Thaindian News

By Arun Kumar
Washington, Jan 5 (IANS) The US is overhauling its terror watch lists with dozens of names added to the government’s no-fly list as enhanced security procedures began for travellers from Pakistan and 13 other nations.

After an ongoing review of the terrorist watch-list system in the wake of the botched Christmas Day attempt to blow up an US airliner, “probably thousands upon thousands upon thousands of names were scrubbed, and probably dozens were moved to different lists”, White House said Monday.

President Barack Obama is set to meet Tuesday with top national security and intelligence officials to discuss the preliminary findings of investigations, spokesman Bill Burton told reporters aboard Air Force One as the president flew home after an 11-day vacation in Hawaii.

He would discuss how a Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, who had known ties to extremists, escaped the scrutiny of intelligence agencies and was able to board a Northwest Airlines flight with explosives. The meeting will likely yield “some new information” about the steps ahead, he said but declined to go into further detail.

Various government agencies - from Homeland Security to the National Counterterrorism Centre - have submitted reviews of their practices to the White House over the past few days.

Obama will hear from the CIA, Burton said, and he will meet with John Brennan, his counterterrorism adviser, who is leading the reviews.

“If you look at what’s happened so far over the course of this review, the president hasn’t just waited for all the different pieces to come in before acting,” Burton said.

“With respect to what happened with the terrorist on the plane coming into Detroit, we are not satisfied,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters Monday.

“The president has called for a whole-of-government review.”

Under the new security measures, people who are from, travelling from or through the 14 designated countries are supposed to have full-body pat-downs or scanning, go through explosive detection technology, and have their carry-on luggage inspected.

As the new procedures went into effect, the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that these measures amount to religious profiling because so many people from these countries are Muslim.

“Under these new guidelines, almost every American Muslim who travels to see family or friends or goes on pilgrimage to Mecca will automatically be singled out for special security checks - that’s profiling,” said Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director.

The TSA said it does not profile. “TSA security measures are based on threat, not ethnic or religious background,” TSA spokesperson Kristin Lee said.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)