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The government’s centralized terrorist watch list passed the 900,000 name mark this month, according to the ACLU, which estimated the new total by relying on Congressional testimony from the fall that the sprawling list was growing by 20,000 names a month.
Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration's domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.
“I stand by this President’s ability, inherent to being Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that,” Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.
The bill, passed by voice vote after a brief but poignant debate, authorized up to $38 million in federal funds to preserve and restore 10 internment camps, including Tule Lake near the California-Oregon border and Manzanar in the stark eastern Sierra
Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced on January 24, 2006 that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps in the United States.
Less attention was focused on the phrase “rapid development of new programs” or what type of programs might require a major expansion of detention centers, capable of holding 5,000 people each. Jamie Zuieback, spokeswoman for ICE, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs” might be.
Scott speculates that the “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.” He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized the Rex-84 “readiness exercise,” which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 “refugees” in the event of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the U.S.
But how could the ACLU have gotten their numbers? a portion of a letter to the Editor from the FBI may supply the answer:
Most of the individuals on the Terrorist Watchlist are not U.S. citizens, but are terrorists living and operating overseas. The Terrorist Watchlist is made up of approximately 400,000 people. The reasonable suspicion standard includes known or suspected terrorists ranging from suicide bombers to financiers. The “No Fly” list has its own minimum substantive derogatory criteria requirements which are considerably more stringent than the Terrorist Watchlist’s reasonable suspicion standard. In order to be placed on the No Fly list, a known or suspected terrorist must present a threat to civil aviation or national security. Consequently, the No Fly list is a very small subset of the Terrorist Watchlist currently containing approximately 3,400 people; of those, approximately 170 are U.S. persons. On a daily basis, the TSC receives between 400 and 1,200 unique additions, modifications, or deletions of terrorist identities. It is through this nomination and review process that the TSC strives to maintain a thorough, accurate, and current database of known or suspected terrorists for lawful and appropriate use in the screening process.
Neither the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) nor the Department of Justice has ever stated that the terrorist watch list contains more than 1 million names. Instead, the Department of Justice explained in its recent report, as has the Terrorist Screening Center numerous times before, that the terrorist watch list contains 1.1 million “terrorist identities” representing approximately 400,000 individuals. This is because a single individual can generate numerous “terrorist identities” or records. For example, if a suspected terrorist uses two different names and three fake dates of birth, TSC would generate six “terrorist identities” or records.
The editorial also failed to include the widely-reported fact that less than 5 percent of the individuals on the watch list are U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents. The vast majority are not even in the U.S.—and the watch list was established to help keep it that way.