Controversy Snarls Upgrade Of Terrorist Data Repository

TIDE and related systems have become crucial tools in the war on terror. TIDE is the central "base for all-source information on international terrorist identities for the U.S. Government," according to documents from a congressional briefing in April. One system linked to TIDE, NCTC Online, has more than 5,500 users in more than 40 federal organizations and agencies.

But counterterrorism officials have made clear that TIDE and related systems need to be upgraded. Documents used in an April briefing of staff members on Capitol Hill show that the systems are poorly integrated, and difficult and costly to upgrade. "Those Information Technology capabilities, as good as they are, were not designed for the scale, robustness or integrated performance required by the NCTC mission," the briefing documents said.

The Railhead project is set up so that the government can hire contractors to upgrade the system in increments, leading to an "integrated and accessible" system that would improve the discovery of information for analysts and make access far easier.

Dozens of documents obtained by The Washington Post show that Boeing and SRI International, one of the primary contractors, and dozens of other subcontractors have sometimes struggled to fulfill a mission that from the outset was not clearly defined.

Officials at Boeing and SRI declined to answer questions.

Boeing and SRI have sometimes not cooperated, the documents show. Last summer, during the transition to Railhead from a previous contracting program, the TIDE system was operated by a sharply diminished support staff and occasionally shut down, according to interviews with people involved in the project.

Counterterrorism officials said those issues were a natural result of the transition from one contract to another and added that it did not impede the systems' effectiveness.

A recent review by SRI and subcontractors, done at the behest of government officials, turned up more than 500 instances where the system did not function as planned or as analysts expected. The systems under development, for instance, did not enable analysts examining terrorist data to see classified cables, to easily sort and filter search results or to search for non-exact matches, the June 18 document said.

One contract executive involved in Railhead, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the work, asserted that the project was not properly planned and that some tasks may have to start over. The executive said Boeing and SRI did not work well together in the public's interest. Contractors assessing the project complained about the lack of cooperation from Boeing in the June 18 document.

"A request for data listed below to complete the gap analysis was requested from Boeing. The information requested below has not been provided by the LSI [lead system integrator]," the document said.

In an interview, Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), chairman of the House Science and Technology subcommittee on investigations and oversight, said those documents, provided by a whistle-blower who worked for a contractor, show the Railhead program is in trouble.

In an Aug. 21 letter, Miller asked the inspector general to investigate "the technical failure and mismanagement of one of the government's most important counterterrorism programs."

"This is a critical national security program that has been plagued by technical design and development errors, basic management blunders and poor government oversight," Miller said in a news release issued that same day.

Officials at the counterterrorism center said the staff material Miller provided in support of his request contains factual errors, including a claim that thousands of CIA cables had not been properly entered into TIDE and that the program has cost $500 million so far.

The officials acknowledged the "gap analysis" reports issued in June. But they said most of those shortcomings have been addressed in recent months and that information in those reports was taken out of context.

Despite occasional outages, the TIDE system has been available for counterterrorism work more than 99 percent of the time, and it has not missed any deadlines for supplying terrorist information to watch-list systems, one senior government official said.

Miller defended going public with his preliminary probe, saying "we conduct our business in the open."