In a letter which is the formal equivalent of the entirely too well known Wikipedia decoration bemoaning the statement of unverified facts, Senators Coburn, Brownback, DeMint, Burr, Murkowski, Inhofe, and Vitter point out a comparative element in my previous analysis which I had neglected to mention.  That element is the citation of sources to back up the claims made by the DHS to back up their statements on domestic terror.

In fact, neither the Leftwing nor the Rightwing report do a very good job with citation.  Even granting that Wikipedians can be a bit unpredictable at times, I find it doubtful that either report would survive the Wikipedia review process.  The reports are conclusory, largely unquantified, and appear to offer no authority other than the judgment of the Department itself for most of the statements offered.  The reports, to be sure, contain sufficient information to assist the efforts of law enforcement in identifying and resolving potential terrorist threats.  They lack, however, sufficient transparency of source material to allow for independent review.

That is not to say, however, that the reports are equally poor at citation.

The Leftwing report contains a “Source Summary Statement” which, while not identifying any particular sources, manages to outline the various types of sources that the DHS looked to in producing the report.  The sources apparently include “field agent reporting,” support from “subject-matter experts,” examination of “leftwing extremist media,” and other “open source data” including “business journals and research institute reports.”  Interestingly, “[g]overnment crime data” is expressly mentioned as being “unavailable.”

However poor the Leftwing “Source Summary Statement” is at providing a substitute for actual citations, it is still more than the Rightwing report contains.  Indeed, the Rightwing report contains but a single reference to a document identified only as “a 2007 study from the German Institute for Economic Research.”  The reference, however, is not general in nature.  Its purpose is to backstop a comment made inside an information box which points out a disagreement among “[s]cholars and experts” “over poverty’s role in motivating violent radicalization or terrorist activity.”  The report apparently shows “a strong association between a parent’s unemployment and the formation of rightwing extremist beliefs in their children.”  There is nothing else citation-like in the entire document.

With luck, the DHS will take Obama’s much campaigned on desire for government transparency to heart and respond with specific citations to available data and research or to publish some of the source documents on which they relied in the report.