Names on U.S. Terror List Quadruple

The National Counterterrorism Center maintains a central repository of 325,000 names of alleged international terrorism suspects or people who aid them, a number that has more than quadrupled since the fall of 2003, according to counterterrorism officials.

The list kept by the National Counterterrorism Center -- created in 2004 to be the primary U.S. terrorism intelligence agency -- contains a far greater number of international terrorist suspects and associated names in a single government database than has previously been disclosed. Because the same person may appear under different spellings or aliases, the true number of individuals is estimated to be more than 200,000, center officials say.

U.S. citizens make up “only a very, very small fraction” of that number, said a Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in accord with his agency’s policies. “The vast majority are non-U.S. persons and do not live in the U.S.,” he added. A center official refused to give a number for U.S. citizens on the list, which was compiled from reports supplied by the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and other agencies.

Officials refused to say how many names on the list were linked to the NSA’s controversial domestic eavesdropping effort. Under the program, the NSA has conducted wiretaps on an unknown number of U.S. citizens without warrants.

The government has been trying to streamline what counterterrorism officials say are more than 26 terrorismrelated databases compiled by agencies throughout the intelligence and law enforcement communities.

Civil liberties advocates and privacy experts said they were surprised by the size of the central database, and said it heightened their concerns that such government terrorism lists include the names of large numbers of innocent people.

Timothy Sparapani, legislative counsel for privacy rights at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the numbers “shocking but unfortunately not surprising.”

“We have lists that are having baby lists at this point, they’re spawning faster than rabbits,” Sparapani said. “If we have over 300,000 known terrorists who want to do this country harm, we’ve got a much bigger problem than deciding which names go on which list. But I highly doubt that is the case.”

U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that he could not discuss specifics but said, “Information is collected, information is retained and information disseminated in a way to protect the privacy interests of all Americans.”