firstlook | 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.”
