Audit:
Anti-Terror Case Data Flawed

Nearly All Terrorism-Related Statistics Flawed:
Diminished or Inflated. 

LARA JAKES JORDAN / AP 20feb2007

Federal prosecutors counted immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking among anti-terror cases in the four years after 9/11 even though no evidence linked them to terror activity, a Justice Department audit said Tuesday.

Overall, nearly all of the terrorism-related statistics on investigations, referrals and cases examined by department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine were either diminished or inflated. Only two of 26 sets of department data reported between 2001 and 2005 were accurate, the audit found.

Responding, a Justice spokesman pointed to figures showing that prosecutors in the department's headquarters for the most part either accurately or underreported their data — underscoring what he called efforts to avoid pumping up federal terror statistics.

The numbers, used to monitor the department's progress in battling terrorists, are reported to Congress and the public and help, in part, shape the department's budget.

"For these and other reasons, it is essential that the department report accurate terrorism-related statistics," the audit concluded.

Fine's office took care to say the flawed data appear to be the result of "decentralized and haphazard" methods of collection or disagreement over how the numbers are reported, and do not appear to be intentional.

Still, the errors led Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., to question whether the department had exaggerated the number of terror cases.

"If the Department of Justice can't even get their own books in order, how are we supposed to have any confidence they are doing the job they should be?" said Schumer, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the department. "Whether this is just an accounting error or an attempt to pad terror prosecution statistics for some other reason, the Department of Justice of all places should be classifying cases for what they are, not what they want us to think them to be."

Auditors looked at 26 categories of statistics — including numbers of suspects charged and convicted in terror cases, and terror-related threats against cities and other U.S. targets — compiled by the FBI, Justice's Criminal Division, and the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys.

It found that data from the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys were the most severely flawed. Auditors said the office, which compiles statistics from the 94 federal prosecutors' districts nationwide, both under- and over-counted the number of terror-related cases during a four-year period.

The office has since agreed to change the way it counts and classifies anti-terrorism cases, said department spokesman Dean Boyd.

Boyd denied suggestions that the department pumped up its numbers. He said Criminal Division prosecutors at Justice headquarters and the FBI have overhauled their respective case reporting systems since 2004 for a more accurate picture of terror-related workloads. Both agencies, he said, were strained to accurately report terrorism data in the flood of cases immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"The notion that the Justice Department intentionally inflated its statistics is false and flatly contradicted by the OIG report itself," Boyd said.

In all but one area, Criminal Division prosecutors either accurately stated or underreported their data — the ones the department usually uses in public statements about its counterterror efforts, Boyd noted. He said the Justice Department has already completed most of the fixes recommended in the audit.

Much of the problem stemmed from how that office defines anti-terrorism cases.

A November 2001 federal crackdown on security breaches at airports, for example, yielded arrests on immigration and false document charges, but no evidence of terrorist activity. Nonetheless, the attorneys' office lumped them in with other anti-terror cases since they were investigated by federal Joint Terrorism Task Forces or with other counterterror measures.

Other examples, according to the audit, included:

_Charges against a marriage-broker for being paid to arrange six fraudulent marriages between Tunisians and U.S. citizens.

_Prosecution of a Mexican citizen who falsely identified himself as another person in a passport application.

_Charges against a suspect for dealing firearms without a license. The prosecutor handling the case told auditors it should not have been labeled as anti-terrorism.

"We do not agree that law enforcement efforts such as these should be counted as anti-terrorism," the audit concluded. Even if those cases were not taken into account, the audit said, the U.S. attorneys' office had overstated statistics in all other categories it reported.

Report Finds U.S. Terrorism Statistics Inaccurate

JAMES VICINI / Reuters 20feb2007

Nearly all of the terrorism-related statistics reported by the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI from the September 11 attacks until early 2005 had some inaccuracies, the department's inspector general said on Tuesday.

The findings drew immediate criticism from U.S. senators, who said it raised serious doubts over how effectively the administration was fighting the terrorism threat.

"If the Department of Justice can't even get their own books in order, how are we supposed to have any confidence they are doing the job they should be?," said Sen. Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting record), a New York Democrat.

"Whether this is just an accounting error or an attempt to pad terror prosecution statistics for some other reason, the Department of Justice of all places should be classifying cases for what they are, not what they want us to think them to be," Schumer said.

The report found that only two out of 26 statistics were accurate after reviewing the number of terrorism convictions in the 2003 and 2004 financial years, the number of convictions or guilty pleas from September 11, 2001, through February 3, 2005, and the number of terrorist threats tracked by the FBI in 2003 and 2004.

"We found many cases involving offenses such as immigration violations, marriage fraud, or drug trafficking where department officials provided no evidence to link the subject of the case to terrorist activity," the report said.

Inspector General Glenn Fine said the Justice Department should clarify the definitions it uses in its anti-terrorism categories, maintain adequate support for the numbers and improve internal controls to improve accuracy.

The report found the statistics were inaccurately reported for various reasons.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and a judiciary committee member, said of the report: "The question I have now is whether the inaccuracies are an accident or if there was some other motive behind it."

The collection and reporting of terrorism-related statistics have been decentralized and haphazard, according to the report and most of the statistics were significantly overstated or understated.

Department officials failed to establish internal controls to make sure the statistics were accurately gathered, classified, and reported.

In response to the report, spokesman Dean Boyd said the Justice Department, with few exceptions, had already implemented the changes recommended by the inspector general.