Official: Terrorist watch list system is too bureaucratic

In a move likely to ignite privacy concerns, top U.S. counterterrorism officials and a key senator on Wednesday called for overhauling the government's terrorist watch list system to make it easier to target people for secondary screening at airports or to prevent them from boarding a plane.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said placing suspected terrorists on watch lists is bogged down by "a bureaucratic process."

It's "too legalistic," he told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at a hearing on the attempted Christmas bombing of Northwest Flight 253 bound for Detroit.

Complaints from people being "hassled" brought pressure to keep the list shorter, not longer, he said, noting that a common complaint has been, "Why are you searching grandmothers?"

The process was changed under the Bush administration and reaffirmed by the Obama administration in response to pressure to keep innocent people from being unfairly targeted, Blair said.

"Shame on us for giving into that pressure," he said. "I should not have given into that pressure, but it was a factor. We've certainly changed that attitude."

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has been charged with attempted murder in connection with the failed bombing plot. The Obama administration has said Abdulmutallab should have been on watch lists that likely would not have allowed him to board the plane.

Blair's testimony is a strong sign that the administration is moving rapidly to overhaul the watch-listing process. But civil liberties groups are likely to fight any attempt to put more people on the lists, arguing it will snag more innocent people while making it tougher to identify suspected terrorists.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., thanked Blair for his assessment, saying the watch list system is too complicated, and the government has relied too much on legal procedures to determine who gets on the list.

But any final decision needs to balance security concerns with privacy concerns, Lieberman said.

The FBI maintains a terrorist watch list of 400,000 names. About 14,000 people are on a list requiring them to go through secondary screening at airports, and 4,000 on a list preventing them from flying.

The administration soon expects to have new interagency guidance to revise watch list standards, Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the committee.

On another front, Blair, Leiter and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said they were not consulted by the administration on its decision to charge Abdulmutallab in criminal court, rather than process him through a military tribunal as an enemy combatant.

The admission opened up a fresh line of attack by critics of the administration's efforts to treat alleged acts of terrorism as crimes instead of acts of war.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said charging Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant was a "terrible mistake which could impact our ability to defend this nation."

Lieberman and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, called the decision "troubling." Lieberman said his panel will hold a hearing in February into the implications of charging suspected terrorists in criminal court.

He also said U.S. personnel "should be disciplined or removed" if they did not perform their job properly in the events leading up to the Christmas plot.