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State Police have barred agents of the New Jersey Office of Counter-Terrorism from filing reports to their database after finding numerous computer entries targeted suspects simply because they practiced Islam or had connections to Muslim groups, according to high-ranking state officials and law enforcement sources.

The State Police action sparked a dispute that became so intense, acting Gov. Richard Codey's office had to intervene two weeks ago by summoning Attorney General Peter Harvey, State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes and Counter-Terrorism Director Sydney Caspersen to a Statehouse meeting to broker a peace, several sources said.

At issue were more than 100 reports Caspersen's investigators had recently filed into a database known as Statewide Intelligence Management System, or SIMS. The database is designed as a crime-fighting tool to be used by state, county and local law enforcement officials. It contains more than 500,000 entries on criminal activities and investigations dating to the 1960s. The system is administered by the State Police.

Sources familiar with the Statehouse meeting said Caspersen vigorously denied his agency was profiling. He said the reports were simply incomplete and that State Police officials who oversee the database had drawn incorrect conclusions.

During the meeting at the Statehouse, Harvey and Fuentes agreed counter-terrorism investigators were not intentionally profiling suspects based on their race or religion, according to sources.

Still, the Attorney General is now conducting his own review of the reports and, until he is finished, Caspersen's agents will not be allowed to file data into the system. Harvey also has asked to be briefed on all terrorism cases Caspersen's office is working on, three high-ranking law enforcement sources said.

Spokespeople for Codey, Harvey, Fuentes and Caspersen confirmed there was a meeting at the governor's office, but declined to comment on specifics. Officials also refused to talk about the State Police audit of the database and the review being conducted by the Attorney General's Office.

The reports filed by Caspersen's agents consist of two sections, law enforcement sources said. The first lists basic information about a suspect and the investigator who filed the report. The second includes a narrative written by the investigator about the suspect -- detailing things such as where the suspect was seen, and who he or she talked to -- and the reason the suspect was being investigated.

According to law enforcement sources, however, the intelligence reports filed by the Office of Counter-Terrorism did not include reasons why their investigators believed the subjects -- many Muslim or affiliated with the Islamic community -- were suspected of terrorist activity.

Nearing the end of federally mandated reforms intended to rid racial profiling from its ranks, State Police feared the reports could make it seem like they condoned the practice, so they immediately restricted the Office of Counter-Terrorism's access to the database, two State Police sources said.

"We've lived that and we're not going to have anything associated with it," one of the State Police sources said, referring to his agency's struggle to eliminate racial profiling from its ranks.

Sources at the Office of Counter-Terrorism defended the intelligence reports, saying the reports were incomplete because supervisors didn't have time to review them. They also said suspects in the reports were all under investigation and that, with some editing, the reports could have met federal investigative standards.

"The easy answer would have been (for State Police) to pull the reports and have the detectives undergo training, but that's not what you do when you are out to get the Office of Counter-Terrorism," one of the counter-terrorism sources said.

The partnership between the State Police and Caspersen's office has been uneasy almost from the time former Gov. James E. McGreevey issued an executive order in 2002 establishing the office.

Under the executive order, the Office of Counter-Terrorism, which has state troopers assigned to it to work alongside state investigators and analysts, is supposed to administer, coordinate and lead New Jersey's counter-terrorism and preparedness efforts. It operates from a nondescript office in Trenton and does much of its work in the shadows of law enforcement, quietly trolling Web sites that preach hate for signs of terrorist chatter or sending its investigators undercover.

Last June, the Office of Counter-Terrorism broke up a document fraud ring and charged 19 people either with trafficking in phony papers or using them to obtain drivers licenses or identification cards. They are the only arrests the office has made to date, according to Roger Shatzkin, spokesman for the Attorney General's Office.

The State Police, meanwhile, prefer to work terrorism investigations with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a coalition of federal, state and local agencies, as they have done since it was established two decades ago, law enforcement sources said. Top brass consider Caspersen's office more of an intelligence clearinghouse than an investigative body.

As part of their review of this year's budget, state lawmakers asked how the Office of Counter-Terrorism and State Police were cooperating and requested "a clear delineation of responsibility."

The Attorney General's Office sidestepped the question in its written response, dwelling instead on the Office of Counter-Terrorism's accomplishments, which included extensive training of state troopers and local police. Among its accomplishments, it listed the entry of 7,500 investigative leads on potential terrorist activity into SIMS since September 2003.

State Police is the largest division within the Attorney General's Office, with 2,745 troopers and an annual budget of $302 million. Counter-Terrorism is one of the smaller offices, with an $8.6 million budget and a staff of 90, including 25 State Police personnel who are specially assigned to it.



Staff writers Robert Schwaneberg and Jonathan Schuppe contributed to this report.



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