WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- The Transportation Security Administration has nearly completed a review of every name on its notorious no-fly list and has scrubbed nearly half of them, the agency's chief told lawmakers Wednesday.
"To assure the accuracy of the no-fly list itself, we will shortly conclude a case-by-case review of every name," agency Director Edmund "Kip" Hawley told a hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Wednesday.
"Working with our partners at the Terrorist Screening Center and in the intelligence community and law enforcement, this effort will effectively cut the no-fly list in half," he said.
He also said that it would be nearly two years before the agency was ready to begin deployment of its ill-starred Secure Flight system -- supposed to replace the airline-administered, name-based no-fly list with an online government-run system providing real-time access to federal databases of suspected terrorists.
In the latest in a long line of promises about Secure Flight, he said the system would be ready for deployment by New Year's Eve 2008, and maybe sooner, depending on how quickly officials could move forward the rule-making process.
Later he added that the review of the names on the no-fly list was expected to be completed "in the next couple of months," and that it would reduce it "to the bare minimum of people who really, really today represent the threat."
The no-fly list is prepared by officials at the Transportation Security Administration and the FBI-led multi-agency Terrorist Screening Center, based upon the single federal watch-list of known and suspected terrorists the center maintains.
It is one of two lists distributed by the Transportation Security Administration to the airlines, whose staff are the ones who actually administer the process. The other is the so-called "automatic selectee" list. Passengers on the no-fly list are not allowed to board an airplane; those on the selectee list will receive additional screening.
Federal officials told United Press International that a scrub of the much larger automatic selectee list would begin as soon as the no-fly list was finished.
They said the review began last year, after implementation guidance for the so-called nomination process -- by which the names of suspected terrorists and their associates are added to the list -- was redrafted.
New nominations were being added in line with the new guidance, but officials then had to go back over the list and scrub the names added previously against the new guidelines.
One official cautioned that the 50 percent figure was still just an estimate until the review was complete.
Hawley acknowledged that the review process would not solve the problems faced by passengers who had the same or similar name to those on one of his agency's lists. Airline procedures generally require people in that position to check-in in person.
In what has become a ritual that many lawmakers have enacted, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Ala., the committee's former chairman and a legendary curmudgeon, teased Hawley about his personal experiences with the agency's name-based screening process.
Joking that he was "going to get shot when I get home tonight" for raising the issue, the senator said he and his wife were repeatedly stopped for additional scrutiny at airports because her name, Catherine Stevens, was similar to Cat Stevens, a name previously used by the singer Yussef Islam, who is on a U.S. watch-list because of his donations to Palestinian charities thought linked to Hamas.
Hawley replied aggrieved passengers could now get on the agency's so-called clear list, of individuals with similar names who are not on the no-fly list, through an expedited electronic process, within 10 days.
"The Catherine Stevens would tell us, and then we'd put a notation in the record that we send to the airlines that said, 'This is Catherine Stevens; she's not Cat Stevens, and don't hassle (her).'
"Unfortunately, it depends airline by airline how their individual systems work as to how effectively that's done," he said, adding the agency continued to work with the airlines on their matching technologies and ability to use the clear list.
But he said people in that situation would continue to be unable to check-in in advance. "Definitely we recognize the inconvenience. It hits people at kiosks printing boarding passes at home. But ... that's the cost to the watch list system we have now."
Officials later added that if only a few common names were removed, a lot of people might be saved inconvenience.
Hawley's dramatic announcement came the day the Department of Homeland Security rolled out a plan for a new "one stop shop" for people who are repeatedly selected for additional screening by border or airport security officials.
The Traveler Redress Inquiry Program will be launched on Feb. 20, the department said in a statement, and aims to "improve customer interface, facilitate information sharing among (homeland security) agencies that receive traveler redress requests and institute performance metrics to track progress."
The program "will serve as the central processing point for redress inquiries," the statement went on, routing them to the right department, and providing an online system where complainants can track the progress of their inquiry.
