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What's Happening in the War on Terror?
By Doug Hornig

Let's just make this clear at the outset: We do not in any way deny that the threat of terrorist violence exists in this country (and around the world). Nor do we wish to minimize the suffering of people who have been victims of that or any form of violence.

But having said that, the War on Terror--itself a misnomer, as Doug Casey likes to point out, since terror is a tactic, and you can no more make war on it than you can on cavalry charges--seems in some ways to have disappeared behind the clouds put out by the Washington fog machine.

It's a bit like the old story about the guy who blesses his neighbor's house by saying, "May this house be safe from tigers," then takes the credit when no tiger-related incidents come to pass.

See, the government tells us, our anti-terror measures are really working. There have been no attacks lately, because we've stopped them.

Lots of them, apparently. The only trouble is, we have no specifics. All the foiled plots are so sensitive that we can't be told anything about them, for reasons of national security.

Now, personally, we can't see all that much downside to telling the American people at least a few details about what they saved us from, if only to help rebuild people's eroding confidence that government can, in fact, keep us safer than we would be able to do on our own.

But no. So what we're left to fall back on are cold, lifeless statistics.

These are not terribly encouraging. According to a Justice Department Inspector General's audit report published in February, only 2 of the 26 sets of statistics on domestic counterterrorism efforts compiled by the Justice Department and FBI from 2001 to 2005 were accurate. The numbers were both over- and understated, depending on the data cited and the part of Justice doing the counting, the report said.

The biggest problem lay in numbers submitted by the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, which tallied hundreds of terrorism cases which, in reality, were minor crimes with no connection to terrorism.

Critics were quick to point out that the government has an interest in both under- and overreporting terrorism cases, the former because it helps people feel safer, and the latter because it means more money for the reporting agency.

Justice Dept. spokesman Dean Boyd immediately said that "the notion that the Justice Department inflated its statistics is false," and the I.G.'s report was careful to stress that the discrepancies appeared to be unintentional, having more to do with shoddy bookkeeping, disagreements over definitions, and other problems.

Yet it's worth noting that the I.G.'s office delineated the inaccuracies even after having accepted the government's tallies at face value. That means if the government said it was a terrorist case, it was recorded as such. There was no follow-up.

Still, the audit turned up any number of airport arrests on immigration and false document charges, and such non-terrorist activities as brokering fraudulent marriages, false information on a passport application, and dealing firearms without a license. These, and others, were lumped in with terror cases solely because they were investigated by federal Joint Terrorism Task Forces, even when prosecutors said they shouldn't be.

A skeptical Washington Post put a team of investigative reporters on the story back in 2005, after President Bush said publicly that "federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted."

The Washington Post's conclusion: "An analysis of the Justice Department's own list of terrorism prosecutions [...] shows that [only] 39 people [...] were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security."

The rest were tried for "minor crimes [that] produced modest punishments. The median sentence for all cases adjudicated, whether or not they were terrorism-related, was 11 months."

Thus the massive sweeps initiated since 2001 have yielded little in the way of results. Of the fear that there may be embedded terrorist cells within the country, Martha Crenshaw of Wesleyan University, who has been studying terrorism since the 1960s, says, "we really don't know if they exist here in any significant way. It's possible that they could have sleepers planted here for a long time and we could always be very surprised. But I'd say that's less likely compared with them trying to repeat a 9/11-style infiltration from the outside."

Perhaps that's what Canada is thinking, that we're exporting our terrorists to their country. How else to explain the difficulty of present-day border crossings.

Not long ago, Americans traveled to Canada on a drivers license and a smile, much as travelers today can move freely among the European Union members' countries. No longer.

Canadian authorities can now tap into American law enforcement databases, and they use them. Got any youthful indiscretions on your record? Some college drug use, a DUI, a shoplifting incident you've regretted ever since? Forget about getting into Canada.

"It's completely ridiculous," says Chris Cannon, an attorney representing a man who was told he was "inadmissible" to the country. Because of a marijuana possession conviction. In 1975. Such stories are now commonplace.

All of this has come about because of a 2002 partnership known as the Smart Border Action Plan, which combines Canadian intelligence with U.S. Homeland Security information. Basically, "They can call up anything that your state trooper in Iowa can," says Canadian customs attorney David Lesperance, who adds that this "is just the edge of the wedge." Soon to come are similar data-sharing agreements with any number of other countries.

Of course, you can get into Canada, even with a prior. But you have to apply for a "Minister's Approval of Rehabilitation." Now, doesn't that have a nice ring to it?

We're sure our neighbors to the north feel oh, so secure.

Finally, returning to the home front, we'd like to mention that the DHS is hard at work trying to track down foreigners who remain in the country even after being ordered to leave. A DHS I.G.'s report from March states that there are 52 separate teams on the case.

Honestly, we have no doubt that these are diligent, hard-working officials who are doing their best. But it's going to be a struggle. The bad news is that the agency still has a staggering backlog of about 620,000 fugitive aliens.

It's best if they're not all caught at once because, as the I.G.'s report readily admits, there would be insufficient jail space to house them.