How A Dead Person Can End Up On The Government's Terrorist Watchlist

The Intercept published an extensive piece Wednesday focused on terrorist watchlists, and many of the puzzling circumstances surrounding its contents. The authors of the article — Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux — stopped by HuffPost Live on Wednesday afternoon to discuss its impact.

The piece is centered around a 166-page document detailing the government's "secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database." One of the strangest facets of this watchlist is the selection process, so strange that a deceased person can be posthumously put on the list.

"You have to read the sentence a few times to realize that what you're reading is actually...they intended to write what it says," Scahill told host Alyona Minkovski. "The deceased spouse of a known or suspected terrorist can be placed on the watchlist after they have died... they put them on the terror watchlist on the idea that maybe someone will try to use that individual's identity to travel."

Catch the rest of the clip above, and watch the full HuffPost Live conversation here.