Education Department assisted FBI in terror search

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Education Department assisted FBI in terror search
 
Enlarge By Jason Forman
Millions of students like these provide personal information to the Education Department in aid applications each year.

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — A little-known federal program created days after Sept. 11, 2001, examined financial aid records of college students targeted by the FBI in terrorism investigations, but it's unclear whether it netted any terrorists, according to U.S. Education Department documents.
The program, called Project Strike Back, was a joint project of the department and the FBI and was created 10 days after the terrorist attacks, according to the documents from the department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

The documents were released to USA TODAY through Freedom of Information Act requests. They were also obtained by a Medill School of Journalism reporter working with the Associated Press.

MEDILL PROJECT: Data dilemma

About 14 million students apply for federal financial aid for college each year, the Education Department says. FBI spokeswoman Catherine Milhoan said the FBI gave the OIG "a small, select list of a couple of hundred names associated with ongoing investigations."

Intelligence has repeatedly indicated terrorists have exploited student-visa and financial-aid programs, and identity theft has been a factor in some student loan frauds, said John Miller, FBI assistant director of public affairs, in a statement Thursday.

The FBI asked the inspector general's office "to run names of subjects already material to counter-terrorism investigations against the databases to look for evidence of either student loan fraud or identity theft," Miller said. "No records of people other than those already under investigation were called for. This was not a sweeping program, in that it involved only a few hundred names."

Milhoan said Project Strike Back "was one of many utilized by the FBI to identify potential people of interest. In the post-9/11 world, it's the job of the FBI to connect the dots and follow our investigations where they lead us. We continue to do that while adhering to FBI guidelines, Department of Justice regulations and most importantly in accordance with the United States Constitution."

Concerns sparked program

The program was created, at least in part, because Bush administration officials believed that terrorists were trying to obtain money "from criminal activity such as identity theft and credit card fraud," according to one memo.

The inspector general's office investigates cases of fraud, waste and abuse in federal education programs, including student loans.

Under the program, the FBI provided the department with names of targets of FBI terrorism investigations. The department reviewed its records to determine if the students received or applied for federal aid or if the loan program had been defrauded, according to an OIG statement.

"Details developed during this project will be disclosed to the FBI and Justice Department attorneys," noted a Sept. 24, 2001, memo from Don Reid, the assistant inspector general for investigations to a Boston-based OIG special agent.

The memo notes that the FBI gave names to the OIG on Sept. 24, 2001, only three days after Project Strike Back was initiated — and 13 days after the Sept. 11 attacks. The names, however, were redacted in the memo. The other inspector general office memos, dated April 2003 and February 2006, noted the OIG was continuing the program, but most descriptive information was redacted.

According to a June 16 memo, the department said it ended Project Strike Back that month. About 10 days earlier, reporters in Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism interviewed the special agent who oversaw the program.

Mary Mitchelson, the counsel for the inspector general's office, said the program was closed because FBI requests had been dwindling since the effort's first year.

"We closed it because there really was no reason to keep it open," she said.

Mitchelson would not comment on whether the program netted any terrorists or suspects, nor how many names the department turned over to the FBI. She said the requests were legal because law enforcement agencies can seek an exemption to the Privacy Act, which governs student data held by the federal government.

The FBI's Milhoan said the program was not an attempt by the agency to do an end-run around the law. "That's not our job," she said. "Our job in the FBI is to uphold the law."

Katherine McLane, an Education Department spokeswoman, said, "By statute, the Office of the Inspector General operates independently of the Department of Education and can be called to cooperate with law enforcement."

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings learned of the project Wednesday, said Samara Yudof, a department spokeswoman.

Project Strike Back is virtually unknown within the higher education community, even among top financial aid and admissions officials.

"There was no attempt to conceal these efforts, in that they were referenced in publicly available briefings to Congress and to the General Accountability Office," Miller said in the FBI statement.

The program was mentioned in a September 2002 Education Department report to Congress, noting that it had been initiated. And a May 2004 Government Accountability Office report on data mining noted that the program compares Department of Education and FBI data "for anomalies. Also verifies personal identifiers."

Plan to track students

The revelations come as Spellings prepares to unveil the final report of her Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which has endorsed a national "unit records" system — basically a database that would track students throughout their academic careers.

While supporters say it would make it easier to learn how both colleges and students perform, critics say such a system could violate student privacy.

Speaking to reporters about the commission's work, Spellings on Wednesday said, "There can and should be ways that we protect security — obviously this government does that at the IRS, at the Social Security Administration and, you know, a lot of places. And we work hard to do that."

She added, "Should we protect privacy and security? Heck yes. Absolutely."

Terry Hartle, senior vice president of government and public affairs for the American Council on Education, which represents colleges nationwide, likened the project to the IRS turning tax returns over to the Department of Homeland Security "for possible ties to terrorism."

"Ultimately, this is troubling but not surprising," Hartle said. "It's hard to be surprised when it has become obvious that the government is mining every database that they have. In the war on terror there are no safe harbors where federal data is concerned."


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