Free Internet Press - U.S. Terrorism Watch List Now Has 325,000 Names

The National Counterterrorism Center maintains a central repository of 325,000 names of alleged international terrorism suspects or people who aid them, a number that has more than quadrupled since the fall of 2003, according to counterterrorism officials. The list kept by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) - created in 2004 to be the primary U.S. terrorism intelligence agency - contains a far greater number of international terrorist suspects and associated names in a single government database than has previously been disclosed. Because the same person may appear under different spellings or aliases, the true number of separate individuals is estimated to be more than 200,000, according to NCTC officials. U.S. citizens make up "only a very, very small fraction" of that number, said an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of his agency's policies. "The vast majority are non-U.S. persons and do not live in the U.S.," he added. An NCTC official refused to say how many on the list - put together from reports supplied by the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA) and other agencies - were U.S. citizens.