TRAC Spotlight

TRAC Spotlight is a new kind of offering from TRAC, a supplemental service for obtaining additional information about the topic of one of our special reports, in this case the government's enforcement of the law against individuals it has determined were somehow involved in terrorism or internal security violations.

If you are already a TRACFED subscriber, just use the menu at left. If not, read on...

With Spotlight, there are now three distinct mechanisms for obtaining information that TRAC has obtained from the Justice Department and other agencies under the Freedom of Information Act about a subject of unique importance.

  1. Available on TRAC's free public site is a report and accompanying tables examining the government's enforcement response to the problems of terrorism and internal security.

  2. Available on TRAC Spotlight are additional data and maps and graphs on such related subjects as how terrorism enforcement effort in a given district compared with what was done at the national level. It also provides a variety of additional indices, as well as greater agency-by-agency detail. For a $10 online charge you get 20 TRAC Spotlight queries over a 20-day period. Click here to get TRAC Spotlight on Terrorism.

  3. Available on TRACFED, TRAC's full-service subscription site, are advanced tools that allow you to drill down to individual records or examine how the government has processed various sub-categories of terrorism matters. (Access to all TRAC Spotlight tools are also automatically included.) TRACFED, however, is not limited to terrorism enforcement. It provides very extensive information about all kinds of criminal and civil enforcement activities (white collar crime, official corruption, drugs, etc.), IRS administrative actions, and federal employees, including case-by-case information about individual federal judges and prosecutors. Click here to subscribe to TRACFED.

TRAC's terrorism enforcement report focuses mostly on how the government responded in the 12 months after 9/11/01. In both TRAC Spotlight and TRACFED enforcement trends can be examined from 1986 to September 30, 2002. This means that you can examine critically important aspects of government criminal enforcement of internal security/terrorism matters from the prior administrations of President Reagan, President Bush and President Clinton through the first two years of the President George W. Bush.

The TRAC Spotlight tool provides six different viewing options. To begin, select a question view from the left-hand menu bar. After making the necessary selections, click submit request and the desired information will be delivered to your browser.