FC: The Justice Department's hoax "domestic terrorism" statistics

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.stpetersburgtimes.com/2002/01/02/news_pf/Opinion/Trumped_up_terrorism_.shtml

St. Petersburg Times editorial
January 2, 2002
Trumped up terrorism numbers
   
   Is a drunk, rowdy passenger on an airplane a terrorist? Is a man who
   pushes a judge? They are according to annual reports from the
   Department of Justice. An investigation by the Miami Herald found that
   the department routinely overstates the number of terrorist arrests
   and convictions it makes every year. It does so, apparently, to cook
   the numbers for Congress, as a way to justify its annual $22-billion
   budget of which counterterrorism is a part.
   
   Is a drunk, rowdy passenger on an airplane a terrorist? Is a man who
   pushes a judge? They are according to annual reports from the
   Department of Justice. An investigation by the Miami Herald found that
   the department routinely overstates the number of terrorist arrests
   and convictions it makes every year. It does so, apparently, to cook
   the numbers for Congress, as a way to justify its annual $22-billion
   budget of which counterterrorism is a part.
   
   In the department's most recent annual report, released in May, the
   department claims there were 236 terrorism convictions in the fiscal
   year ending September 2000. But when pressed to provide specifics, the
   department refused to release information backing up that number or
   disclosing the details of those convictions.
   
   In its investigation, Herald reporters reviewed dozens of so-called
   terrorism cases over a five-year period, examining files obtained
   through the Freedom of Information Act. The reporters found that
   numerous convictions labeled as terrorism were just ordinary crimes,
   having nothing to do with a politically motivated agenda. For example,
   the department listed as a case of domestic terrorism, the conviction
   of a man from Arizona who got drunk while returning from Shanghai. He
   had continually demanded liquor and manhandled a flight attendant. The
   judge in the case called it a case of a man "being an annoyance beyond
   belief," but not terrorism.
   
   According to the department, terrorism was also involved in the case
   of an Ecuadorian man who tried smuggling 12 guns from Miami to his
   home country for the purpose of reselling them. And the conviction of
   seven Chinese sailors was counted as terrorism after they commandeered
   a boat in order to sail it into U.S. territorial waters to ask for
   political asylum.
   
   Disturbingly, the federal prosecutor office in San Francisco was the
   office that listed the most cases of domestic terrorism over the past
   three years. For much of that time, Robert Mueller, now director of
   the FBI, was at its helm.

   [...]



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