Apr. 22, 2005
DISCONTINUATION OF STATE DEPARTMENT TERROR REPORT RAISES EYEBROWS.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., asked for an investigation this week after
the State Department announced that after 19 years, it would no longer annually publish terrorist attack numbers,
Reuters reported Thursday. The decision “denies the public access to
information about the incidence of terrorism,” he said in
correspondence to the acting State Department inspector general in
which he asked what political concerns, if any, motivated the
discontinuation. The 2004 statistics contradicted the Bush
administration’s claims that the war on terror was making progress.
A spokesman for the State Department, Richard Boucher, answered the press corps’ questions about the decision
on Monday morning, saying that responsibility for the report has simply
been shifted to the National Counterterrorism Center because “the 9/11
Commission recommended and the Congress passed legislation called the
Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 that
established the National Counterterrorism Center as the primary
organization in the U.S. Government for analysis of global terrorism.”
Behind the Homefront
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