t5 b70 kevin perkins- fbi fdr- entire contents- questions- 6-3-04 interview notes- doj ig detainees...

8/14/2019 T5 B70 Kevin Perkins- FBI Fdr- Entire Contents- Questions- 6-3-04 Interview Notes- DOJ IG Detainees Report- Pgs 6

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Enforcement Privacy

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T h e S e p t e m b e r 11 D e t a i n e e s :A R e v i e w o f t h e T r e a t m e n t o f A l i e n sH e l d o n I m m i g r a t i o n C h a r g e s i nC o n n e c t i o n w i t h th e I n v e s t i g a t i o n o f th eS e p t e m b e r 1 1 A t t a c k s

O f f i c e o f th e I n s pe c t o r G e n e r a lA p r i l 2003


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reaching David Israelite, the Deputy Chief of Staff. According to Ziglar, healerted Israelite to the fact that September 11 detainee cases were not beingmanaged properlyand warned ofpossible problems for the Department. Ziglartold the OIG that he was frustrated at this time and felt powerless toresolvethe situation because he had no authority over the FBI, which was responsiblefor determining which detainees were "of interest," who would be cleared, andwhen. Israelite told the OIG that he could not recall this particularconversation with Ziglar and did not recall any complaints from the INS duringthe fall of 2001 regarding the clearance process for September 11 detainees.

Ziglar said that based on these and other contacts with seniorDepartment officials, he believed the Department was fully aware of the INS'sconcerns about the ramifications caused by the slow pace of the detaineeclearance process. When asked why he did not press the issue with theAttorney General or the Deputy Attorney General, he acknowledged that atsome point he should have "gone around the chain ofcommand" directly to theAttorney General or the DeputyAttorney General, but he felt it would havebeen futile to approach them directly about these issues because he did notthink the outcome would have been different.

Deputy Attorney General Thompson told the OIG that he had not beenmade aware of the slow pace of FBI clearance investigations. He said that hadthe INS alerted him to the time limits it believed were applicable, he would havecontacted the FBI immediately. Thompson said he received regular briefingsduring this period regarding the INS in which he was assured that theimmigration processes for the detainees were being handled "properly."The Attorney General stated that he had no recollection of being advisedthat the clearance process was taking months, nor did he recall hearing anycomplaints about the timeliness of the clearance process or a lack of resourcesdedicated to the effort to clear detainees.

VI. FBI WATCH LISTIn contrast to the inefficient waythat the clearance process forSeptember 11 detainees on the INS Custody List was handled, the FBI handledclearances from another important list - itswatch list - in a more efficientmanner.52 Webriefly discuss the FBI's handling of this watch list to illustratethe differences in how the two clearance processes were handled.

52 Wehave not analyzed legal issues that may be presented by the creation of such alist, nor have wedetermined whether the list itself was effective from an investigatoryor publicsafety perspective.

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The day after the terrorist attacks, the FBI began developing a watch listoriginally designed to identify potential hijackers who might be planningadditional terrorist acts once air travel resumed. The FBIdistributed the watchlist to airlines, rail stations, and other common carriers to assist in itsterrorisminvestigation.The FBI developed two versions of the list. One contained a person'sname and date of birth only and the other contained additional information.The information on the lists was updated once or twice daily. The FBI providedthe name and date of birth list to common carriers such as Amtrak, buscompanies, truck rental companies, and the National Business AviationAssociation. By September 26, 2001, the list had grown from the initial namesto several hundred. Asword spread nationwide that such a watch list existed,various agencies requested that names be added to the list.Kevin Perkins, the Inspection Division Section Chief at FBI Headquarters

who coordinated the watch list, told the OIG that he immediately recognizedthat the existence of the list created risks that innocent persons not connectedto terrorists would be unfairly implicated. He said he wanted to create amechanism for limitingwho was placed on the list and for removing peoplefrom the list as quickly as possible. Perkins recruited an attorney from theFBI's Office of General Counsel to assist with managing the watch list andasked the attorney to develop parameters for placing names on the list thatfollowed the Attorney General's guidelines for opening a criminal case. Theattorney prepared a one-page document called "Screening Characteristics forLookout Lists" that set out three categories of persons to be placed on the list.

Perkins said the list eventually grew to as many as 450 people. At onepoint, Perkins's supervisor said he directed that no one could be added to thelist without his authorization. When interviewed by the OIG, Perkins and theattorney assisting him said they became concerned that individuals were beingplaced on the list who had no connection to terrorists. For example, becausethe airlines use a "soundex" system to retrieve like-sounding names, thisresulted in names endingup on the list as soundex matches to names thatwere entirely different. Perkins also gave an example where a group of entrieson the list all had the same first initial and a common last name, with noadditional information.Perkins told the OIGthat he quickly turned his attention from regulatingwho got on the list to working to get people off the list. He recruited a group oflegal instructors stationed at the FBIAcademy in Quantico, Virginia, to helpmanage the process. Perkins said he ensured that all of the names on the listwere indexed and he created a file for each. He asked the legal instructors totake each file and review how each person got on the list and what work hadbeen done by FBI field offices to follow up on any initial leads. He told the OIG

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that he asked the legal instructors to review the sufficiency of the informationand to run records checks for each person.Perkins said that in some instances, removing people from the list wasnot difficult. For example, a**BBBIB''1FBI field office had providedinformation that approximately 20 Arab men attended the same flight schoolsas the hijackers, so these men were placed on the list. Upon further checking,this information turned out to be inaccurate - the men had attended flightschools, but not the same ones as the hijackers. Consequently, the men'snames were taken off the list.By late October 2001, the FBI alerted its field offices that it had stoppedadding names to the watch list. By the end of November 2001, Perkins saidthe team had reduced the watch list to 20 to 30 names, 19 of which were thenames used by the hijackers (the FBI was uncertain whether they had usedtheir real names).

VII. OIG ANALYSIS

The Department reacted swiftly to the attacks on the World Trade Centerand Pentagon by launching a massive investigation in this country and abroad.Within a week of the attacks, the FBI had assigned more than 7,000 employeesto the task of tracking down anyone who had aided the terrorists andattempting to prevent additional attacks. In the ensuing weeks, JTTF agentsand other law enforcement officers across the country arrested hundreds ofillegal aliens they encountered while pursuing PENTTBOM leads, whether ornot they were the subjects of the leads. While it is beyond the scope of theOIG's review to assess the appropriateness of these law enforcement actions,we saw some instances of the detention of aliens that appear to be extremelyattenuated from the focus of the PENTTBOM investigation.

The Department instituted a policy that all aliens in whom the FBI hadinterest in connection with the PENTTBOM investigation, no matter howtangential the connection, required clearance by the FBI of any connection toterrorism before they could be removed or released. Therefore, determiningwhich of these aliens was "of interest" to the FBI's terrorism investigationbecame the first of a series of critical decision points. We found that often theFBI could not state whether or not it had an interest in a particular alien andtherefore, out of an abundance ofcaution, the FBI labeled the alien of interestor of unknown interest, and consequently the INS treated the alien as aSeptember 11 detainee who required clearance from the FBI before he could bereleased.

In fact, in NewYork City we found that the FBI and the INSmade littleattempt to distinguish between aliens arrested as subjects of a PENTTBOMlead and those encountered coincidentally. This lack ofprecision had69

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