What else should we have expected from Bush but failure?
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After a surge, US terror prosecutions drop to pre-9/11 levels
By Alexandra Marks | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
NEW YORK
With great fanfare, the federal government last March announced
indictments against 19 people for "racketeering to support a terrorist
organization." The allegation: They trafficked in contraband cigarettes
and other items and sent some of the profits to Hizbullah in Lebanon,
which the US calls a terrorist organization.
In the announcement, a US attorney said the terror fight is his office's
No. 1 priority. But lawyers for some of those charged claim their
clients had nothing to do with terror. At best, they say, their clients
may have been involved in "nickel-and-dime" criminal activity.
The contrasting views of this case illustrate the difficulties
encountered by the federal government in prosecuting terrorism. A new
analysis of federal data since 9/11 also underscores the difficulties:
It finds that the number of criminal prosecutions for international
terrorism in the US has dropped sharply.
After spiking up in the aftermath of the attacks, the number of
prosecutions started to decline in 2004 and now stands at pre-9/11
levels, according to a report by the Transactional Records Access
Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse (N.Y.) University. In addition, the
length of sentences served by those convicted of international
terror-related crimes has dropped from a median of 41 months prior to
9/11, to 28 days in the two years following the attacks.
Analysts say one reason for the drop is the intensity of the
law-enforcement activity in the immediate aftermath of the attacks,
which then leveled off. Critics also point to the way the government
conducts its homeland-security policy: They raise questions about the
effectiveness of its current surveillance and intelligence operations,
and also ask whether the threat of terrorism has been exaggerated.
The Department of Justice counters that the report "presents a
misleading analysis," and it strongly objects to the suggestion that the
threat of terrorism may be exaggerated. It says the TRAC report ignores
the DOJ's "successful strategy of prevention through prosecution." "It
is irresponsible to attempt to measure success in the war on terror
without the necessary details about the government's strategies and
tactics," said Bryan Sierra in a prepared statement.
The Justice Department says that by going after small offenses - such as
fraud - it's able to disrupt terrorist activity. It declined to provide
a spokesperson to address directly some of the issues raised in the TRAC
report.
An independent review by the Monitor of dozens of cases categorized by
the government as terrorism or terrorism-related supported the findings
in the TRAC report. The Monitor review - which covered cases
characterized by the Justice Department as successful terror
prosecutions, as well as those included in the TRAC data - found many
cases had tenuous connections to terrorism and resulted in little, if
any, jail time.
For instance, the case of a Kentucky businessman who pleaded guilty to
lying about selling forklift parts to an Iranian truck manufacturer was
categorized as a successful prosecution related to "international
terrorism." The businessman was sentenced to 50 hours of community
service and a year of probation.
Other cases, like the Michigan cigarette smugglers, show a pattern of
government overreaching, say lawyers for some of the defendants. For
instance, they note that in the indictment, many of those named are not
charged with an overt act of giving money to a terrorist organization -
just associating with people who did.
"These guys have never contributed a dollar to Hizbullah and wouldn't in
a thousand years," says James Burdick, who represents Majid Hammoud and
his brother.
The terrorism cases that did result in longer jail terms (14 resulted in
20 years or more) were usually the result of a government sting
operation, like the case of Shahawar Matin Siraj. He was convicted last
May of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in New York
prior to the Republican National Convention.
"Had we not intervened, had we not put an informant next to them, would
these really have been terrorist attacks? We don't know," says Brian
Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif.
Jenkins and other terrorism experts say they're not surprised by the
significant drop in terrorism prosecutions, in part because of the spike
in the number of arrests in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
"The FBI grabbed the good stuff quickly. People who were at risk of
being deemed terrorists or were terrorists went underground," says
Jonathan Winer, a terrorism expert in Washington. "It may well be that
there's not a lot to work with now, only really hard cases with shards
of information left."
That may figure into another TRAC finding: US attorneys declined to
prosecute about two out of three cases (748 cases out of 1,391)
categorized as "international terrorism" that were referred to them by
investigative agencies. In the first six months of this year, nine out
of 10 referrals were declined. "That's a very high declination rate,"
says Christopher Bebel, a former federal prosecutor.
At least one former FBI agent does not find it unusual that the US
attorneys are declining to prosecute the vast majority of terrorism
cases brought to them.
"Terrorism cases are a whole lot of work, and the likelihood of getting
a conviction is very low," says Christopher Hamilton, senior fellow for
terrorism at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies and the
former chief of Palestinian investigations in the FBI.
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