'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.

The report mirrored previous assessments of the watch list, including an audit released in March 2008 that led to headlines such as, "Terrorist Watch List Riddled With Errors."

"The government's terror watch list includes inaccurate and outdated information, increasing the risk that innocent people will be misidentified as terrorists, while terrorists are overlooked," Marisa Taylor, a McClatchy reporter, wrote last spring. The most recent audit proves that this is still very much the case. According to the DOJ inspector general, "The failure to place appropriate individuals on the watch list, or the failure to place them on the watch list in a timely manner, increases the risk that these individuals are able to enter and move freely about the country."

Never mind guns; Calabrese argues that the true problem at the heart of this latest controversy is the terrorist watch list itself. "I think the real question is more about why anyone should have their rights deprived," he says. "The way it is constituted right now, innocent people are routinely being denied their right to fly."

A Post-9/11 Scheme

The Terrorist Watch List began as a project of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, an agency created in 2003. Like many of the Bush administration's post-9/11 schemes -- think Tom Ridge and color-coded terror threat levels -- the watch list quickly proved to be problematic and controversial, in no small part because it was shrouded in secrecy. (Simply put, undisclosed names are placed on the list according to undisclosed criteria.)

As the May audit reminds us, unlike existing lists of suspects, the TSC watch list was designed to consolidate the names of suspected domestic terrorists as well as international terrorists, who are added through a multiagency "nomination" process.

The audit reports: "FBI policy requires that all subjects of international terrorism investigations be nominated to the consolidated terrorist watch list. It also requires that any known or suspected domestic terrorist who is the subject of a full investigation be nominated to the watch list." However, "Under special circumstances, FBI policy also allows for the nomination of known or suspected terrorists for whom the FBI does not have an open terrorism investigation."

If that sounds pretty broad, it is. "It's clear that it started as a real sort of cover-your-butt list," Calabrese explains. Unlike existing (and public) lists targeting people who had some sort of documented proof against them, the TSC list became a catch-all tally of just about anyone who might merit suspicion, for anything, by anyone -- just in case they proved to be a terrorist down the line.

"Put it this way: Nobody ever lost their job for putting somebody on a list," Calabrese says. "So, for example, according to the DOJ, there are some 50,000 names on the TSC list that were just dumped there by the Department of Defense, but no identifying information about why they might be dangerous."

Indeed, the U.S. military's contribution to the terrorist watch list recalls its notoriously flawed process of sweeping up prisoners to send to Guantanamo after 9/11. According to the DOJ audit, "shortly after the initial United States invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, the FBI decided to deploy special agents to Afghanistan in an effort to collect fingerprints and other identifying information from known or suspected terrorists … these FBI deployments resulted in the collection of thousands of fingerprints of military detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq."

By one estimate, since then, "approximately 50,000 military detainees" had been nominated to the watch list.

Crucially, the audit found, "the FBI was not reviewing each nomination and that the determination that these individuals as known or suspected terrorists was being made by the DoD using DoD criteria."

Who are these 50,000 detainees? Did they end up at Guantanamo? Bagram Air Base? Are they actually terrorists?

We cannot know for sure: The full list of names on the TSC watch list remains classified.

Over 1 Million and Counting

Anonymous military prisoners aside, several well-publicized reports in the past few years have found serious problems with the terrorist watch list when it comes to the names of ordinary -- and not-so ordinary -- people.

In 2006, for example, 60 Minutes obtained a copy of the government's No Fly List, which comprises names culled from the Terrorist Screening Center's master list.

Among the hardened terrorists it found on the government watch list? Nelson Mandela, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis, countless civilians (with the misfortune to be named Gary Smith, John Williams or Robert Johnson), and numerous dead people.

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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