Testimony of Robert J. Garrity, Jr., Acting Assistant Director, Records Management Division, FBI
Before the House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform
Before the House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform
National Name Check Program
The National Name Check Program (NNCP) has the mission of disseminating information from the FBI's Central Records System in response to requests submitted by federal agencies, congressional committees, the federal judiciary, friendly foreign police and intelligence agencies, and state and local criminal justice agencies. For all except law enforcement requests, the program is to be operated on a fee-for-service basis, with the beneficiary of the name check paying for it, not the American taxpayers. The Central Records System contains the FBI's administrative, personnel and investigative files. The NNCP has its genesis in Executive Order 10450, issued during the Eisenhower Administration. This executive order addresses personnel security issues, and mandates National Agency Checks (NAC) as part of the pre-employment vetting and background investigation process. The FBI is a primary NAC conducted on all U. S. Government employees. From this modest beginning, the NNCP has grown exponentially, with more and more customers seeking background information from FBI files on individuals before bestowing a privilege - - Whether that privilege is government employment or an appointment; a security clearance; attendance at a White House function; a Green card or naturalization; admission to the bar; or a visa for the privilege of visiting our homeland; more than 70 federal and state agencies regularly request an FBI name check. Two specific visa request categories, Visa Condor and Visa Mantis, are relevant to the hearing today. In addition to serving our regular governmental customers, the FBI conducts numerous name searches in direct support of the counterintelligence, counterterrorism and homeland security efforts of the FBI.
Exponential Growth
Prior to September 11, 2001, the FBI processed approximately 2.5 million name check requests per year. In FY 2002, that number increased to 3.2 million. For FY 2003, the number of requests to date already exceeds 5.6 million and is expected to reach 9.8 million requests. That represents an increase in excess of 300%. Attachment A illustrates this explosive increase. This year, the FBI will process approximately 200,000 visa name check requests, including approximately 75,000 Visa Condor requests and 25,000 Visa Mantis requests.
Over Burdened System
I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, that with the advent of new visa screening requirements in late 2001, specifically the Visa Condor program, the FBI was overwhelmed by the increase in names to be checked. We did experience a backlog, and visas requested in the spring and summer of 2002 were delayed beyond the time period travelers had anticipated. We have all but eliminated the backlog, and have worked together with the State Department to ensure that any old visa requests have been accounted for and processed. The days of what some people would characterize as an unreasonable delay have now passed us by. I would now like to explain the process the FBI uses to conduct name checks on these visa requests.
FBI Name Check Process
It may be helpful to the Committee to follow along with Attachment B, a flow chart of the FBI visa name check work process. Consular officers worldwide determine whether a visa request falls into one of the special visa categories requiring additional scrutiny. Two of these categories are Visa Condor, relevant to certain individuals who are from designated countries and who satisfy additional criteria which may make them worthy of additional scrutiny, and Visa Mantis, relevant to certain individuals who will have access during their visit to American special technologies. The consular officer will submit their name check requests by cable, simultaneously to both the FBI and State Department headquarters.
In the next step of the process, the FBI communications center forwards the batches of names to be checked electronically to the name check program. The name is electronically checked against the FBI Universal Indices (UNI). The searches seek all instances of the individual's name and close date of birth, whether a main file name or reference. By way of explanation, a main file name is that of an individual who is, himself, the subject of an FBI investigation, whereas a reference is someone whose name appears in an FBI investigation. References may be associates, witnesses, conspirators, or a myriad of other reasons may exist to explain why an FBI Agent believed it important to index a particular name in an investigation for later recovery. The names are searched in a multitude of combinations, switching the order of first, last, middle names, as well as combinations with just the first and last, first and middle, and so on. It also searches different phonetic spelling variations of the names, especially important considering that many names in our indices have been transliterated from a language other than English.
If there is a match with a name in a FBI record, it is designated as a "Hit", meaning that the system has stopped on a possible match with the name being checked, but now a human being must review the file or indices entry to further refine the names "Hit" on. If the search comes up with a name and birth date match, it is designated an "Ident." An "Ident" is usually easier to resolve.