Federal inspector nspector questions anti-terrorism statistics

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department's inspector general on Tuesday questioned the accuracy of anti-terrorism statistics gathered by the FBI and federal prosecutors, saying they included immigration violations, drug trafficking and marriage-fraud cases even when there was no evidence linking them to terrorist activity.

In a 140-page audit released Tuesday, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine found that nearly all of the department's terrorism-related statistics on investigations, referrals and cases from September 2001 to February 2005 were wrong.

But Fine's office concluded that the flawed data compiled by the FBI, the Justice Department's Criminal Division and the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys did not appear to be intentional or politically motivated. Instead, most mistakes appeared to be the result of decentralized and "haphazard" ways of collecting the information, or disagreements over what constitutes an anti-terrorism case.

The result was that while federal authorities inflated the number of anti-terrorism cases half of the time, they undercounted about an equal number of cases, the audit found.

The statistics were reported in operational documents such as Justice Department budget requests and annual financial statements and statistical reports. They were used to help the department and its overseers in Congress assess the government's effectiveness in combating terrorism and to help determine the budgets of the FBI and federal prosecutors from one year to the next.

Some investigations and prosecutions were counted as anti-terrorism cases even if they involved workers arrested at airports for immigration violations or for having false documents. Another case included a marriage broker convicted on charges of aiding and abetting marriage fraud between U.S. citizens and Middle Eastern or African men who were eager to live in the United States, but who had no demonstrable ties to terrorism.

"We do not agree that law-enforcement efforts such as these should be counted as anti-terrorism," the audit said.

All three agencies agreed to put in place reforms recommended by the inspector general.

Dean Boyd, the national-security spokesman for the Justice Department, said the department has agreed to change the way it counts and classifies anti-terrorism cases, but he said although some cases may not be directly linked to terrorism, "their underlying purpose is to prevent and deter terrorist infiltration."

Material from McClatchy Newspapers is included in this report.