No, 72 DHS Employees Are Not on a Terrorism Watch List

When a member of Congress refers to federal employees as terrorists, it’s bound to turn some heads.

That was exactly what happened when Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., told a radio station in Boston last week that 72 employees at the Homeland Security Department were on a terror watch list. The comment spurred several outlets running the headline that dozens of DHS employees were on the list.

One problem, however: Lynch’s claim was not true. The radio station -- WGBH -- asked him why he was one of 47 Democrats in the House that voted to effectively block Syrian refugees from entering the United States.

The DHS inspector general, he said, conducted an investigation and found “72 individuals that were on the terrorist watch list that were actually working at the Department of Homeland Security.”

Therefore, he reasoned, the data collected by the department could not be trusted, and Syrian refugees needed to go through a more rigorous review process than DHS was conducting.

Turns out, no such investigation ever took place. Lynch, typically an advocate of federal employees and a member of the subcommittee with primary oversight of the federal workforce, was likely referring to a June report titled, “TSA Can Improve Aviation Worker Vetting.” That audit found 73 (not 72) airport and airline workers -- in the private sector and not employed by DHS or any federal agency -- were on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (not the Consolidated Terrorism Watch List, to which Lynch had alluded). TIDE is the government's central repository of information on international terrorist identities. 

A spokeswoman in the DHS IG’s office confirmed Lynch was most likely referring to those findings. The report was certainly troubling and has led to reforms at the Transportation Security Administration. It does not, however, indict any federal workers with suspected links to terrorism.

Lynch’s office did not respond to repeated requests for clarification of his comments.

Attacking the so-called “nameless, faceless bureaucrats” has become a tired cliché in American politics, and a rite of passage for just about any federal lawmaker. Mistakenly referring to them as terrorists to make a political point, however, may have forged a new low. 

Especially when it relates to an agency experiencing the worst morale in government.