Connecting The Dots

Scott Redd may be the most important person you've never heard of. As correspondent David Martin reports, Redd is the head of the new and very secret National Counterterrorism Center; it's his job to make all the different intelligence agencies — and their computers — talk to one another and share everything they know about terrorist plots against this country.

"Before 9/11 there were 13 different databases on known terrorist identities. They were disconnected. Disparate, different agencies. People didn't talk to each other," Redd explains.

Asked if he's the guy in charge of the war plan for the war against terror, Redd says, "That's one way of putting it. Yes, sir."

"And you give that to the president?" Martin asks.

"Well, yes sir, I do," says Redd.

"Another way of describing your job might be to make sure something like 9/11 never happens again," Martin remarks.

"That's what we worry about every day," Redd replies.

Known by the initials NCTC, the center is normally off-limits — CBS News is not allowed to tell you exactly where this building is. But we were given unprecedented access to the brand new state-of-the-art nerve center.

Because the center is so new, it's loaded with the kind of gadgets that make the conference room look like a made-for-TV movie. But it's not the gadgets that make this room the hub of the war against terror, it's the business that's transacted here.

Every morning at 8 a.m., FBI agent Kevin Brock chairs the morning's top-secret meeting.

"Here's where we exchange current intelligence about what the terrorism threat is out there. We talk about it. We make sure information is being exchanged freely among the agencies in the intelligence community," Brock explains.

For the first time in the history of this country, 18 intelligence agencies are routinely sharing the kind of sensitive information they used to keep to themselves.

CBS News was not allowed to stay long in the top-secret meeting — and when you listen to the roll call, you understand why. On the lines are representatives from all the intelligence agencies including the CIA, the NSA plus the White House.

Every morning begins with an update of the threat matrix — intelligence that has come in overnight on plots against this country.

One of those "sit reps" — short for situation report — contains the latest developments in the London bomb plot, which was broken up the day before we visited.

Redd recited the message he sent out to his staff after that. "I said: 'This was just the type of event that NCTC was established to address. The amount of effort that went into foiling this plot was admirable and extremely effective. The bottom line is we save lives,'" he explains.

"Watch out for the next one. Never let your guard down," he tells Martin.

That's why the operations center goes 24/7. During his watch, supervisor Randy Crawford showed Martin one example of how the NCTC can monitor flights.

"That's an aircraft tracker, and what that is used for is tracking aircraft movement around the United States," Crawford explains. "These are aircraft that are inbound to the Washington national capital region, and we can go in and pull up their flight numbers and get their squawk data."

The NCTC also can call up the passenger manifest and check it against the no-fly list of known or suspected terrorists.

"Earlier in the week there was a no-fly on a flight bound from Heathrow into the United States. And sure enough we got the list. There was a no-fly on it. The plane turned around and landed at Heathrow," Crawford says.

"There's a name on there that corresponds to a name in that huge database you keep of all suspected terrorists. And then that's enough for, for someone else to make the decision to turn a plane around?" Martin asks.

"Yes," Crawford answers.

Russ Travers is responsible for keeping that list of suspected terrorists accurate and up-to-date.

"Information sharing is undoubtedly the most complex thing I've ever been associated with," he explains.

The database, Travers says, has 350,000 to 400,000 names in it. "It's huge. It doubled in '04. It doubled again in '05," he says.

"The reality is that right now we are getting on a daily basis many thousands of names every day. Lots of them are undoubtedly duplicates. Some of them aren't really terrorists. We are dealing with fragmentary information. We're dealing with ambiguous information. We're dealing with conflicting information," says Travers.

A lot of intelligence information is pouring in. "It's probably the single biggest challenge that the community's got right now. It's because the information that's out there is coming in a deluge," he says.

Sorting through the 6,000 cables that come in each day — and the 6 million documents stored on the center's internal Web site — is a task of mind-boggling complexity. But Redd insists it's night and day better than before 9/11.

"Five years on, we're better prepared today to fight this war than we have been at any time in our history," he says.

"We're better prepared, but are we winning?" Martin asks.

"No commander is going to tell you that he is winning the war in the midst of the war. There are too many unknowns out there," Redd says. "But I will say this: A long war, if we have the perseverance to stick with it, we'll lose a few of the battles along the way. And I think that's — that's almost inevitable. But we're gonna win most of the battles. And at the end of the day, Lord willing, you know we'll win the war."