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New U.S. Office to Prepare Global Terrorism Data
The newly created U.S. National Counterterrorism Center this year will prepare statistics for the annual Patterns on Global Terrorism report, taking over from the State Department, the Los Angeles Times reported today (see GSN, June 23, 2004). A State Department official said that methodology problems would cause this year’s report to be submitted without the data on terrorist incident trends, which are expected to be added later by the new agency. The report is required to be delivered to Congress by April 30. “The basic decision is that these numbers are a mess,” the official said. “Let the numbers experts do the numbers and we’ll do the policy.” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the current numbers for 2004 were too preliminary to be released, and that the new agency would release final data at a future date. In the wake of significant increases in terrorist incidents reported last year, however, one terrorism expert said the move appears political. “They didn’t want to have to explain to the press why they’re ‘winning’ the war on terror, but the numbers are the highest ever in the 37 years since they’ve been reporting the data,” said Larry Johnson, a former CIA and State Department counterterrorism official. “If terrorist incidents had dropped 50 percent, do you think they’d be eliminating the report?” The number of attacks designated as “significant incidents” rose from 175 in 2003 to 655 in 2004, according to Johnson. Last year, the department initially released the report showing a sharp reduction in terrorism. Following protests by Johnson, another version had to be issued showing that the number of terrorist-related deaths and injuries had more than doubled since the year before. The Bush administration at the time said the mistake was caused by statistical errors. “Last year, it was an act of stupidity,” Johnson said. “This year it’s an act of politics” (Efron/Richter, Los Angeles Times, April 19).
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