Reuters: The U.S. officials said four of the attackers who have been publicly named by France were listed before the attacks in TIDE, a central, highly classified database of raw information maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), a division of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. They did not name those who were listed in TIDE. A paper issued by NCTC last year reported that as of December 2013, TIDE contained “about 1.1 million persons,” many including “multiple minor spelling variations of their names.”
According to the officials, the names of the attackers had been entered into the database after European authorities shared information with the United States. They are not believed to be citizens or residents of the United States, though thousands of names of U.S. citizens are in the database.
Separately, the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), which is maintained by an official with the FBI, compiles a large list of terrorist suspects called the Terrorist Screening Database in addition to two more selective lists called the “select list” and the “no fly” list.
Three of the anonymous U.S. officials said that one of the Paris attackers, and perhaps more, was on the “no fly” list. A spokesman for TSC would not confirm or deny the report.
Airlines are required to give lists of passengers to TSC so the government entity can screen passengers before flights depart.
The gun attacks and suicide bombings in Paris last Friday killed 129 people and wounded over 350 others. Authorities believe that nine people were behind the attacks, eight of whom are now dead.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the terrorist who French authorities suspected was the ringleader behind the attacks, was killed in a police raid in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis Wednesday.
*** Barack Obama refuses reality as noted by the Weekly Standard:
Speaking to reporters at the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, Obama said that, while the Paris attacks might have been a “setback” for his ISIS strategy, they would not change it. When reporters expressed surprise at his continued embrace of an approach that was failing, he lashed out at them for daring to question him. At a time when an American president might have been expected to show some righteous anger at the attackers and those who enabled them, Obama instead directed his fury towards critics at home who worry about jihadist violence against the homeland. It was a shameful spectacle, and a revealing one.
Barack Obama remains committed to a failed strategy against an enemy he has long underestimated in a war he has no plans to win. Nothing has changed. And this time, what’s past truly is prologue.
In an interview with ABC News the day before Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists killed more than 130 people in multiple, coordinated attacks in Paris, Obama told George Stephanopoulos that the terror group had been “contained.” Stephanopoulos had asked Obama a straightforward question: “ISIS is gaining strength, aren’t they?”
“Well, no, I don’t think they’re gaining strength,” Obama responded. “What is true is that from the start our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria they’ll come in, they’ll leave. But you don’t see this systematic march by [ISIS] across the terrain. What we have not yet been able to do is to completely decapitate their command and control structures. We’ve made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters.” (The full article is a long, but a MUST read and can be found here.)
