General Accounting Office. In the third week of February 2003,
the General Accounting Office made public a report
challenging the accuracy and reliability of the Justice Department's
terrorism-related statistics. The agency called for better management
oversight and improved internal controls. The study supported
the findings of an investigative article published more than a
year before by Philadelphia Inquirer reporters Mark Fazlollah
and Peter Nicholas. Beginning with the detailed information obtained
by TRAC from the Justice Department, the two reporters had examined
court records and interviewed assistant U.S. attorneys about criminal
prosecutions the Justice Department had classified as involving
terrorism from 1997 to 2001. Their conclusion: many of the so-called
terrorism cases were nothing of the sort, frequently involving
such subjects as mentally ill individuals, drunken airline passengers
and convicts rioting for food.
