Report: FBI Mishandles Terror Watch List

The FBI can’t figure out the right way to add or remove suspected terrorists from the country’s unified terrorist watch list, subjecting citizens to unjustified scrutiny from government officials and possibly putting the country at risk, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog said Wednesday in a new report. “We found that the FBI failed to nominate many subjects in the terrorism investigations that we sampled, did not nominate many others in a timely fashion, and did not update or remove watchlist records as required,” the Inspector General report (.pdf) said. “We believe that the FBI’s failure to consistently nominate subjects of international and domestic terrorism investigations to the terrorist watchlist could pose a risk to national security.” Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), a longtime civil liberties advocate, took issue with the nation’s premier law enforcement agency letting innocent citizens languish on a secret list.

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