The politicization of the list began even before it was created. It was no secret that Israel and pro-Israeli groups in the United States saw it as a means to weaken Arab and Islamic organizations that opposed the Oslo peace process, Israel's existence or both--and, in fact, those groups predominate. In January 1997, concerned that the State Department was too slow in implementing the law, the pro-Israeli Anti-Defamation League blasted then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher for dragging his feet, warning that the FTO designations should be made as quickly as possible. According to The New Yorker, Newt Gingrich, then Speaker of the House, got wind of the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah, two anti-Israel Muslim organizations, might not be included, and he demanded action. They were included, along with the Abu Nidal organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and nine other Palestinian and Islamic groups. (More recently, pro-Israel groups in Washington, emboldened by the apparent shift in US opinion about Yasir Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization chairman, have been urging the State Department to add the tanzim, armed elements of Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO.)

In a similar vein, after the December 13 assault on India's Parliament by Islamic extremists, the State Department scrambled to add two Pakistani-based Kashmiri groups to the list. But the debate around those two groups has been swirling for years--and not because of questions about the proclivity of the two groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammed, to engage in terrorist violence. ("They assassinate civilians," says Selig Harrison, director of the national security project for the Center for International Policy and a veteran Asia observer. "They assassinate police. They really are terrorists.") During the 1990s, however, while the State Department's terrorism office was demanding that the two be added, some of its Asia hands argued against it, for fear of offending Pakistan. More recently, says Harrison, "they felt it would undermine relations with [President] Musharraf." Even the Justice Department weighed in, asserting that it could defend the designation of the two groups as terrorists. But still the State Department demurred. The Bush Administration continued this policy even after September 11 until the murderous events in New Delhi created countervailing pressure from India. Bingo! Add two groups.

On the other hand, the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, a moderate Islamic guerrilla group opposed to Iran's theocratic regime, is in court arguing that it has no business being on the list, and that it was put there only because the United States was trying to curry favor with the Iranian government. Indeed, two years ago, when asked why the State Department had decided to add the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a sister organization of PMOI, to the list, Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official, said bluntly, "The Iranian government had brought this to our attention." The action on NCRI came despite the fact that twenty-eight senators and more than 200 representatives protested the inclusion of the two Iranian groups. The State Department continues to defend the inclusion of the two groups--which continue to maintain offices in downtown Washington--even though their target, the government of Iran, is now officially part of the "axis of evil" and has long been listed by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Heavyweight organizations that have elbowed their way to legitimacy and even near-state status while using paramilitary and even terrorist methods, such as the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Irish Republican Army, aren't listed, though had the State Department been compiling this list back in the 1970s, when the PLO and the IRA had decidedly less prestige, they might well have topped it. The same goes for the African National Congress, which waged a violent campaign against South Africa's apartheid regime, and for Central American insurgencies during the cold war. Had the law been in effect then, and had those groups been on it, Americans who supported Irish, Palestinian, South African and Central American guerrilla movements would have been labeled as criminals.

Since 1997 Iranian, Kurdish and Sri Lankan groups have challenged the law in court, managing to eke out limited victories on the margins but unable, so far, to get themselves removed from the list or to overturn the law on constitutional grounds. The most recent organizations to challenge their inclusion on the list are the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association. Last year both groups were accused by the State Department of being aliases of the Real IRA, an Irish republican group opposed to the US- and British-led peace process in Northern Ireland. Although the Real IRA is illegal in Britain, its allied aliases are not--and both groups have gone to court in Washington to have their designation overturned. "What we do is open, legal and lawful, both here and in the United Kingdom and Ireland," says Martin Galvin, a member of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and a plaintiff in its legal challenge.

Galvin only found out that his group was listed when reporters called him. "As a result of this designation, American members and supporters of 32 County have ceased all our advocacy on behalf of 32 County," says Galvin, adding that the group has closed its post office box, shut down its website, halted distribution of its publications and had its bank account shut. Galvin himself has stopped writing a column and giving speeches. Lynne Bernabei, the Washington attorney representing the two Irish organizations, says that the organizations were added to the list based in part on information provided by the British and Irish governments and in part on the word of David Rupert, an FBI informant whose veracity is questioned by the two Irish groups. But because the administrative record in the case contains classified material and is sealed, it's hard to make the case that the designation was made in error.

The biggest obstacle for any group seeking to be delisted is the fact that the evidence used to target it is secret. In a 1999 ruling, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit pointedly noted that the law does nothing to prevent the Secretary of State from using gossip, innuendo, misinformation and disinformation in assembling the case against a group. The court noted that the administrative record "consists entirely of hearsay, none of it was ever subjected to adversary testing, and there was no opportunity for counter-evidence by the organizations affected." Still, the court upheld the law.

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