The
Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist
The Obama
administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist
watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither “concrete
facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” to designate an American or foreigner as a
terrorist, according to a key government document obtained by The Intercept.
The “March 2013
Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National
Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting
individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the
selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border
crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as
representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually
connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the
unilateral authority to place entire “categories” of people the government is
tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of
government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is
vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people
to be watchlisted.
Over the years, the Obama and Bush Administrations have fiercely
resisted disclosing the criteria for placing names on the databases—though the
guidelines are officially labeled as unclassified. In May, Attorney General
Eric Holder even invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent watchlisting
guidelines from being disclosed in litigation launched by an American who was
on the no fly list. In an affidavit, Holder called them a “clear roadmap” to
the government’s terrorist-tracking apparatus, adding: “The Watchlisting
Guidance, although unclassified, contains national security information that,
if disclosed … could cause significant harm to national security.”
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