[Media-watch] LA WEEKLY - exciting statistics! (Honestly)

[Sigi D]

Hello, dear Media Watch friends,
here are some exciting statistics from LA Weekly. 
I found the article via Utne Webwatch. i copy their
introduction for the LA Weekly article into this
email.
Best
Sigi

Utne says:
George W. Bush declared the “War on Terrorism” “the
first war of the 21st century” almost like a boy
proudly claims a newfound toy. Soon after followed the
knee-jerk USA PATRIOT Act, a misguided piece of
follow-the-leader legislation ushering in a new era of
human rights violations. Writing for LAWeekly.com,
Christine Pelisek has compiled a mile-long list of
post 9/11 “accomplishments” and statistics facilitated
by the expanded reach the PATRIOT Act granted to
federal offices and the creation of the Homeland
Security department. For example: “Number of al Qaeda
or allied terror suspects arrested by officials since
9/11: 2,700. Number of U.S. citizens indicted by a
federal grand jury for al Qaeda-related activities:
5.” Newfound capacity for the Bush administration to
exploit post-9/11 fear and grief for its own secret
purposes: Priceless.

{Article and link follows:}
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/03/33/features-pelisek2.php
 JULY 4 - 10, 2003 

The List
by Christine Pelisek 
 
(Illustrations by Juan Alvarado)

• Number of al Qaeda or allied terror suspects
arrested by officials since 9/11: 2,700. 

• Number of U.S. citizens indicted by a federal grand
jury for al Qaeda–related activities: 5. 

• Number of immigrants detained after 9/11 — some up
to eight months: 762. 

• Number of people arrested by the LAPD’s
anti-terrorism bureau since 9/11: 75. 

• Number of convicted al Qaeda members: 0. 

• Number of people the Justice Department charged with
terrorism in the first two months of 2003: 56. 

• After a Philadelphia Inquirer investigation, the
number of those cases that were found to have nothing
to do with terrorism: 41. 

• Number of cases that involved Latinos using phony
Social Security numbers: 28. 

• As of April 22, number of passengers in San
Francisco who have been detained for questioning
because of the government’s “no-fly list”: 339. 

• Since the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, the number
of people secretly detained without charges as
“material witnesses” in the 9/11 attacks: 50. 

• Percentage of those held up to 90 days: 90. 

• Year that many of the USA Patriot Act provisions,
including one that gives the FBI greater authority to
investigate libraries, are set to expire: 2005. 

• As of June 27, number of states that have adopted
measures protesting the USA Patriot Act: 3. 

• As of June 27, number of cities, towns and counties
adopting measures: 129. 

• Number of lawsuits the ACLU is juggling on the
terrorism front: 33. 

• Percentage of librarians who said they “probably”
would defy an agent’s order to see patrons’ records:
16.1. 

• Percentage of librarians who said they “definitely”
would defy an agent’s order to see patrons’ records:
5.5. 

• Number of pages in the USA PATRIOT Act: 340. 

• Number of House co-sponsors of a bill that would
exempt libraries and bookstores from Section 215 of
the USA PATRIOT Act: 122. 

• Number from California: 20. 

• Under the proposed USA PATRIOT Act II, the number of
additional crimes that would be punishable by death:
15. 

• Under the proposed USA PATRIOT Act II, the number of
days the government could wiretap a suspected
terrorist without a judge’s approval: 15. 

• Number of computer intrusions or hackers
investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice in
2002: 814. 

• Number of computer intrusions or hacker
investigations still pending in the U.S. Department of
Justice in 2002: 1,956. 

• Number of computer intrusion or hacker convictions
or pretrial diversions by the U.S. Department of
Justice in 2002: 101. 

• Number of state and local bomb techs trained in
2002: 882. 

• Number of terrorist cases investigated, both pending
and received, by the U.S. Department of Justice in
2002: 15,455. 

• Number of terrorist cases closed by the U.S.
Department of Justice in 2002: 5,533. 

• Number of terrorism-related convictions by the U.S.
Department of Justice in 2002: 251. 

• Number of terrorism convictions by the U.S.
Department of Justice in 2002: 153. 

• Number of hazardous-duty mobile robots in the LAPD
Bomb Squad: 2. 

• Cost of each: $160,000. 

• Weight: 350 pounds. 

• High-speed capability: 3.5 mph. 

• Number of times deployed in 2003: 0. 

• In a poll of 2,000 Americans conducted by National
Public Radio and others, the percentage who felt it
was more important to protect constitutional rights
than to find every potential terrorist: 44. 

• Percentage who said finding the terrorists was more
important: 47. 

• Percentage who believe the federal government
threatens their own personal rights and freedoms: 32. 

• President Bush’s defense-budget request for 2004:
$380 billion. 

• Amount set aside for missile defense by the U.S.
Senate: $9.1 billion. 

• Amount set aside for developing chemical-and
biological-weapon detection and protection technology:
$181 million.  


 

• Amount set aside for 12 civil-support teams to help
first responders in the event of a chemical,
biological or nuclear attack by terrorists: $88.4
million. 

• Number of major chemical facilities nationwide:
15,000. 

• If attacked, the number of those facilities that
would endanger the lives of a million or more
Americans: 100. 

• Number of the government-appointed Defense Policy
Board members out of 30 who were linked to companies
that have won more than $76 billion in defense
contracts in 2001 and 2002: 9. 

• Requested down payment in 2002 for the Pentagon’s
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agencies’ Total
Information Awareness System (TIPS), a system that
allows the government to study the purchases and
activities of its citizens: $200 million. 

• When it was defunded: March 2003. 

• Percentage of Americans TIPS sought to turn into
snitches before it was dismantled: one in 24. 

• Right after 9/11, percentage of Americans who
favored putting Arabs under “special surveillance”
like that used against Japanese-Americans during World
War II: 32. 

• Percentage who favored “heightened surveillance of
Middle Eastern immigrants”: 66. 

• Number of days Nacer Fathi Mustafa and his father,
both American citizens of Palestinian descent, were
held in a Texas jail after being falsely accused on
September 15, 2001, of altering their passports: 67. 

• Number of countries whose citizens are required to
register with the Bush Administration’s National
Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS): 25. 

• Number of people who have registered across the
country with NSEERS: 138,053. 

• Total number of men and boys who showed up at
immigration offices to register for NSEERS: 82,414. 

• Total number of men and boys detained after
registering for NSEERS: 2,747. 

• Number of those subjected to enforcement actions:
739. 

• Number of those who were considered by the Bureau of
Citizenship and Immigration Services as “criminals”:
130. 

• Number of those held in custody: 114. 

• Total number linked to terrorism: 11. 

• Estimated number of Iranians arrested in Los Angeles
by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services
as part of NSEERS: 700. 

• Number of illegal immigrants removed from the United
States in March 2003: 14,137. 

• Number of those considered “criminals” by the Bureau
of Citizenship and Immigration Services: 5,818. 

• Number deported: 3,556. 

• Number deemed “inadmissible”: 10,581. 

• Number of immigration inspections in March 2003 in
the U.S.: 34,941,527. 

• Number of inspections conducted at airports:
5,941,752. 

• Number of inspections conducted at land borders:
27,274,733. 

• Number of inspections conducted at sea: 1,239,029. 

• Number of applications for asylum in March 2003:
4,670. 

• Number of applications for asylum approved: 1,141. 

• Number of applications for asylum denied: 1,252. 

• Country that submitted the most asylum applications:
Indonesia. 

• From January to August 2002, the number of “no
match” letters the Social Security Administration sent
out to employers asking them to explain why names and
numbers of their employees didn’t match: 800,000. 

• Estimated number of immigrant workers who lost their
jobs because of Operation Tarmac raids at airports,
the new citizenship requirements for screeners and
Social Security “no match” letters: 10,000. 

• In L.A., the number of employees out of 150 at Super
Assi Market who lost their jobs after receiving Social
Security Administration “no match” letters in August
2002: 60. 

• Number of applications to surveil suspected
foreign-intelligence and terrorist targets under the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) granted
by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in
2000: 1,012. 

• Number of applications approved in 2002: 1,228. 

• Number of FISA warrants challenged by federal judges
in 2002: 2. 

• Number of times the FISA court has admonished the
FBI for misrepresenting facts since 9/11: 75. 

• Number of terrorist attacks around the world in
2001: 355. 

• Number of terrorist attacks around the world in
2002: 199. 

• Number of deaths due to terrorist attacks: 725.  


 

• Number of people killed in the terrorist bombing at
the nightclub in Bali: 200. 

• Number of Iraqi civilians killed during the recent
war: 3,240. 

• Number of Afghan civilians killed during the 2001
war: 1,800. 

• New name of the Immigration and Naturalization
Service: Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration
Services. 

• Number of foreign nationals inspected at LAX in
2000: 4,465,206. 

• Number of foreign nationals inspected at LAX in
2001: 4,330,501. 

• Number of foreign nationals inspected at LAX in
2002: 3,655,193. 

• Number of applicants refused entry at LAX —
excluding people who claimed asylum, parole cases or
those subjected to deferred inspection in 2000: 3,161.


• Number of similar applicants refused entry at LAX in
2001: 3,015. 

• Number of similar applicants refused entry at LAX in
2002: 3,797. 

• Number of Japanese rounded up — most of them U.S.
citizens — on the West Coast during World War II:
120,000. 

• Number of allegedly “subversive” aliens President
Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer,
rounded up for deportation during the Palmer raids:
3,000. 

• Number of suspected al Qaeda members the U.S. claims
it has detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba: 680. 

• Number of nationalities: 42. 

• Number of confirmed suicide attempts by Guantánamo
Bay prisoners: 28. 

• Number of prisoners under monitoring by a
psychiatrist in the newly opened mental ward at
Guantánamo Bay: 24. 

• Number of hours prisoners were handcuffed, shackled,
made to wear mittens, surgical masks and ear muffs,
and blindfolded by the use of taped-over ski goggles
during their flight to Guantánamo Bay: 22. 
 



• Amount the NYPD spends per day on security since
9/11: $700,000. 

• Number of full- and part-time airport screeners at
420 U.S. airports: 55,600. 

• Number of screeners Congress has sought to limit the
work force to: 50,000. 

• Number of passenger and baggage screeners employed
by LAX as of June 5, 2003: 2,695. 

• Number of those recently fired for poor performance:
360. 

• Average hourly wage for screeners nationwide: $13 to
$14. 

• Number of health-care workers Bush announced would
be given the first set of shots to protect against an
intentional release of the smallpox virus: 500,000. 

• Number of hospitals nationwide that refused to
participate: 80. 

• In the 90 days after 9/11, the number of anthrax
scares in the L.A. Unified School District: 33. 

• Yearly salary Donald Rumsfeld was making while a
board member of ABB, the engineering company that won
a $200 million contract to provide the design and key
components of two light-water nuclear reactors to
North Korea in 2000: $190,000. 

• Average pay increase of defense-company CEOs from
2001 to 2002: 79 percent. 

• Average pay increase of company CEOs from 2001 to
2002: 6 percent. 

• Pay increase of the CEO of Lockheed Martin, the
country’s largest defense contractor: 400 percent. 

• The distance from which the Pentagon wants to be
able to identify people with its new radar-based
device that identifies people by the way they walk:
500 feet. 

• Amount U.S. government agencies have spent in the
past five years on camera surveillance technology —
with a notable increase in spending proposals after
9/11: $50 million. 

• Percentage funneled toward facial-recognition
programs: 90. 

• Percentage of the time that face-recognition
biometric technology turned up false positives in
matching scans with a database according to a study by
the National Institute for Standards in Technology:
43.  


 

• Cost of the proposed national-identity-card system:
$4 billion. 

• Amount the 9/11 Independent Commission originally
received to explore the causes of the attacks: $3
million. 

• Amount a 1996 federal commission was given to study
legalized gambling: $5 million. 

• Amount a commission was given to look into the
Columbia shuttle crash: $50 million. 

• Amount the Bush Presidential Library in College
Station, Texas, received from the family of Saudi
Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz: $1
million. 

• Amount made available by the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security from the 2003 budget to California
to beef up security at local ports: $28,511,178. 

• Amount given to the Los Angeles Harbor Department:
$800,000. 

• Amount given to the city of Long Beach and the Port
of Long Beach: $10 million. 

• Number of communities in Los Angeles County that
took part in weekly vigils to protest the war with
Iraq: 45. 

• Number of people arrested during an anti-war protest
on March 20, which forced the police to close down a
section of Wilshire Boulevard: 14. 

• Number of law-enforcement officers deployed: 600. 

• Number of peaceful demonstrators herded into a trap
and arrested during a September 2002 protest near the
White House: 400. 

• Number of protesters arrested in San Francisco the
day after the Iraq war started: 2,300. 

• Percentage increase in membership of the ACLU since
9/11: 25. 

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