Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, the FBI “created an investigative operation, the Pentagon/Twin Towers Bombings Investigation, or PENTTBOM.” According to a report by the Office of the Inspector General on April 29, 2003, “One week after the attacks, the program had yielded ninety-six thousand leads. …Leads emerged from an unsavory stew of sources, including neighbors, landlords, and employers settling scores. Among all the reasons that the FBI would receive a tip, actual involvement with terrorism was at the bottom of the list. Moreover, the FBI’s lack of focus and anxiety about a subsequent attack quickly transformed the investigation into a dragnet targeting undocumented aliens. When the FBI encountered someone of Muslim or Arab background not in this country legally, they took that person into custody, even if that person was not the subject of the tip. …The FBI labeled those they arrested, eventually numbering well over a thousand people, as ‘persons of interest,’ regardless of their involvement with terrorism.”
– Peter Margulies, Law’s Detour, Pages 28-29