New Justice Department Statistics Show Hundreds of Terrorist Cases Were Prosecuted in Civilian Courts Since 9/11

New Justice Department statistics sent to Congress on Friday support Obama administration assertions that hundreds of terrorism suspects have been successfully prosecuted through the U.S. civilian court system since the 9/11 attacks. Earlier this year, Republicans, including senators and Dana Perino, a former White House spokesperson for George W. Bush, accused the Obama administration of exaggerating, or even fabricating, statistics showing that civilian courts had effectively dealt with hundreds of terror-related cases. But the new statistical compilation sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee bolsters the administration's claims and rebuts those of their critics.

As we reported, a chorus of GOP personalities slammed the administration for defending its decision to process accused Christmas underpants bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab through the civilian court system, rather than some kind of military tribunal. Republicans suggested that the administration had essentially made up claims, articulated in a letter sent to senators by Attorney General Eric Holder in February, that the Bush administration had successfully prosecuted more than 300 terrorists in civilian courts. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Judiciary Committee's top Republican, called Holder's statistic "unsubstantiated" and dared him to back it up: "If this figure is valid, why is the attorney general not willing to explain it?"

The controversy went viral when the Fox News Web site quoted Perino snapping: "The 300 number is as false as false gets." But, as we reported, it turned out that the numbers came from the Bush administration. According to official Justice Department records, the figure of 300 prosecuted terrorists came from an official summary of a 2009 Justice Department budget proposal that the Bush administration submitted to Congress in 2008.

The latest Justice Department submission to Congress ups that figure by roughly another hundred cases. The Department submission includes a chart listing 403 terrorism-related convictions obtained via the civilian court system between September 11, 2001, and March 18 of this year. The cases range from the very serious—such as the recent guilty pleas of would-be New York subway bomber Najibullah Zazi and U.S.-based Lashkar-e-Taiba associate David Headley—to the tangential (the guilty plea of a New York imam who knew Zazi on charges of making false statements to the FBI). Some of the cases also relate to terrorist offenses or groups with no known connection to Al Qaeda or Islamic extremism; for example, listed on the chart are individuals arrested and convicted as a result of "Operation White Terror," a joint operation between the DEA and FBI to take down a drugs-for-guns operation run by a right-wing paramilitary gang in Colombia.

The administration's submission of the new statistics on terror convictions comes at a time when the Obama Justice Department and the White House, under heavy political pressure not just from the GOP but from Democrats as well, have already walked away from an initial plan to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other alleged 9/11 plotters in civilian court in Manhattan, and when the administration appears to be pumping new life into a military-commission terrorist trial system that in the Bush years became bogged down in litigation. As Declassified reported earlier this week, the Defense Department is set to announce that Secretary of Defense Bob Gates has appointed a new chief judicial officer for the Office of Military Commission; the issue of whether KSM and other 9/11 defendants will now receive civilian or military trials appears to be very much up in the air.

Whether the latest statistical evidence about the extent to which civilian courts have been able to jail terrorists will have any bearing on the current debate over civilian versus military terror trials remains to be seen.