Demand a Congressional Investigation into the FBI’s Illegal “Radar Category” and Its Misuse of the National Crime Database (NCIC) for Counterterrorism

We call for a full and impartial Congressional investigation into the FBI’s creation and use of an unauthorized system known as the “Radar Category.”

This category represents a structural breach of federal authority — a surveillance framework instituted without executive or congressional authorization and maintained through internal procedures outside established oversight channels.

Its continued use raises serious constitutional and statutory concerns, including the unlawful expansion of agency power and the circumvention of law and inter-agency review.

 

1. Structural Violation of Federal Authority

 

Under Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6 (HSPD-6), only two lawful designations exist within the United States counterterrorism framework: Known or Appropriately Suspected Terrorist.

Each designation must meet established legal standards linking the individual to terrorism-related activity and be formally recorded in the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).

By contrast, the FBI’s “Radar Category” created a third classification — one never authorized by the Executive Branch or Congress.

Through this act, the Bureau contravened an executive mandate, a federal authority that carries the same weight in implementation as statutory law.

An executive directive defines the lawful scope of agency power. To disregard or violate it is to operate in defiance of both the law and the separation of powers within the United States Constitution.

By expanding the definition of a terrorist through internal policy, the FBI assumed legislative powers it does not possess, imposing those powers upon civilians without authority.

 

2. Expansion Beyond Legal Limits

 

The result of this program is not merely bureaucratic misconduct but a constitutional breach with profound legal and institutional implications.

Evidence and reports indicate that upon the inclusion of civilians into this system, their names — though possessing no criminal record, no active investigation, and no lawful designation under federal counterterrorism standards — are being illegally embedded into the National Crime Database (NCIC).

This practice effectively converts an internal administrative framework into a mechanism of unlawful conduct and record-keeping, placing non-criminal civilians within a database intended for offenders and fugitives.

By collapsing the distinction between intelligence assessments and criminal adjudication, the Bureau subverted the integrity of both systems.

Such conduct is in direct confliction with the Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6 (HSPD-6) Executive Mandate.

Under that directive, NCIC entry is permitted only when an individual who already meets the reasonable-suspicion standard for a terrorism designation is further determined to pose an active public-safety or criminal threat.

By embedding civilians who met neither condition, the FBI bypassed both frameworks, violating the procedural thresholds that define lawful federal authority.

Through this unauthorized expansion of internal power, the Bureau circumvented statutory protections separating preventive intelligence operations from criminal law enforcement, eroding due-process safeguards and weakening the constitutional boundaries that define legitimate government power.

 

3. Consequences and Allegations

 

The downstream consequences of this unlawful framework extend far beyond data misuse. Civilians swept into the “Radar Category” report systemic interference with employment, financial access, community trust, and erroneous public-safety status — consequences that mirror the restrictions imposed on actual criminal offenders.

Such outcomes demonstrate how an unauthorized classification, once institutionalized, can replicate the functional penalties of criminal conviction without judicial process.

The embedding of civilians in a federal criminal database exposes them to unwarranted police scrutiny, algorithmic flagging during background checks, and reputational harm through systems designed for law-enforcement tracking.

These effects occur absent any indictment, charge, or adjudicated finding of guilt — constituting an extrajudicial form of punishment under color of authority.

Allegations emerging from victims and investigative documentation suggest that this system, far from serving legitimate national-security aims, has been repurposed for activities inconsistent with lawful counterterrorism operations.

Reports describe patterns of coercion, intimidation, and reputational targeting that align more closely with unlawful domestic surveillance than with the prevention of terror.

The cumulative effect is a parallel enforcement regime existing outside statutory constraints — one that replaces due process with data profiling and substitutes accountability with administrative secrecy.

Such conduct erodes public trust in federal institutions and reintroduces the same moral hazards that allowed prior domestic-intelligence abuses to flourish unchecked.

 

4. Erosion of Oversight and Public Trust

 

Violating an executive mandate constitutes a breach of law. The FBI’s decision to maintain a classification framework outside the authority of HSPD-6 represents a direct violation of established legal boundaries and a circumvention of the separation of powers that governs coordination among the Executive Branch, Congress, and the Judiciary.

By instituting a parallel framework of classification and enforcement beyond statutory authorization, the Bureau combined authorities that law requires to remain distinct.

Through internal directive, it performed functions reserved for the creation and interpretation of law, without the procedural checks required by statute.

This arrangement subverted established review mechanisms with the FBI’s own internal administrative processes, diminishing the external safeguards that limit the Bureau’s lawful authority.

The Department of Justice retains ultimate responsibility for ensuring that all federal law-enforcement programs operate within statutory and executive limits, yet no public record indicates a formal legal determination or corrective action addressing the lawfulness of this framework or its consistency with governing directives.

Each period of inaction reinforces the presumption that internal policy may substitute for law itself, allowing an unauthorized system to persist within the federal structure without institutional scrutiny or remedial process.

When agencies entrusted with enforcing the law operate beyond its prescribed limits, public confidence and institutional legitimacy are eroded.

Sustained accountability remains the measure of constitutional government and the condition for its survival.

 

5. Department of Justice Oversight Lapses and a Repeat of Historical Failures

As the supervising authority over all federal law-enforcement agencies, the Department of Justice bears direct accountability for ensuring adherence to executive directives and statutory law.

Its position asserting limited awareness of the FBI’s actions within this unauthorized category is inconsistent with that responsibility and the documented record.

The DOJ is not an external institution unfamiliar with the binding force of an executive mandate; it is the entity expressly charged with enforcing it.

The Bureau’s establishment of a surveillance classification in direct defiance of HSPD-6 warranted immediate departmental review and corrective action, not institutional silence.

The DOJ’s own watchdog office (OIG) issued reports in 2008, 2009, and 2014 that documented the very violations now under scrutiny.

Those reports revealed that the FBI bypassed the oversight division within the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) by independently nominating individuals to this classification, operating outside the review mechanisms designed to ensure compliance with federal law.

Under the HSPD-6 executive mandate, reasonable suspicion serves as the legal threshold that determines who may be lawfully recognized as a terrorist by the United States government.

By repeatedly failing to meet this standard, the FBI effectively assigned the legal status of a terrorist label to individuals who did not qualify for that designation under federal law.

These findings did not originate from external critics; they were produced by the DOJ’s own oversight apparatus, recorded in its official publications, and repeated over multiple years.

To now imply a lack of awareness is to disregard the Department’s own official record.

The DOJ was fully apprised of the Bureau’s misconduct and failed to act, allowing an unauthorized framework to persist in plain view of the nation’s chief law-enforcement authority.

History has already shown what follows when oversight yields to accommodation: programs like COINTELPRO thrived under the quiet protection of institutional denial.

The same pattern is repeating here — only this time, it operates under the guise of counterterrorism, with far more damning implications.

 

We Demand the Following Actions from Congress

 

• Conduct a full Congressional inquiry into the FBI’s creation and maintenance of an off-record classification framework used to monitor civilians outside the lawful authorities of Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6 (HSPD-6), including all memoranda, communications, and internal approvals related to its operation.

 • Immediate suspension of any ongoing program that classifies civilians outside lawful investigative standards or embeds them into NCIC without probable cause.

 • Full disclosure of internal policies, directives, or communications used to justify or maintain this category.

 • Establishment of legal remedies for individuals wrongfully labeled, surveilled, or entered into federal systems under this unauthorized framework.

 • Creation of statutory safeguards to ensure that no agency can unilaterally expand counterterrorism authority or reinterpret executive mandates in the future.

 • Pursue disciplinary or criminal referrals where evidence indicates willful misconduct, concealment, or fraud in the creation or continuation of this framework.

 

Why This Matters

 

The integrity of the United States constitutional system depends on the separation of powers and its lawful restraints for intelligence agencies.

When a law-enforcement body assumes powers not granted by statute or executive mandate, it undermines not only the rights of individuals but the legitimacy of government itself.

Unchecked authority breeds corruption, and corruption disguised as national security endangers both liberty and law.

Congress must act decisively to expose, dismantle, and permanently prohibit this unauthorized classification framework — restoring the constitutional boundaries that protect the American public from institutional abuse.

 

Sign this petition to demand transparency, accountability, and the restoration of constitutional law.