This morning, on GMA, Janet Napolitano said that the government needs to re-examine how their terrorist watch lists are monitored:

Today, on “Good Morning America,” she said, “Clearly, there’s some work that needs to be done to link up what we call the tie, the generic base in which his name had been entered, to those who already have visas.”

“We want to go backwards now and review our list processes,” Napolitano added. “They clearly need to be adjusted. We need to look at this individual specially, and the screening technology that was deployed.”

That’s possibly true but there’s a more fundamental step that should be taken, namely, having the appropriate authorities look into a person whose father walked into a U.S. embassy and told the embassy people that his son might be an Islamic extremist. You’d think that people in security positions would attempt to connect the dots, especially after a high profile commission published a report saying that the most important thing going forward was connecting the terrorist warning dots.

You’d think that a tip like that would at least warrant a quick check of things like visas, whether he’d traveled to or lived in any terrorist-sympathizing countries like, say, Nigeria. Here’s another troubling piece of information:

In May 2009, a report by the Justice Department Inspector General found problems with how the FBI was managing the terrorism watch list, noting, “We found that the FBI failed to nominate many subjects in the terrorism investigations that we sampled, did not nominate many others in a timely fashion, and did not update or remove watchlist records as required. Specifically, in 32 of the 216 (15 percent) terrorism investigations we reviewed, 35 subjects of these investigations were not nominated to the consolidated terrorist watchlist, contrary to FBI policy.”

Was this IG report shared with Secretary Napolitano? If not, why wasn’t it? If it was, what action did Secretary Napolitano take? What types of recommendations did she get from her senior policy staff? If it’s revealed that this IG’s report had made it to Secretary Napolitano’s desk and she hadn’t acted on it, then she needs to be fired ASAP.

Frankly, I don’t have a bit of confidence in Secretary Napolitano. This is, after all, the same woman who thought that military veterans, conservatives and constitutionalists presented a terrorist threat:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation earlier this year launched a nationwide operation targeting white supremacists and “militia/sovereign-citizen extremist groups,” including a focus on veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to memos sent from bureau headquarters to field offices.

The initiative, dubbed Operation Vigilant Eagle, was outlined in February, two months before a memo giving a similar warning was issued on April 7 by the Department of Homeland Security.

Disclosure of the DHS memo this week has sparked controversy among some conservatives and veterans groups. Appearing on television talk shows Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the assessment, but apologized to veterans who saw it as an accusation.

Why should we suddenly think that she’ll experience a sudden burst of competence now?

Technorati: Terrorism, Janet Napolitano, Watch Lists, Connect the Dots, 9/11 Commission, Commission Report, Justice Department, FBI, Homeland Security, President Obama, Democrats

Cross-posted at California Conservative