(AP) A Muslim civil-rights group says the FBI is letting animal shelters, private investigators and even a Midwestern megachurch have access to its watchlist of suspected terrorists.
In court documents unsealed after a court hearing Friday, lawyers for the Council on American-Islamic Relations expressed concern that the watchlist is disseminated much more broadly than the government is willing to acknowledge.
“Defendants share their list with anyone or anything that asks,” CAIR’s lawyers wrote in one of their legal briefs.
Government lawyers, meanwhile, say CAIR is being alarmist and misrepresenting some of the entities on the list.
CAIR’s assertions about the broad dissemination of the terror watchlist are “so rife with misleading statements and outright falsehood that it is hard to know where to begin,” government lawyer Amy Powell wrote in an email attached to a court filing.
