The compilation of data about terrorist attacks is not a required part of the report, but traditionally had been provided by the State Department, going back to the years in which the State Department was basically the public voice of the U.S. Government on international terrorism, generally. . . . But what's important for our purposes is what the law said the NCTC should do. It said the NCTC was the primary organization for analysis and integration of -- and I'm quoting from the law now -- "All intelligence possessed or acquired by the United States Government pertaining to terrorism or counterterrorism." The law further stated that the NCTC would be the United States Government's "shared knowledge bank on known and suspected terrorists and international terror groups, as well as their goals, strategies, capabilities, and networks of contact and support." (Phil Zelikow)

State Department�s role as the lead for coordinating international terrorism was established by a National Security Decision Directive signed by President Reagan in early 1986. This was in response to an interagency fight that broke out during an effort to apprehend the terrorists responsible for the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship. While flying over Italy in late 1985 in pursuit of Abu Abbas, a State Department official and a CIA officer argued heatedly over who was in charge of the mission. Recognizing the need for a clear chain of command the Department of State was put in charge of coordinating the efforts of CIA, DOD, and FBI efforts to track and deal with terrorism. The first man put in charge of this effort was L. Paul (Jerry) Bremer.

Mr. Zelikow is misleading the media by asserting that the State Department �traditionally compiled the data�. That is simply not true. The State Department never was in charge of collecting or compiling the statistics. It simply coordinated the process of assembling the data in order to provide the Congress and the American people with a comprehensive view of international terrorist activity. Since 1986 the Counter Terrorism Center at the CIA had the task of compiling the data and writing the narrative analysis. Don�t take my word for it, just ask the former Chiefs of the Counter Terrorism Center starting with Dewey Claridge and ending with Cofer Black.

By splitting the statistics on terrorism from the country reports, Zelikow is creating the kind of stovepiping of information which the 9-11 Commission claimed helped undermine US efforts to detect and defeat Al Qaeda�s effort to launch their suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. There is nothing in the new law requiring this move.

John Brennan, the head of the National Counter Terrorism Center, made the unbelievable admission that when the CIA shifted responsibility for counting terrorist incidents to the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) in the fall of 2003 only three part time people were assigned to the task. Brennan said:

To ensure a more comprehensive accounting of terrorist incidents, we in the NCTC significantly increased the level of effort from three part-time individuals to 10 full-time analysts, and we took a number of other steps to improve quality control and database management. This increased level of effort allowed a much deeper review of far more information and, along with Iraq, are the primary reasons for the significant growth in a number of terrorist incidents being reported.

The American people are asked to believe that nobody at TTIC understood in the aftermath of 2001 that we needed to keep a comprehensive count of terrorist events. Implicit in this criticism is a smear on the good work done previously at the Counter Terrorism Center. CTC did not consider counting terrorism events an afterthought. They used a sound methodology of monitoring news media reports, FBIS reports, and cables from US Embassies and Defense Attaches to identify possible acts of international terrorism. An act of violence did not necessarily mean that terrorism was involved. Instead expert analysts from CTC and State Department�s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) would meet periodically to review and decide what incidents represented acts of international terrorism.

This process broke down when the responsibility for doing this was shifted from CTC and put under Mr. Brennan�s stewardship at the Terrorist Threat Integration Center in late 2003. Mr. Brennan in fact shares much of the responsibility for the debacle with the statistics that were misreported in the report issued in April 2004. He did not ensure that his part time employees could count.

With the beefed up work force at NCTC we now know that 10 analysts were involved in counting 651 significant international terrorist attacks in 2004. Geez, I guess that means it took each analyst one year to keep track of 65 attacks.

Brennan asks the media and the American people to believe that the rise in attacks is simply the result of better counting by more people. Not true. An independent data source from RAND-MIPT shows a similar dramatic rise in attacks and deaths. This is not an artifice of methodology. Something bad is going on out there.

Two countries account for a major portion of the increased terrorist activity�the Kashmir region of India and Iraq. With respect to Kashmir it is important to note that since 1998 this area has consistently appeared in the appendix in Patterns of Global Terrorism that described significant incidents. I have used this data in briefing for foreign governments during that period to point out that not only was India being repeatedly attacked by Islamic jihadists (who were funded and trained by Pakistan), but that the people of Kashmir repeatedly suffered one of the highest death tolls of any country in the world from terrorist attacks. The sad fact is that media, and to a lesser extent the U.S. Government, tended to ignore these attacks.

It is worth recalling that the cruise missiles fired by President Clinton in August of 1998 in retaliation for the Al Qaeda bombing of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania struck a camp in Afghanistan and killed members of one of the groups that carried out attacks in the Kashmir as well as two Pakistani intelligence officers. In the war against Islamic extremists Kashmir matters.
Brennan�s response on Iraq is more puzzling:

QUESTION: Do you regard the Iraq numbers that you just gave us -- for which, thank you -- as comparable? And the reason I ask is that I've got to figure that if there's one piece of real estate that the U.S. intelligence community has devoted enormous resources to in the last two years, it's got to be -- two-and-a-half years -- it's Iraq. Therefore, do you think those figures are comparable, '03 to '02?
MR. BRENNAN: In terms of what the term you're using -- "comparable" -- to sort of denote here, I'm not certain. The rigor that we applied worldwide for the 2004 data also applied to Iraq. So it was Iraq, Kashmir, and others. So that number, I think, is the result of exhaustive search and research on that. Also, as I pointed out, the number of civilians that have come not just from the United States, but also from other countries -- the number of individuals who, in fact, are in different places in Iraq that have been involved in some of the attacks that have taken place there, I think that is the reason why, in fact, we're seeing an increase in that number.

Although Brennan is not certain about the comparability of the numbers we do not have to rely on him. Data maintained by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is reported on at least a weekly basis to the Secretary of Defense, shows clear unambiguous data that the level of terrorist activity in Iraq mushroomed in 2004. In fact, the highest level of attacks ever recorded in Iraq occurred in December 2004.

Iraq is relevant to the threat of international terrorism principally because it is serving as a drawing card for jihadists throughout the Islamic world. I have had recent discussions with senior government officials representing three countries in the Persian Gulf. To a man they were alarmed by the images coming out of Iraq showing US soldiers abusing muslim women and the shooting of unarmed insurgents. The perception of the United States as an invader is inciting terrorism in the region, not quelling it. Several commented on the perceived parallel of the U.S. presence in Iraq as comparable to what the Soviets did in Afghanistan during the 1980s. They worry that we are sowing the seeds of future jihadist terrorism.

The real news from the press conference of Messrs. Zelikow and Brennan is that they have not finished counting the incidents from last year and that the numbers are likely to go up when revised statistics are issued in June. Moreover, both conceded that events in Russia and Philippines, where several hundred were killed, were excluded from the data.

I welcome Mr. Brennan�s commitment to look at the methodology and recommend corrections. The failure to count attacks inside Russia by Chechen separatists, for example, needs to be re-examined. While ten years ago there was no evidence that the Chechen were receiving outside assistance, that is not the case today. In fact Chechen fighters in the battle of Anaconda in Afghanistan in March 2002 killed American soldiers. The Chechen movement has clear economic and military ties to international jihadists. In future reports it would be entirely appropriate to classify as international attacks something carried out by any group with established ties to groups outside of their country.

There is no single statistic that can tell us what is happening in the war on terrorism. Reporting multiple attacks does not necessarily mean that casualties will follow. As Brennan and Zelikow correctly note most of the casualties were caused by a relatively small number of attacks. But, those attacks were carried out by Islamic extremists that have clear ties with Al Qaeda.

In light of this it is breathtaking that someone with Zelikow�s intellect can argue that numbers don�t matter. The following exchange occurred during the Wednesday afternoon press conference:

QUESTION: Um, 651 attacks in 2004, compared to 175 attacks in your report in 2003. That's a sharp increase in terrorist attacks. What does that tell us about the war on terrorism -- the global war on terrorism and the cooperation? . . . .
MR. ZELIKOW: I mean, the short answer is it doesn't tell us anything about the war on terror. The statistics are simply not valid for any inference about the progress, either good or bad, of American policy. I think that's the honest answer. If you just look at what the statistics are and what kind of inferences can legitimately be drawn from them, I can't come up with a defensible inference.

Here�s the bottomline. Numbers do matter. If more people are being killed in Iraq and India then we need to ensure that US policy for combating terrorism is focused on those areas. To pretend that the threat of terrorism is as great in Brazil as in Iraq is delusional. And to pretend that objective facts say nothing about the reality of terrorism perhaps shows us why the US effort to deal with Islamic extremists is going in the wrong direction.

Friends in the intelligence community tell me that Zelikow, when confronted with the higher numbers, tried to have those numbers suppressed. Once word of this leaked out Zelikow shifted gears to damage control and constructed the artificial and misleading explanation that NCTC is now doing something new that was never done before. Oh yeah, and it is mandated by law.

Sadly this simply shows how uninformed Zelikow is about the history of counter terrorism policies and procedures during the last 25 years, notwithstanding his post as staff director of the 9-11 Commission. Maybe this explains why the Commission had such difficulty identifying who failed in their duty to prevent those terrible attacks in September 2001. Phil Zelikow by his own admission has trouble making sense of numbers.

Starting at least in June 1981, the CIA released a report titled, PATTERNS OF INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM: 1980. The CIA was responsible for collecting the data and writing the analysis. This was produced by the National Foreign Assessment Center. (I have one of the originals.)

In 1986, following the creation of the Counter Terrorism Center (CTC) at CIA, the State Department took charge of releasing the report and it was renamed, PATTERNS OF GLOBAL TERRORISM. However, the CTC continued its job of collecting the data and writing the analysis in conjunction with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). The Office of the Coordinator for Counter Terrorism (S/CT) issued the report. Until this year, that is how the report was produced. CIA collected the statistics, the CTC with INR wrote the narrative of the report, and the Office of the Coordinator for Counter Terrorism coordinated the effort and wrote the regional summary sections of the report.

Problems arose in late 2003 when the responsibility for compiling the statistics and writing the narrative shifted from CTC to the new Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC). As a result State Department coordinated with TTIC rather than CTC, but the process remained the same. As a side note, the failure to totally and accurately count all incidents of international terrorism in 2003 was essentially a clerical error by TTIC.

As a result of the Intelligence Reform Act TTIC has been folded into the National Counter Terrorism Center(NCTC). NCTC has assumed the task of compiling statistics and writing the analysis as was the case with its predecessor, CTC.

For Phil Zelikow to claim like a 21st Century version of Freddie Prinze, "It's not our yob" would be funny if the issues were not so serious. State Department still has the lead for dealing with international terrorism on a country by country basis. What do we do about Pakistan, for example, where elements of their Intelligence service continue to protect and host Al Qaida and other Islamic extremists implicated in terrorist attacks in the Kashmir region of India? While NCTC may provide the data it is up to the State Department to craft and implement a policy towards Pakistan that meets the goal of reducing terrorism and promoting security between Pakistan and India. How can they do this if, "the numbers don't matter"?

If State Department does not work closely with NCTC to figure out which groups in the world are killing and wounding innocent civilians how in the world can they construct an effective policy to deal with the terrorist threat? The report may be out but some tough questions still need to be asked and some honest answers provided. Prior to 2005 we had one report that brought together the intelligence community and policymakers in a joint effort to report on international terrorism. Now we have two reports going in different directions. This is exactly what the 9-11 Commission said we should not be doing.

NOTE: You can obtain the "Patterns" reports back to 1986 on the MIPT site.

First, the Security Council has adopted a new tone of language with regard to terrorism. The Security Council President�s Statement, this time, forthrightly condemned terrorism �in all its forms and manifestations� as �criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, whenever and whomsoever committed.� This language seems closer in tone to the �definition of terrorism� now being considered for adoption.

A new emphasis was also placed on expanding counter-terrorism cooperation with various regional and international organizations, notably Interpol. This is a positive step and the UN should be encouraged to look even more broadly to international and regional enforcement agencies to garner increased compliance with its sanctions measures.

There was also a new degree of frustration and impatience with the slow pace of work manifested by the various terrorism committees. Most of this was directed at the Secretariat�s failure to get the new Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) up and running. CTED was established by the Security Council over a year ago and remains woefully understaffed. The success of the Security Council�s counter-terrorism program, US Security Council Representative Stuart Halliday warned, is dependent on getting the CTED fully operational, �Without a fully operational Executive Directorate, it would be difficult for the CTC to fulfill its mandate, let alone the latest 90-day work programme,� he said.

There was also growing impatience with the failure of some 75 countries to provide the chapter VII required reports on the steps they were taking to deal with terrorism. The absence of reports was viewed as seriously hampering the work of the 1640 Committee charged with developing recommendations on stemming risks of WMD proliferation.

The Security Council will soon reconsider the mandate of the 1267 Committee and develop new, strengthened measures to deal with Al Qaeda and related groups. Regrettably, there is no indication they are yet considering measures to bring greater accountability and transparency to the sanctions implementation process. A healthy dose of �name and shame� authority could go a long way toward making the UN counter-terrorism measures more effective.

The 2004 Data

Officials from the State Department and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) came to Congress yesterday to provide a private briefing to committee staffs on the Patterns of Global Terrorism report. The officials who conducted the briefing, Karen Aguilar, the Acting Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department, and Russ Travers, the Deputy Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, indicated that the data on terrorist attacks in 2004 is the most comprehensive and most reviewed data ever compiled. They reported that both the State Department and the NCTC devoted significant time, personnel, and resources to developing the most reliable terrorism data possible.

During the briefing, the officials provided a summary of this 2004 terrorism data. Although the data is not classified and has been released publicly in the past, the handout summarizing the data was marked "FOUO," meaning "for official use only."

According to the 2004 data presented at the briefing, there has been a "dramatic up-tick" in significant terrorism attacks throughout the world. Overall, there were approximately 650 significant terrorist attacks in 2004, compared with 175 attacks in 2003. Prior to 2004, the
175 significant terrorist attacks in 2003 represented a 20-year high.[1]

Ms. Aguilar and Mr. Travers indicated that a major source of this increase was the high number of terrorist attacks in Iraq.
According to information provided at the briefing, there were approximately 198 significant terrorist attacks in Iraq in 2004. This is nine times more than the 22 significant terrorist attacks in Iraq identified in the State Department's 2003 report. Indeed, the number of significant terrorist attacks in Iraq in 2004 exceeded the 175 significant terrorist attacks that occurred throughout the entire world in 2003.

Ms. Aguilar and Mr. Travers said another factor in the global increase was greater awareness of terrorist events. In particular, they emphasized that enhanced efforts to monitor newspapers, television, and other media for incidents of terrorist attacks resulted in identifying many more attacks in India and Pakistan related to Kashmir. Yet even if every terrorist attack in India and Pakistan is removed from the database, the 2004 data still shows a record increase in terrorist attacks. Excluding attacks in India and Pakistan, more than 350 significant terrorist attacks occurred worldwide last year, still double the total number of attacks in 2003.

Other parts of the world also experienced significant increases in terrorist attacks in 2004. In Afghanistan, for example, the number of significant terrorist attacks doubled, increasing from 14 in 2003 to approximately 27 in 2004. The number of significant terrorist attacks in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank also more than doubled, increasing from 19 in 2003 to approximately 45 in 2004.[2]

Despite the large increase in terrorist attacks in 2004, it appears that the 2004 data may be a significant underestimate. Many incidents that most Americans would regard as terrorist attacks were excluded from the database because they did not meet the strict State Department definitions of an international terrorist attack. Mr. Travers explained that the data collected for Iraq did not include a large number of attacks by insurgents that resulted in only Iraqi fatalities or that were directed at U.S. armed forces. Over 100 attacks by "foreign terrorist organizations" were "not counted" because they were not considered "international" attacks.

No data was presented at the briefing on the number of fatalities or injuries caused by the terrorist attacks. This essential information has traditionally been released as part of the annual global terrorism report.

The Decision to Withhold the 2004 Data

During the briefing yesterday, Ms. Aguilar and Mr. Travers also discussed whether the terrorism data would be released to the public. What they said about this question appears to conflict with the previous claims by State Department officials.

Last week, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher stated that the "people of the United States will get all the facts."[3] He said "the government has decided that the [NCTC] should compile and publish the statistical data on terrorism."[4] Yesterday, however, Ms.
Aguilar and Mr. Travers contradicted these statements, saying that no decision to publish the data has been made. Instead, they said that Ambassador Negroponte, the recently confirmed Director for National Intelligence, was in the process of making this decision. Ms. Aguilar also said the State Department would not publish the data, even if Ambassador Negroponte decided that the NCTC was not the proper office to release this information.

Mr. Boucher also stated last week that the State Department would not release the data because it would be inappropriate to have "some State Department cutout trying to explain someone else's methodology."[5] However, Ms. Aguilar and Mr. Travers indicated at the briefing that the methodology and definitions used to vet the data were identical to last year's and were taken directly from the statute governing the State Department's annual report. They also made clear that NCTC compiled the data specifically for the State Department's annual report. Mr. Travers called the State Department "the client" for this information. And the briefing document provided yesterday describes the NCTC as providing "support" for the "Patterns" report, depicting the Department's annual report as the final stop on a terrorism data flow chart.

Moreover, Ms. Aguilar conceded at yesterday's briefing that numerous Department officials - including officials from the Department's Counterterrorism Center and the Department's Bureau for Intelligence and Research - had extensive involvement in the preparation of this terrorism data. Not only did they identify and submit information about specific terrorism incidents, but they also participated in an interagency adjudication process that had as its sole purpose determining whether these terrorist incidents met the statutory standards for inclusion in the Department's annual report.

We also learned at the briefing that the State Department failed to implement numerous recommendations made by the Inspector General last September that could have prevented questions about the data's origins and methodology from arising. For example, the Inspector General recommended that the data be distributed to State Department bureaus "at a minimum on a quarterly basis," enabling the bureaus to evaluate the data regularly.[6] The Inspector General also recommended that the State Department conclude a "Memorandum of Understanding" to govern how the Department obtains terrorism data from organizations outside the Department, including "complete minutes of meetings and notes on how decisions were made."[7] Ms. Aguilar reported yesterday that neither recommendation had been implemented over the past seven months.

The main rationale given by Ms. Aguilar for your decision to exclude the 2004 data from the Patterns of Global Terrorism report is that the terrorism data is not "relevant" to the report itself. With all due respect, this is a ludicrous position. As the Inspector General concluded last year, "The accuracy of the report is dependent on accurate and complete data."[8]

Conclusion

Last year, Bush Administration officials cited the annual terrorism data as an illustration of "the great progress that has been made in fighting terrorism."[9] Members of Congress and the public discovered that these statements were erroneous only because the underlying data on terrorist attacks was available for scrutiny.[10] In effect, your decision to withhold the data this year eliminates this vital check on the veracity of the Administration's claims.

The contrast between your approach and the approach of your predecessor, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, could not be more stark. To Secretary Powell's credit, he recognized that the 2003 report contained major errors. He withdrew the initial report, directed his staff to scrub the data for errors, discussed these problems personally with Members of Congress, including myself, and issued a revised report based on the most up-to-date information.[11] Although the revised report undercut the Administration's claims that terrorist attacks were declining, Secretary Powell never sought to hide behind the actions of another agency, avoid responsibility, or conceal data.

I urge you to follow Secretary Powell's example. The large increases in terrorist attacks reported in 2004 may undermine Administration claims of success in the war on terror, but political inconvenience has never been a legitimate basis for withholding facts from the American people.

Sincerely,

Rep. Henry A. Waxman

Ranking Minority Member

Yesterday, the Associated Press ran an interesting story about Jama. It seems the Feds, in duly attempting to execute their sworn duty to finally deport Jama, who, over four years, had fully exhausted his extensive legal appeals under U.S. law (yes, the very immigration laws and procedures that some media and special interest groups deem to be something akin to a draconian �star chamber�) and lost his case before the Nation�s highest Court, could not be physically removed to Somalia, after all.

But, it wasn�t for lack of trying. According to the AP report, last week, ICE officials flew Jama to Kenya, where they turned him over to a private security firm for further transport to Bossasso, Somalia. When Jama got to Bossasso, �authorities� there refused to allow him to enter the country and he was ultimately returned to the custody of the ICE officers. He was then flown back to the United States, and remains in custody in the St. Paul, Minnesota area pending further decisions in his case.

The Supreme Court decided that, legally, there was no bar to the U.S. Government deporting Jama, or any other similarly situated deportable alien, to Somalia or any other country that just didn�t happen to have a viable national government that would �officially� accept their return. There are about 3500 other Somalis under final removal orders who are no doubt anxiously waiting to see what happens in the Jama case. The rest of us should at least pay some attention, as well.

We probably don�t need to imagine too hard who those �authorities� in Bossasso really were. Somalia is essentially a country divided into warlord fiefdoms. Bossasso was no doubt chosen by that contract security company as a place they thought they could most easily and quickly accomplish an entry, drop-off and departure with the minimum amount of payoff to the local gunmen at the airport. Something obviously did not go according to plan, and the private security escorts, possibly unarmed and undoubtedly outgunned even if they were armed, decided retreat in the face of whatever potential trouble they faced was the better part of valor.

The Jama case is significantly noteworthy because it highlights how complex immigration issues can be, particularly when dealing with volatile third world countries with a long history of terrorism and violence. Somalia, a hotbed of al-Qaeda sympathizers and operatives, with no viable government beyond heavily armed drug smuggling warlords overseeing their own chunk of geography, may be a place to where we can �legally� deport aliens, but actually doing that is clearly going to be another matter. The physical process of safely and securely moving human beings from here to there suddenly becomes a whole other issue.

And, that becomes an issue of foreign policy and even national security. Consider the options. If the United States cannot effectively deport these Somalis under this �normal� process, then what? How far do we go? Surely, with the utilization of enough military resources�military transport planes and armed troops for security�these deportees could be flown in unannounced at remote locations, dropped off (deported) and the U.S. personnel then depart with relative safety. Is that an alternative we should really employ? And, that is an expensive alternative, which theoretically employs an armed military incursion each time we deport people. Then again, where�s the Somali government to resist or complain?

And, what if we do nothing and we don�t deport those 3500 Somalis the Supreme Court now says we can legally remove? We can say we�re temporarily deferring their removal for humanitarian purposes. But, if we do that, we also run the risk of being perceived by many, not the least of which would be many in the radical Islamic world, of being afraid and incapable of conducting these deportations because of�what? The radical Muslim warlords controlling Somalia�some of whom are aligned with al-Qaeda? Is that really an option?

The case of Keyse Jama will remain one to watch.

She writes that, "No financial intelligence unit actually exists today in Saudi Arabia. This is unacceptable...The Saudis deserve a measure of credit for recently trying to place controls on their government-sponsored charities. But international Islamic charities based in Saudi Arabia are mostly unaffected...And while the Saudis have been perhaps more aggressive than any country in the region in urging its citizens to reject terrorism, it is still difficult to say a strong message has been delivered with regard to terror finance. The virtual absence of convictions for terror finance offenses in Saudi Arabia since 9/11 has often been mentioned."

Preservation of human rights in the war on terrorism was a key topic at both the Riyadh and Madrid Conferences, and in Secretary-General Kofi Annan�s new counter-terrorism strategy. It was also reflected at this week�s general session of the UN Commission on Human Rights which agreed to appoint, for three years, a Special Rapporteur to oversee and report on the effects counter-terrorism actions are having on human rights. His mandate includes gathering information on relevant human rights violations, and on making recommendations concerning best practices on �measures to counter terrorism that respect human rights and fundamental freedoms.�

The delegates to the Madrid Conference recognized that �we owe it to the victims� to ensure that law enforcement agencies are given adequate power and resources to bring terrorists to justice. Yet, they added, �they must never sacrifice the principles they are dedicated to defend. Measures to counter terrorism should fully respect international standards of human right and the rule of law.

Achieving such compatibility between effective police and military actions and human rights safeguards has not been an easy task. Normal police and investigative methods are often not sufficient to obtain from fanatical terrorists the vital information necessary to prevent an horrendous attack. This has led some countries, including the United States, to sometimes seek to side-step the human rights issue. Rendition is a case in point.

Rendition involves turning over suspected foreign terrorists to their country of origin, or a third country, for interrogation and possible incarceration. One motivation for such action is to put greater pressure on the suspect to divulge information. In several cases, suspects picked up in the United States and abroad by US agents were turned over to foreign government�s whose standards of interrogation were, at the least, questionable.

In 1998, Congress passed legislation declaring that it is �the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States.� Nevertheless, the Bush Administration relaxed restrictions on rendition as part of its more aggressive counter-terrorism posture after 9/11. Then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, argued that rendition, in appropriate cases, was justified in order to provide �the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians�.�

This practice is now coming in for increased criticism from both within and outside the US government. Several Members of Congress have called on the Bush administration to sharply curtail this practice. Congressman Ed Markey (D) Massachusetts recently introduced legislation that would prohibit direct or indirect use of the rendition technique by the United States. But, while CIA Director Porter Goss has come in for some sharp questioning about the practice, Congress still appears to want to stay away from confronting the administration on this issue.

In that letter, the ABA and state regulators requested clarity and more consistency in federal BSA examination procedures. They wrote, "(T)he lack of consistency in examination oversight and compliance guidance is a major theme of regulatory complaints received by ABA and the state banking associations." While pledging to work with the industry to avoid confusion and defensive filing of BSA-required disclosures, the FBAs (federal banking regulators) has something interesting to add about another federal agency which did not sign the letter:

"It is also important to consider the role of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in BSA-related enforcement matters. The FBAs and FinCEN believe that the Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) process is a valuable tool in the civil regulatory and criminal enforcement scheme. Currently, we are working with our colleagues at DOJ to attempt to better define the value and appropriate uses of SARs as well as the appropriate role for criminal prosecutions of banks under the BSA. We are hopeful that this effort will result in a clear and consistent approach that will alleviate some of the concerns that have led to defensive SAR filings."

This is another tacit admission of what has been obvious in public conferences this year - that the Justice Department does not think that it should be held responsible for any confusion. The industry became very upset when a U.S. Attorney in Mississippi prosecuted AmSouth last year without a prior regulatory action or DOJ headquarters review. As I posted on April 13, that led to an effort to take the prosecutorial discretion for BSA bank prosecutions away from the U.S. Attorneys in the field and centralize it at DOJ headquarters. Although that effort has support in Washington, the industry shouldn't think that DOJ will just step out of BSA prosecutions. As far as DOJ prosecutors are concerned, the industry had many years after the BSA was passed to prepare their systems to avoid criminal prosecutions, and the banks and the FBAs ought to do their job and let DOJ do theirs.

Moreover, DOJ is not the only player in the field. The DHS Office of Immigrations & Customs Enforcement (ICE) has begun a vigorous nationwide task force to investigate money service businesses, with big cases in Philadelphia this weekend and the Rahim Bariek indictment in northern Virginia last week. I can't expect that new DHS Secretary Chertoff, a former federal prosecutor who was instrumental in the pursuing the corporate fraud prosecutions, will tell his ICE agents to back off and let the regulators and banks work things out.

A State Department official commenting on the decision to not publish the statistics on international terrorism said they would let NCTC worry about the statistics and State would do the "policy". Really? How can you formulate a coherent policy if you don't know what the numbers are? Who is doing the killing? In which countries are there attacks where terrorists are killing and wounding scores of people? One of the uncomfortable answers buried in the data concerns the attacks in Kashmir. The groups responsible for these attacks--e.g., the Lashkar Tayibba, the Harakat ul-Ansar--have received funding and support from elements of Pakistan's intelligence service. In the past these groups were training in Afghanistan alongside Al Qaida. In other words one of our key allies in the war on terrorism has been a sponsor of terrorism.

This is but one example of the unpleasant, difficult policy issues that lurk behind the so-called meaningless statistics. Until you have someone at the State Department in a leadership position who understands that the numbers matter you will not have an effective policy to combat terrorism. For now the policy is adrift.

What should Condi do? For starters she might want to consider naming her buddy Phil Zelikow as the new Coordinator for Counter Terrorism. He is the right man for the job--he has access to Condi and knows the issues. However, I fear Zelikow would view this as a step down from his current perch. That, my friends, speaks volumes about the gulf between the lip service being provided to fighting the war on terrorism and the actual commitment to put some bodies on the line that can make a difference.

So, as State Department continues to tap dance about justifying not putting out a public report that provides specific data on the level of international terrorism around the world, perhaps Secretary Rice could better spend her time by naming a new Coordinator that has the clout to get something done, including putting out reports with good analysis and accurate numbers.