US admits its terror report was wrong

The Department also said the number of resulting deaths was expected to be higher for 2003 than the 307 initially reported, but officials said it may not exceed 2002's 725 fatalities.

The admissions dented the claim by President Bush's administration that Washington is winning the "war on terrorism," an argument critical to his reelection strategy.

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The State Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism Report" released on April 29 said "terrorist" attacks fell to 190 last year, their lowest since 1969, from 198 in 2002.

It also said those killed dropped to 307, including 35 US citizens, from 725 in 2002, including 27 Americans.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said both totals were understated because of errors in compiling the data by the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. The interagency group was set up last year to address the failure of US intelligence agencies to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Boucher told reporters the terrorism experts appeared to have made a series of mistakes, failing to count attacks for the full year and possibly misinterpreting the definition of such attacks to exclude incidents included in the past.

"The data in the report are incomplete and in some cases incorrect," he said, admitting his department failed to catch the mistakes. "We got the wrong data and we didn't check it enough ... That's the simplest explanation for what happened."

Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was "very disturbed" that errors had made it into the report but denied the numbers were manipulated for political benefit.

When the report was released, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said it provided "clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight" while State Department coordinator for counterterrorism Cofer Black hailed its "good news."

Boucher said the department learned of the report's errors in the first week of May and began an investigation. He said a May 17 letter from Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat and frequent critic of the administration, spurred its efforts.

The State Department did not publicly acknowledge the report's errors until they were reported in the media.

Boucher said the State Department asked the Terrorist Threat Integration Center to review the numbers and would publish revised figures when they were available.