Rice Accused of Suppressing Terror Info

A senior House Democrat who has been sharply critical of State Department reporting on terrorism is accusing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of denying Congress and the public important information about the number of incidents. "There appears to be a pattern in the administration's approach to terrorism data: favorable facts are revealed while unfavorable facts are suppressed,'' Rep. Henry A. Waxman of California said in a letter to the department's acting inspector general, Cameron R. Hume. Waxman said that Rice's predecessor, Colin Powell, had consulted Congress and never sought to withhold data from the public. The question is "whether political considerations played a role in Secretary Rice's decision.'' His letter came after an announcement Monday that the department had decided to stop publishing an annual statistical account of terror incidents worldwide, turning the task over to a government center established last year by Congress - the National Counterterrorism Center. Last year, the department reported a decline in significant incidents of terror in 2003 and then isssued a corrected version showing an increase, The falloff had been used by senior Bush administration officials to bolster President Bush's claim of success in countering terrorism. Waxman said at the time that the Bush administration had "tried to take self-serving political credit'' based on inaccurate information. "The numbers were off,'' then-Secretary of State Powell acknowledged. He said "we have identified how we have to do this in the future.'' [more]