WASHINGTON, Nov 26, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- The Justice Department will soon resume releasing the numbers -- but not the names -- of those detained in connection with the massive investigation of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Monday.
He insisted that releasing the names of those detained, as well as other details, would constitute an illegal "black list."
In describing the department's position, Ashcroft reached back for a term from the McCarthy era, when the entertainment industry and other industries developed "black lists" of those believed to harbor communist sympathies.
It would be "a violation of (privacy) rights for me to develop ... some sort of black list of people being held," Ashcroft told reporters at a Justice Department news conference.
An overall list might also be of interest to Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks now apparently at bay in the mountains of Afghanistan.
"Let bin Laden develop his own list," Ashcroft said.
The department stopped releasing the totals of those being held last month.
At that time, the number of those who had been arrested or detained in connection with the investigation was just under 1,200.
But that figure included all those arrested by federal, state and local law enforcement after they were investigated by the FBI.
The new figure, expected later this week, will include only those being held after arrests by federal authorities.
None of those in custody so far have been charged directly in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Less than 160 have been held on immigration violations; another "handful," according to FBI Director Robert Mueller, are being held on material witness warrants issued by a federal judge.
All of those in custody have been charged after they were found to be in violation of a law, Ashcroft said Monday, and all have been given access to attorneys.
He insisted that even as terrorist networks were being destroyed overseas, the Justice Department's get-tough policy for anyone caught up in the domestic investigation is "disrupting the terrorist network in our own country."
On another front, Ashcroft said the purported warning of a threat against U.S. natural gas pipelines last week was of "undetermined reliability."
Despite the lack of credibility, the attorney general said, "we have a very serious approach to all the strategic assets of the United States. "They have been the subject of regular efforts, not just for natural gas, but for nuclear energy, other infrastructural components," Ashcroft said. "Industry representatives and those who have been waging the war of disruption and detection here at the federal level have been in regular communication, and by that -- sometimes in daily, but in multi-week -- multi-communications per week, for a long time."
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND, UPI Legal Affairs Correspondent
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.