One area I see as a gap is that there are, as you are aware, quite a number of cases brought in under the Witness Protection Program Act where we're actually assisting other law enforcement agencies. We essentially can't ensure any consistency in that across the board or control what takes place with an individual up to that point.
The other thing that can cause us problems is that when we reach the termination process, there may be gaps and we may not be fully aware of why a person was terminated or aware if the termination was done in what we would feel to be in an equitable manner.
What can happen is that we'll see cases come in as assistance cases, and we will essentially have to take them on because they do meet the section 7 criteria of the act. So these people are provided secure identification and are made part of the witness protection program.
We take on all of that risk in the federal program without having any of the checks and balances in place. So if something goes wrong and the local program decides to terminate the person, we're left owning that person. When we look at any of the civil cases and stuff that arise around that, the first area they look to is the federal government side. That's one area where we see a bit of a gap.
In my mind, the best possible world would be to have an integrated national source witness protection program, where many different police agencies participate side by side and there is one program, rather than various versions of programs running across the country. Then I think you'd move closer to having a guarantee of really good consistency, and you'd know that the people doing the screening were all trained the same way and that the people doing the assessments and handling the moves were doing it the same way, and there will be much more exposure to those handling agents or to the high-risk protectees.
