewed by the Secret Service in the Raleigh-Durham airport after making untoward comments about President Bush. During his interrogation, Stuber claims to have taken a clandestine peek at a Secret Service binder containing a list of organizations including the Green Party, EarthFirst, and Amnesty International. Law enforcement and security officials are, of course, shocked to hear allegations that the tools of their trade may have nefarious political applications.

“I think that’s probably nonsense,” said O’Hara, adding that he and his wife were searched in three different airports on the same trip.
“Now if Al Qaeda is a political party, you bet,” quipped the TSA’s Welna. “And if you knew somebody was a member of Hamas, you would certainly take some extra time.”
“To be honest with you, I have no comment on that,” said the TSA’s Doyle.
“That’s ridiculous. Unless a person has ties to a terrorist organization, they would not be on the Terrorism Watch List,” said the FBI’s McCabe, who takes criticism of his employer a little personally. “I know the average citizen thinks we can just pull up in front of your house and listen in on your conversations. That’s how they portray it in movies. That’s the farthest thing from the truth… A lot of the fears, you know, are just not real. I wish everyone could spend one day inside the FBI. We have enough real criminals to go after.” (Those of us who have tried that line to weasel out of a speeding ticket know how much traction it gets.)Surprisingly, the alleged victims of the new security are not much more forthcoming than the secretive feds. Johnnie Thomas doesn’t return calls anymore. Doug Stuber has not confirmed his story with The Rake, and has since been suspended from his position with the North Carolina Green Party for “misrepresenting the party,” according to Laura King, chair of North Carolina Green Party. (King says his suspension is unrelated to the incident and that the party can neither confirm nor deny details regarding it.) The Secret Service has also declined to talk about the incident. Nor has Amnesty International replied to queries asking if their membership has found itself under the security thumb.

The Rake was able to talk to Marc Mannes, who has recovered from the loss of his Swiss Army knife at airport security (“The Accidental Terrorist,” October 2002). Mannes recently traveled to Cuba as a consultant to the World Health Organization. When he returned to Minneapolis, he declared that he’d been to Cuba, along with Mexico and Jamaica. Dutifully whisked aside for a customs confessional, Mannes felt certain his name would soon be digested by the listmaking industry and flagged for extra attention during future travels. But despite his contact with the forbidden island and political views “slightly to the left of George Bush,” subsequent flights have been uneventful, security-wise. Perhaps we are being overly paranoid.

The American Civil Liberties Union has responded to this threat to its namesake by setting up a “Passenger Profiling Complaint Form” on its website. But while local ACLU spokesman Charles Samuelson will talk your ear off about virtually anything else, he won’t reveal just how many hits they’ve had on the form. For the most part, the victims of politically targeted screening are keeping their secrets better than the CIA.

In the watchlist game, it’s hard to tell who’s the more paranoid, the government or its citizens. For his part, McCabe says the public is unaware of just how much the FBI has reformed over the past decade, and how much they play it by the book. Still, the feds certainly have history going against them. And it’s hard to know whether to be comforted or disturbed when federal agencies open their files in the interest of the Freedom of Information Act. Who can forget Daniel Schorr’s live CBS broadcast of President Nixon’s enemies list, on which he famously found his own name? The CIA website now contains Reagan-era watchlists of anti-war activists, including the Nuclear Freeze Campaign.

A few months ago, Becky Roering, then the acting deputy director of security for the local TSA office, told The Rake that passenger names are not screened against any list at Minneapolis-St. Paul International. This seemed counter-intuitive, and, as it turned out, not quite true. After our conversation, TSA spokesman David Steigman confirmed the existence of a No Fly List with about 1,000 names on it. It’s obvious, of course, why the Bush administration has a stake in keeping a lid on details about intelligence failures and 9/11. But why would the TSA not be forthcoming sooner about something it’s doing to protect us?

Nick O’Hara acknowledges that habits of secrecy in federal agencies have led not only to a suspicious public, but have often robbed the feds of the good P.R. they need to maintain citizen support. Americans certainly might be a little less paranoid if the feds didn’t act so guilty when the press gets nosey. On the other hand, there is the very real possibility that the more we learn about lists, the more we find out about their limitations. The public is wise to ask when—or even if—a secret list has yet prevented tragedy or led to a conviction.