In late November, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse put up on its home page a special report on the Justice Department's claimed achievements
in enforcing the law against domestic and international terrorism from October 1, 1997 to September 30, 2001. The FBI claimed that in recent years it had completed more than 10,000 terrorism
investigations each year. In 2001, however, all federal agencies together only asked federal prosecutors to bring charges against 263 individuals who they categorized as terrorists. And of these 263
matters, two out of three were declined. The report--which became available to the public on December 3--was available for almost a week to reporters with a password. The embargo gave reporters time
to dig into what the FBI and the U.S. Attorney were doing in their area, an opportunity taken advantage of by scores of news organizations such as the Associated Press, the Boston Globe, the Copley
News Service, CNN, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, the Las Vegas Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and many others.
