U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

International Terrorism: FBI Investigates Domestic Activities to Identify Terrorists

NCJ Number
127269
Date Published
1990
Length
47 pages
Annotation
Between January 1982 and June 1988, the FBI closed about 19,500 international terrorist investigations. A General Accounting Office (GAO) questionnaire generalized results to an adjusted universe of 18,144 cases.
Abstract
GAO estimates that half of the 18,144 cases were opened because the FBI suspected that individuals or groups were involved in terrorist activities. Thirty-eight percent of the subjects were U.S. citizens or permanent resident aliens. The FBI monitored first amendment-type activities in 11.5 percent of the cases and indexed information on non-subject individuals in 47.8 percent of the cases and on non-subject groups in 11.6 percent of the cases. It closed 67.5 percent of the cases because it did not have sufficient evidence against the subjects. Because the FBI limited access to sensitive files and denied access to open case files, the GAO could not determine if the FBI abused individuals' first amendment rights or if it had a reasonable basis to monitor their activities. 5 appendixes, 8 tables and 5 figures