FBI Terrorist Watch List Tops 400,000 Names

The FBI’s so-called terrorist watch list has over 400,000 names, and in the last year, the agency says, about 1,600 people qualified for having a “reasonable suspicion.”

 WASHINGTON, D.C. — The FBI’s so-called terrorist watch list has over 400,000 names, and in the last year, the agency says, about 1,600 people qualified for having a “reasonable suspicion.”

The details of this list were revealed to the Senate Judiciary Committee through the FBI this past September.

The FBI noted that that each name might represent an alias of a person or group that was on a previous list.

More details came from FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in answer to the committee’s questions, according to Steven Aftergood’s Secrecy News.

The list has been criticised because the FBI is not required, as it had prior to Sept. 11, 2001, to provide information that a person was indeed up to no good before the opening of an investigation.

The FBI, in response to Sen. Russell D. Feingold, said that the number of its “assessments” could only be released in classified form.