US GOVERNMENT STILL CONFUSED ABOUT TERRORIST INCIDENTS?

By Larry Johnson

By
Larry C. Johnson

Confusion within the Bush Administration about how to count terrorist activity persists despite pledges to fix the problems and get the facts straight. The initial problem emerged last spring with the release of the State Department�s annual report on international terrorism, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003, which claimed terrorists year were responsible for 190 attacks, 307 deaths, and 1593 injuries during that year. Several independent analysts subsequently discovered that the numbers in the body of report did not match up with the events recorded in Appendix A, which showed that at least 390 people died and 1910 were wounded.

When confronted with the discrepancy in the numbers, the State Department and the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which had the job of producing the statistics, audited the report. The subsequent investigation showed that besides not properly adding the events the TTIC analysts also forgot to include almost two months of data. Although the State Department issued a correction in June 2004, in which they reported 208 attacks, 625 fatalities and 3646 wounded, the numbers are still in dispute. For example, the body of the report described but failed to count 13 terrorist attacks by Chechen terrorists in Russia that left 244 dead and 654 injured.

The State Department and the newly created National Counter Terrorism Center (and successor to TTIC) currently are locked in a bureaucratic battle trying to figure out how to count the terrorist incidents for the year just ended. Early indications are that a new methodology will be introduced and that the number of terrorist attacks to be reported for 2004 will soar. For starters there is pressure building to include all terrorist attacks, not just international incidents. There is some merit in this approach in light of the exclusion of the Chechen attacks in Russia (who had clear ties to al Qaeda and jihadist elements in the Middle East). On the other hand, some analysts are concerned that casting the definition of terrorism in the broadest terms possible will clutter the report with insignificant incidents that will divert attention from the more serious threats.

An indication of the direction where the decision may be headed can be found at the Department of Homeland Security funded Terrorism Knowledge Base of the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (http://www.tkb.org/Home.jsp) aka MIPT . Per the website, �the United States Congress directed MIPT to conduct research into the social and political causes and effects of terrorism through our automated information systems and to serve as a national point of contact for antiterrorism information sharing among Federal, State and local preparedness agencies, as well as private and public organizations dealing with these issues.� While not strictly a government entity, the fact that its charter and mission are dictated by law suggests this is not a simple private entity.

In stark contrast to the terrorism database generated by the predecessor of the National Counter Terrorism Center, the MIPT reports that in 2003 there were 1839 terrorist attacks, 2164 deaths, and 5939 injured. The gap between what the US Government has reported and what a US Government funded entity is reporting is enormous. A comparison of those two databases shows that MIPT is including many reports of violence that do not have a clear link to terrorism. On the other hand, there are some incidents captured by the MIPT data that, in retrospect, probably should have been included in the State Department report.

Resolving this dispute could be dicey since the post for the Coordinator of Counter Terrorism at the Department of State has been vacant for almost three months. While counting terrorist incidents is a minor concern in the galaxy of terrorist activity, it does provide a indicator of the seriousness of the Administration in dealing with this issue in a substantive manner rather than focusing on cosmetic gestures. Once we figure out how to accurately count we may be able to get on with the task of finding Bin Laden.

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