|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
U.S. Democratic Senators Call on State Department to Remove Inaccurate Terrorism Report From Web Site By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — Six U.S. Democratic senators, including Minority Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.), called on the State Department today to remove from its Web site an inaccurate report purporting to show that terrorism incidents have been on a steady decline over the past three years (see related GSN story, today). The Democratic senators made their request in a letter sent today to Secretary of State Colin Powell, expressing their “deep concern” over the report. In addition to Daschle, the letter was signed by Senators Joseph Biden (Del.), Carl Levin (Mich.), Patrick Leahy (Vt.), Harry Reid (Nev.) and Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.). The Democrats’ call to remove the 2003 Patterns of Global Terrorism from the State Department Web site is the latest development in the controversy surrounding the report, which the department released in April and heralded as evidence of success in the war on terrorism. The report claimed that the number of terrorist incidents has been on the decline over the past three years and that last’s years count, 190, represented the lowest reported total since 1969. Last month, however, two U.S. academics publicly challenged the report’s findings, saying that the only verifiable information contained in the report showed that the number of terrorist incidents has instead increased annually over the past few years. The State Department later acknowledged that it had undercounted the number of terrorist incidents that occurred in 2003 and pledged to release a revised version of the report. The department has denied, though, that any political motivations were behind the errors in the report, blaming the mistakes instead on poor data handling. On Sunday, Powell himself weighed in on the report, calling it “very embarrassing.” “I am not a happy camper over this. We were wrong,” Powell said on NBC’s Meet the Press. A State Department official said today, though, that there are no plans to remove the report from the department’s Web site, noting that a disclaimer has been added saying that the statistics used in the report are being evaluated for accuracy. The official also defended the continued presence of the report on the department’s Web site by saying that the bulk of the information contained within was accurate. In addition to calling for the removal of the report from the State Department Web site, the Democratic senators today called on Powell to hold a public press conference to described the revisions set to be made to the original report and to launch an investigation by the department’s Inspector General’s Office to determine how report came to contain inaccurate information. “Prevailing in the war on terrorism will require the long-term cooperation of the American public and the world. Our government’s credibility is essential to these efforts. By releasing an inaccurate report, the administration has undermined our nation’s credibility at a critical moment in the war on terrorism,” the senators wrote. Earlier this week, the State Department seemingly rejected the idea of conducting an inspector general investigation into the report. “I don’t know that they need to be involved at this stage. Obviously, if they think it’s appropriate, they can get involved,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday.
| ||||||||||
Back to top
