9/11 and Terrorist Travel: Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States Page: 68

                                
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4
Immigration and Border Security Evolve, 1993 to 2001
4.1 The Intelligence Community
As we have seen in chapter 3, prior to September 11, 2001, the intelligence community
did not organize to disrupt terrorist travel except when targeting individual terrorists. It
also failed to fully use the one tool it supported to prevent terrorist entry-the terrorist
watchlist.
Overall, intelligence community guidance about terrorist travel was limited. Recognizing
the importance of freedom of movement to international terrorist groups, the Annual
Strategic Intelligence Review for Counterterrorism, issued in October 1995, called for
additional intelligence information on terrorist "travel procedures,"
"surveillance/targeting capability regarding modes of transportation and facilities," and
"training."' The same review released two and a half years later, in April 1998, pointed to
the need for more information on terrorist "travel procedures" and "operational tactics
and tradecraft capabilities."2
Such calls for additional intelligence regarding terrorist travel in its broader context seem
to have had no result. A likely explanation for this inaction is that in the context of the
Lockerbie experience, "travel procedures" were interpreted to mean access to
transportation and reservation systems. But the previous existence of the Redbook, whose
purpose was to assist frontline border officials in disruption and law enforcement
operations, suggests that the phrase might have been more broadly understood. In any
case, as we noted earlier, there was certainly no lack of raw data concerning terrorist
travel methods. During the 1990s, the FBI's numerous terrorist law enforcement
investigations provided a cache of information, obtained in part from raids and seized
hard drives, on the travel tactics of terrorists as they moved around the globe-planning,
surveilling targets, and carrying out attacks.3
This information apparently remained stovepiped at the FBI, drawn on only when needed
for a particular law enforcement case. It was not shared with the CIA unit that published
the Redbook. The CIA as a whole simply did not engage in analysis of terrorist travel
information at this time.4 The closest it came to doing so was through a program called
the Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System, or PISCES,
started by the CIA in 1997.5
PISCES initially assisted foreign countries in improving their watchlisting capabilities. It
provided a mainframe computer system to facilitate immigration processing in half a
dozen countries. Foreign authorities used the technology to watchlist and share
information with the CIA about terrorists appearing at their borders. The CIA used the
information to track and apprehend individual terrorists, not for wide-ranging analysis of
terrorist travel methods.6