'A Comedy of Errors': Why It's Time to Get Rid of the So-Called Terrorist Watch List

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted June 27, 2009.

But the "first surprise," according to a segment that aired in October 2006, "was the sheer size of it."

In paper form, it is more than 540 pages long. Before 9/11, the government's list of suspected terrorists banned from air travel totaled just 16 names; today there are 44,000. And that doesn't include people the government thinks should be pulled aside for additional security screening. There are another 75,000 people on that list.

With Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, 60 Minutes spent months going over the names on the No Fly List. While it is classified as sensitive, even members of Congress have been denied access to it. But that may have less to do with national security than avoiding embarrassment.

Asked what the quality is of the information that the TSA gets from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI, Trento says, "Well, you know about our intelligence before we went to war in Iraq. You know what that was like. Not too good."

... 60 Minutes certainly didn't expect to find the names of 14 of the 19 9/11 hijackers on the list, since they have been dead for five years. 60 Minutes also found a number of high-profile people who aren't likely to turn up at an airline ticket counter any time soon, like convicted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, now serving a life sentence in Colorado, and Saddam Hussein, who, at the time, was on trial for his life in Baghdad.

In 2004, the ACLU sued the Bush administration on behalf of several plaintiffs who had been wrongfully placed on the list, including a college student, an Air Force sergeant, an attorney, and a U.S. citizen from Pakistan who worked for the ACLU. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, however.

Meanwhile, the list has continued to grow. Last summer, the number of names hit 1 million, a figure so staggering the ACLU added a handy Watch List Counter to its Web site. Now, the number is over 1.1 million -- and counting.

Time to Scratch the List

Not surprisingly, the terrible reputation of the TSC's terrorist watch list has provided ammunition to gun lobbyists to criticize the veracity of this week's GAO study and the legislation it has inspired.

"The integrity of the terror watch list is poor, as it mistakenly contains the names of many men and women, including some high-profile Americans, who have not violated the law," Chris W. Cox, the National Rifle Association's head lobbyist, argued in a statement this week. According to Cox, giving the attorney general new authority to block gun sales to anyone on the list would thus mean inevitably denying innocent Americans their Second Amendment rights. In this case, regardless of where one comes down on the gun debate, the NRA has a point.

Likely anticipating such arguments, Sen. Lautenberg's legislation would allow people to appeal decisions by the attorney general to deny them the ability to purchase a gun. But when contacted by AlterNet, his staff would not say whether the senator would address the proven -- and highly publicized -- flaws in the terrorist watch list.

He will have to at some point. Basing legislation on such a flawed counterterrorism tool will inevitably undermine it.

More importantly, however, the latest finding on guns only underscores what a useless and counterproductive tool the TSC watch list has proved to be. It’s long past time politicians made it a priority to overhaul the so-called terrorist watch list, if not scrap it completely.

The ACLU's Calabrese argues there is no reason the list can't be retired. After all, it is still a new invention. "We already have lists of dangerous people," he says. "We have no problem with the FBI's Most Wanted. Those lists work for a reason. There's a process in place to do this in the right way."

But, politically this poses a daunting challenge. Although the ACLU called on President Barack Obama to order a "thorough review" of the terrorist watch list when he was elected, so far, there are few signs that his administration will follow through.

"A lot of people seem to think that these problems have been solved now that Barack Obama was elected," Calabrese says. "But, in fact, what has happened is that they've been institutionalized."

See more stories tagged with: fbi, barack obama, aclu, department of justice, guns, terrorist watch list, chris calabrese

Liliana Segura is a staff writer and editor of AlterNet's Rights & Liberties Special Coverage.

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