United States Department of State

The United States Department of State is the central decision-making agency in the designation system for foreign terrorist organizations described in the book’s appended government report. The report presents designation as a formal, time-limited legal process involving intelligence and other federal agencies, congressional notice, and possible judicial review. In the surrounding argument, however, the Department’s procedures sit alongside a challenge to the political use of the word terrorism: formal definitions may be invoked against designated organizations while state violence is described in different terms.

Designation and statutory basis

The report says that the Secretary of State establishes the official list jointly with the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury. Designations are made under the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The Secretary of State is therefore not acting alone: the formal framework assigns the decision to one office while requiring coordination with the justice and treasury departments.

A designation lasts for two years. It does not renew automatically: renewal must be an affirmative decision by the Secretary of State, who must determine that the organization has continued terrorist activity and still meets the statutory criteria. If those conditions are not established, the designation expires. The report’s history records that Madeleine Albright approved an initial list of thirty organizations in October 1997. In October 1999, she renewed the designations of twenty-seven and allowed three to be removed because they had ceased terrorist activity and no longer met the criteria.

Administrative process and review

Before designating or renewing an organization, the Secretary of State reviews a comprehensive report prepared from intelligence and other sources. The Department of State works closely with the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, and intelligence services to prepare a detailed administrative record documenting the organization’s terrorist activities. The process thus links the political decision to an evidentiary file assembled across agencies, drawing on both confidential and public sources.

Seven days before a designation is officially entered in the Federal Register, the Department of State must notify Congress confidentially. The law also subjects designations to judicial review. If an organization challenges a designation in federal court, the government relies on the administrative record to defend the Secretary of State’s decision; because that record contains intelligence information, it is confidential. This arrangement provides for review while limiting public access to some of the evidence on which the decision rests.

The Secretary of State may add organizations to the list at any time after consulting the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury. The Secretary may also revoke a designation when that decision is considered warranted, after notifying Congress. Alongside the two-year expiration rule, these powers make the list changeable through both scheduled review and decisions made between review dates.

Consequences of designation

The report describes designation as more than a public label. Among its stated effects, it can deter donations and contributions, increase public awareness of the listed organizations, inform other governments of U.S. concerns, and stigmatize and isolate the organizations internationally. The designation therefore operates simultaneously as an administrative classification and as a means of political signaling.

The broader book places such official classifications in tension with its account of state violence. It argues that the U.S. government’s formal definition of terrorism covers calculated violence or threats used to pursue political, religious, or ideological aims, including intimidation, coercion, or the creation of fear. It also notes that the United States officially conducts low-intensity warfare, whose conventional definitions, in the author’s comparison, closely resemble official definitions of terrorism. The resulting issue is not simply how the Department identifies listed groups, but how the same kinds of coercive conduct may be named differently depending on whether the actor is an adversary or a state.

Political language and institutional context

The book argues that calling a policy a war on terrorism can function as propaganda if the campaign does not consistently target conduct that meets the government’s own definitions. It contrasts the official classification of non-state organizations with state actions that, under a literal and consistently applied definition, could also fall within the concept of terrorism. In this account, designation procedures give legal and administrative force to one use of the term, while the surrounding political vocabulary can shield powerful states and their allies from equivalent scrutiny.

That critique also extends to the political use of counterterrorism after the September 11 attacks. The author says governments used the attacks to justify or intensify repressive policies, while the Bush administration treated the new phase of the campaign as an opportunity to strengthen U.S. military dominance. The Department of State’s designation system is not itself presented as the cause of those wider policies; rather, it is one institutional setting in which official definitions, evidence, state authority, and the consequences of labeling organizations become visible together.