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Sunday, June 12, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
U.S. terror convictions overstated, data show
By Dan Eggen and Julie Tate
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — On Thursday, President Bush stepped to a lectern at the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy in Columbus to urge renewal of the USA Patriot Act and to boast of the government's success in prosecuting terrorists.
Flanked by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Bush said "federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted."
Those statistics have been used repeatedly by Bush and other administration officials, including Gonzales and his predecessor, John Ashcroft, to characterize the government's efforts against terrorism.
But the numbers are misleading at best.
An analysis of the Justice Department's list of terrorism prosecutions by The Washington Post shows that 39 people — not 200 — have been convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security.
Most of the others were convicted of relatively minor crimes such as making false statements and violating immigration law — and had nothing to do with terrorism, the analysis shows. Overall, the median sentence was 11 months.
Justice Department officials say they have not sought to exaggerate the importance or suspected associations of those prosecuted in connection with terrorism probes, and they argue that the list provides only a partial view of their efforts.
About the analysis
Individual cases were classified as terrorism-related if any supportable allegation of terrorism was made by authorities or could be found through additional investigation. Cases were classified as not related to terrorism if individuals were publicly cleared of connections to terrorism or no link could be found. Except for eight cases ultimately classified as "unknown," the Post accepted the Justice Department's assertion that a case was related to terrorism if circumstances were unclear.
The Washington Post
Still, except for a small number of well-known cases — such as truck driver Iyman Faris, who sought to take down the Brooklyn Bridge — few appear to have been involved in active plots against the United States.
In fact, among all the people charged as a result of terrorism investigations in the three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Post found no demonstrated connection to terrorism or terrorist groups for 180 of them.
Al-Qaida connections
Only one in nine individuals on the list had an alleged connection to the al-Qaida network, and only 14 people convicted of terrorism-related crimes — including Faris and Sept. 11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui — have clear links to the group. Many more cases involve Colombian drug cartels, supporters of the Palestinian cause, Rwandan war criminals or others with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or its leader, Osama bin Laden.
Bush spent much of the past week lobbying for an extension of the USA Patriot Act, which he credits as an essential tool in the war on terrorism. The law, quickly enacted after the attacks on New York and Washington, expanded the power of the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies. Among 16 provisions set to expire Dec. 31 are sections allowing the use of roving wiretaps on multiple telephones and secret warrants for "tangible items" held by libraries, financial firms and other businesses.
Yet, many people appear to have been swept into U.S. counterterrorism investigations by chance — through anonymous tips, suspicious circumstances or bad luck — and have remained classified as terrorism defendants years after being cleared.
The prosecution of 20 men, most of them Iraqis, in a Pennsylvania truck-licensing scam accounts for about 10 percent of individuals convicted — even though the entire group was publicly absolved of ties to terrorism in 2001.
"For so many of these cases, there seems to be much less substance to them than we first assume or have first been told," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who heads the Washington office of Rand Corp., a think tank that conducts national-security research. "There's an inherent deterrent effect in cracking down on any illicit activity. But the challenge is not exaggerating what they were up to — not portraying them as super-terrorists when they're really the low end of the food chain."
Prosecutors' strategy
Justice Department officials said all the individuals were first put on the list because of a suspected connection or allegation related to terrorism. Last week, they also said the department had tightened requirements for including a case on the terrorism list.
Barry Sabin, chief of the department's counterterrorism section, said prosecutors frequently turn to lesser charges when they are not confident that they can prove crimes such as committing or supporting terrorism. Many defendants also have been prosecuted for relatively minor crimes in exchange for information that is not public but has proved valuable in other terrorism probes, he said.
"A person could not have been put on this list if there was not a concern about national security, at least initially," he said. "Are all these people an ongoing threat presently? Arguably not. ... We are not trying to overstate or understate what we're doing. You don't want to put language or a label on people that is inconsistent with what they have done."
Comparing lists
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department database has served as the key source of statistics on the status of terrorism investigations in the United States and has been cited frequently in official speeches and testimony to Congress. But since releasing a limited version in late 2001 with fewer than 100 names on it, the department has declined to provide further details.
The list obtained by the Post includes 361 cases defined as terrorism investigations by the department's criminal division from Sept. 11, 2001, through late September 2004. Thirty-one entries could not be evaluated because they were sealed and blacked out. (The list does not include about 40 cases filed since then that account for Bush's total of about 400). The Post sought to update and correct data whenever possible, including noting convictions or sentences handed down within the past nine months.
The list of domestic prosecutions does not include terrorism suspects held at the Guantánamo Bay military prison or at secret locations around the globe. Nor does it include many of the approximately 50 people the Justice Department has acknowledged detaining as "material witnesses," or three men who were held in a South Carolina brig.
The Post identified 180 cases in which no connection to al-Qaida or another terrorist group could be found in court records, official statements, the 9/11 commission's report or news accounts. Even some of the other cases featured early allegations of terrorist connections that were dropped.
Of 142 individuals on the list linked to terror groups, 39 were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security. More than a dozen defendants were acquitted or had their charges dismissed, including three Moroccan men in Detroit whose convictions were tossed out in September after the Justice Department admitted prosecutorial misconduct.
The median sentence was 11 months, and nearly three dozen other defendants were given probation or deported. The most common convictions were on charges of fraud, making false statements, passport violations and conspiracy.
Two life sentences have been handed down: to Richard Reid, the British drifter who was foiled by passengers in his attempt to blow up an aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean; and Masoud Khan, a Maryland man convicted of traveling to Pakistan and seeking to fight with the Taliban against U.S. forces.
Two others convicted of terrorism-related crimes face life sentences: Abdel Sattar, an Egyptian-born postal worker convicted of conspiring to kill and kidnap in a foreign country; and Ali Timimi, a Northern Virginia spiritual leader convicted of encouraging others to attend terrorist camps. (Timimi was indicted in late September and was not on the list obtained by The Post.)
Only 14 of those convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security have clear links to bin Laden's network, most notably Moussaoui and Reid. Others include Faris, an admitted al-Qaida member who sought to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, and six Yemeni men from Lackawanna, N.Y., who were convicted of providing material support for terrorists by attending an al-Qaida training camp before Sept. 11, 2001.
In addition, Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh, most closely associated with Afghanistan's deposed government, trained at an al-Qaida camp.
The patterns discovered by the Post are similar to findings in studies of Justice Department terrorism cases by New York University and Syracuse University, each of which examined different sets of data.
More than one-third of the cases on the list arose from a post-Sept. 11 FBI dragnet, which resulted in the arrests of hundreds of Muslim immigrants for minor violations unrelated to the hijackings or terrorism.
"What we're seeing over time is the equivalent of mission creep: Cases that would not be terrorism cases before Sept. 11 are swept onto the terrorism docket," said Juliette Kayyem, a former Clinton administration Justice official who heads the national-security program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "The problem is that it's not good to cook the numbers. ... We have no accurate assessment of whether the war on terrorism is actually working."
In the years before the Sept. 11 attacks, many veteran U.S. counterterrorism officials assumed that al-Qaida sleeper cells were hiding in the country, awaiting orders to launch attacks.
Sleeper cells?
The results from the Justice Department database, however, raise the possibility that the presence of al-Qaida operatives and sympathizers within the United States is either limited or largely undetected, many terrorism experts say. In a recent assessment of al-Qaida's presence in the United States, for example, the FBI and CIA conceded that U.S. authorities had not identified any operational sleeper cells akin to those unearthed over the past year in Britain, according to officials with access to the document.
"These kind of statistics show that we really don't know if they exist here in any significant way," said Martha Crenshaw, a professor of government at Wesleyan University in Connecticut who has studied terrorism since the late 1960s. "It's possible that they could have sleepers planted here for a long time and we could always be very surprised. But I'd say that's less likely compared with them trying to repeat a 9/11-style infiltration from the outside."
Washington Post research database editor Derek Willis contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
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Sunday, June 12, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
U.S. terror convictions overstated, data show
By Dan Eggen and Julie Tate
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — On Thursday, President Bush stepped to a lectern at the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy in Columbus to urge renewal of the USA Patriot Act and to boast of the government's success in prosecuting terrorists.
Flanked by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Bush said "federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted."
Those statistics have been used repeatedly by Bush and other administration officials, including Gonzales and his predecessor, John Ashcroft, to characterize the government's efforts against terrorism.
But the numbers are misleading at best.
An analysis of the Justice Department's list of terrorism prosecutions by The Washington Post shows that 39 people — not 200 — have been convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security.
Most of the others were convicted of relatively minor crimes such as making false statements and violating immigration law — and had nothing to do with terrorism, the analysis shows. Overall, the median sentence was 11 months.
Justice Department officials say they have not sought to exaggerate the importance or suspected associations of those prosecuted in connection with terrorism probes, and they argue that the list provides only a partial view of their efforts.
About the analysis
Individual cases were classified as terrorism-related if any supportable allegation of terrorism was made by authorities or could be found through additional investigation. Cases were classified as not related to terrorism if individuals were publicly cleared of connections to terrorism or no link could be found. Except for eight cases ultimately classified as "unknown," the Post accepted the Justice Department's assertion that a case was related to terrorism if circumstances were unclear.
The Washington Post
Still, except for a small number of well-known cases — such as truck driver Iyman Faris, who sought to take down the Brooklyn Bridge — few appear to have been involved in active plots against the United States.
In fact, among all the people charged as a result of terrorism investigations in the three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Post found no demonstrated connection to terrorism or terrorist groups for 180 of them.
Al-Qaida connections
Only one in nine individuals on the list had an alleged connection to the al-Qaida network, and only 14 people convicted of terrorism-related crimes — including Faris and Sept. 11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui — have clear links to the group. Many more cases involve Colombian drug cartels, supporters of the Palestinian cause, Rwandan war criminals or others with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or its leader, Osama bin Laden.
Bush spent much of the past week lobbying for an extension of the USA Patriot Act, which he credits as an essential tool in the war on terrorism. The law, quickly enacted after the attacks on New York and Washington, expanded the power of the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies. Among 16 provisions set to expire Dec. 31 are sections allowing the use of roving wiretaps on multiple telephones and secret warrants for "tangible items" held by libraries, financial firms and other businesses.
Yet, many people appear to have been swept into U.S. counterterrorism investigations by chance — through anonymous tips, suspicious circumstances or bad luck — and have remained classified as terrorism defendants years after being cleared.
The prosecution of 20 men, most of them Iraqis, in a Pennsylvania truck-licensing scam accounts for about 10 percent of individuals convicted — even though the entire group was publicly absolved of ties to terrorism in 2001.
"For so many of these cases, there seems to be much less substance to them than we first assume or have first been told," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who heads the Washington office of Rand Corp., a think tank that conducts national-security research. "There's an inherent deterrent effect in cracking down on any illicit activity. But the challenge is not exaggerating what they were up to — not portraying them as super-terrorists when they're really the low end of the food chain."
Prosecutors' strategy
Justice Department officials said all the individuals were first put on the list because of a suspected connection or allegation related to terrorism. Last week, they also said the department had tightened requirements for including a case on the terrorism list.
Barry Sabin, chief of the department's counterterrorism section, said prosecutors frequently turn to lesser charges when they are not confident that they can prove crimes such as committing or supporting terrorism. Many defendants also have been prosecuted for relatively minor crimes in exchange for information that is not public but has proved valuable in other terrorism probes, he said.
"A person could not have been put on this list if there was not a concern about national security, at least initially," he said. "Are all these people an ongoing threat presently? Arguably not. ... We are not trying to overstate or understate what we're doing. You don't want to put language or a label on people that is inconsistent with what they have done."
Comparing lists
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department database has served as the key source of statistics on the status of terrorism investigations in the United States and has been cited frequently in official speeches and testimony to Congress. But since releasing a limited version in late 2001 with fewer than 100 names on it, the department has declined to provide further details.
The list obtained by the Post includes 361 cases defined as terrorism investigations by the department's criminal division from Sept. 11, 2001, through late September 2004. Thirty-one entries could not be evaluated because they were sealed and blacked out. (The list does not include about 40 cases filed since then that account for Bush's total of about 400). The Post sought to update and correct data whenever possible, including noting convictions or sentences handed down within the past nine months.
The list of domestic prosecutions does not include terrorism suspects held at the Guantánamo Bay military prison or at secret locations around the globe. Nor does it include many of the approximately 50 people the Justice Department has acknowledged detaining as "material witnesses," or three men who were held in a South Carolina brig.
The Post identified 180 cases in which no connection to al-Qaida or another terrorist group could be found in court records, official statements, the 9/11 commission's report or news accounts. Even some of the other cases featured early allegations of terrorist connections that were dropped.
Of 142 individuals on the list linked to terror groups, 39 were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security. More than a dozen defendants were acquitted or had their charges dismissed, including three Moroccan men in Detroit whose convictions were tossed out in September after the Justice Department admitted prosecutorial misconduct.
The median sentence was 11 months, and nearly three dozen other defendants were given probation or deported. The most common convictions were on charges of fraud, making false statements, passport violations and conspiracy.
Two life sentences have been handed down: to Richard Reid, the British drifter who was foiled by passengers in his attempt to blow up an aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean; and Masoud Khan, a Maryland man convicted of traveling to Pakistan and seeking to fight with the Taliban against U.S. forces.
Two others convicted of terrorism-related crimes face life sentences: Abdel Sattar, an Egyptian-born postal worker convicted of conspiring to kill and kidnap in a foreign country; and Ali Timimi, a Northern Virginia spiritual leader convicted of encouraging others to attend terrorist camps. (Timimi was indicted in late September and was not on the list obtained by The Post.)
Only 14 of those convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security have clear links to bin Laden's network, most notably Moussaoui and Reid. Others include Faris, an admitted al-Qaida member who sought to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, and six Yemeni men from Lackawanna, N.Y., who were convicted of providing material support for terrorists by attending an al-Qaida training camp before Sept. 11, 2001.
In addition, Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh, most closely associated with Afghanistan's deposed government, trained at an al-Qaida camp.
The patterns discovered by the Post are similar to findings in studies of Justice Department terrorism cases by New York University and Syracuse University, each of which examined different sets of data.
More than one-third of the cases on the list arose from a post-Sept. 11 FBI dragnet, which resulted in the arrests of hundreds of Muslim immigrants for minor violations unrelated to the hijackings or terrorism.
"What we're seeing over time is the equivalent of mission creep: Cases that would not be terrorism cases before Sept. 11 are swept onto the terrorism docket," said Juliette Kayyem, a former Clinton administration Justice official who heads the national-security program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "The problem is that it's not good to cook the numbers. ... We have no accurate assessment of whether the war on terrorism is actually working."
In the years before the Sept. 11 attacks, many veteran U.S. counterterrorism officials assumed that al-Qaida sleeper cells were hiding in the country, awaiting orders to launch attacks.
Sleeper cells?
The results from the Justice Department database, however, raise the possibility that the presence of al-Qaida operatives and sympathizers within the United States is either limited or largely undetected, many terrorism experts say. In a recent assessment of al-Qaida's presence in the United States, for example, the FBI and CIA conceded that U.S. authorities had not identified any operational sleeper cells akin to those unearthed over the past year in Britain, according to officials with access to the document.
"These kind of statistics show that we really don't know if they exist here in any significant way," said Martha Crenshaw, a professor of government at Wesleyan University in Connecticut who has studied terrorism since the late 1960s. "It's possible that they could have sleepers planted here for a long time and we could always be very surprised. But I'd say that's less likely compared with them trying to repeat a 9/11-style infiltration from the outside."
Washington Post research database editor Derek Willis contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
E-mail this article
Print this article
Search archive
Get home delivery for $1.95 per week
More nation & world headlines...
Search
Today Archive
Advanced search
NWsource shopping
Local sales & deals
Search retail ads
Today's featured ads
Homescapes on 153rd: 10% off your purchase
Receive $10 off your entire bill at Azteca
Funky Bob's Art Galleria: 20% off framed art
More ads
Don't miss it
Velocity Art & Design Handbag Sale
Save 20 percent on mod Angela Adams handbags online or in-store.
Find great prices on boutique clothes at the Best Kept Secret Sample Sale.
Save up to 50 percent at the Hanna Andersson Twice A Year Sale.
Shop for summer at Nordstrom’s Women's and Kids' Half-Yearly Sale.
Shopping events
Create sale alert e-mails
Store guides
Grocery coupons
Travel deals
Looking for a car?
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Home delivery | RSS feeds | Low-graphic | Search archive
Site map | webmaster@seattletimes.com | Contact us | Privacy statement | Terms of service
NWclassifieds | NWsource | Advertise with us | The Seattle Times Company
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