IBD: At Least 20,000 Terrorists In The US

Once again front page above the fold news from the editors of Investor’s Business Daily:

Put ACLU On Watch

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, July 25, 2008

Homeland Security: Forced to defend its growing terrorist watch list, the FBI let slip a chilling fact that should silence ACLU grumblers: America is teeming with 20,000 terrorists.

After 9/11, federal authorities estimated that as many as 5,000 terrorists were living in the U.S. The new figure is jarring not only because it’s four times as large but because it’s based on real persons, not estimates.

It’s not something headquarters wanted to publicize. Officials had downplayed the threat so as not to spook the public. The spin had been that Britain has the homegrown problem, not us.

But that was before the ACLU launched a campaign with the Democrat Congress to demonize the watch list as a Gestapo-like tool. The FBI had no choice but to knock down their myths.

The ACLU charged that an “out-of-control” FBI is adding mostly innocent people to the list, ballooning it to “over 1 million names.” “I doubt this thing would even be effective at catching a real terrorist,” ACLU spokesman Barry Steinhardt harrumphed.

In fact, the list has saved countless lives, according to the head of the FBI’s terrorism screening center — an assertion backed up by a recent independent review by the GAO.

And the watch list monitors only 400,000 people, not a million, says the FBI official, Leonard Boyle. The rest are aliases due to the myriad spellings and variations of Arabic surnames.

In a rare public appearance on C-Span, Boyle added that the overwhelming share of individuals on the terrorist list are foreigners, while “5% to 6%” of individuals are U.S. citizens or legal residents.

That still pencils out to at least 20,000 people living in this country right now — at large and on the streets — who have “some relationship with terrorist activity,” as Boyle described it.

They pose a big enough threat for airlines to legally bounce them off planes, and for every law enforcement authority from border agents to local police to detain them for questioning.

At 20,000 strong, these suspected homegrown terrorists number a full army division. And they don’t include the more than 440 active terrorists the Justice Department already has put behind bars since 9/11. Britain, by comparison, is watching just 8,000.

But never mind all that. The ACLU and its allies on the Hill want to scrap the terrorist watch list and take law enforcement’s eye off these potentially dangerous suspects.

In a perfect world, the ACLU might qualify as a terrorist facilitator deserving of its own spot on the list.

20,000 is quite a sizeable army.

And yet the ACLU is fretting about even keeping tabs on them.

It’s almost as if the ACLU hates our country and our way of life.

Related Articles:

• 'Hook' Imam Denied Extradition Appeal
• Mandela Removed From Terror Watch List
• 911 Op Arrested For Accessing Terrorist Info
• ACLU Demands A Prosecutor For CIA Tapes
• Spitzer's Illegals License Deal Outrages ACLU
• ACLU Is Publishing Comic Books For The Masses
• NYT Still Pushes ACLU Lies About "Data Mining"
• ACLU And Unions Set US Immigration Policies
• ACLU Sues Airplane Maker Over "CIA Transfers"
• 2 Muslim Women "Surveyed" Love Field, TX
• Middle Eastern Men Found Hiding In FL Port Truck
• ACLU Hires FBI "Whistleblower" Terrorism Expert
• ACLU: CIA's "Tortures" Honed In US Prisons
• ACLU Fights For Phelps Funeral "Protests"
• ACLU Sues To Keep Castro Agit-Prop In Libraries
• ACLU Must Stay True To Communist Roots
• ACLU Wins Suit To Keep Homeless On LA Streets