Our Ballooning Terrorist Watch-List
The GAO reported last week that the government's watch list is growing at a clip of 20,000 records a month. That's a list four times the size of even the most liberal estimate for the number of actual bad guys out there. Brian Beutler | November 1, 2007 | web only
In the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States government compiled a list of 20 known terrorists: They were the 19 hijackers who died in the attacks and the one -- now known to be Zacarias Moussaoui -- who got away. Rapidly, however, that list grew.
President Bush called upon every agency of government to provide his administration with the names of every so-called person of concern contained in their millions of files. Those records included not just potential terrorists, but also deadbeat dads, people wanted by the federal Marshal, and Drug Enforcement Administration suspects, among others. But they all found themselves on what has come to be called the "terrorist watch list." By June 2004, that list had swelled to 158,000 names. In May of this year, it clocked in at 755,000. Today, only five months later, it's at 860,000 and counting, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The argument for maintaining such an unwieldy and quickly growing list is perhaps best voiced by cliché: better safe than sorry. But that philosophy has spawned a list that a recent GAO study found much too large to be effective, and much too inaccurate to protect the civil liberties of innocent people.
The FBI's Terrorist Screening Center manages the list, but to date, the administration has failed to establish a clear, consist methodology for government agencies to use when determining who goes on the list and who doesn't. The criteria vary widely, where they're known at all. The Central Intelligence Agency, for instance, flatly refuses to disclose its criteria for submitting a name to the list. The FBI, on the other hand, generally nominates any and all subjects of ongoing counterterrorism investigations.
In Oct. 24 testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs -- chaired by Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Vt., who is typically deferential to the Bush administration on national security -- GAO's Eileen Larence noted the list is actually growing even faster than it seems. The Terrorist Screening Center told GAO it has deleted around 100,000 records from the list, but investigators are adding records so furiously that they're far outpacing the rate at which they are establishing suspects' innocence. It's two steps backward for each in the right direction.
Moreover, the list is already multiple times larger than even the most generous estimate of the number of terrorists out there. ......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=our_ballooning_terrorist_watchlist 
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