Hovsepian

On August 18, 2000, the district court administered the oath of citizenship to Ap-pellees Viken Hovsepian and Viken Yacou-bian. That naturalization ceremony was the culmination of a 16-year struggle between Appellees and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (“INS”), 1 which had sought to deport them. In this appeal, the INS argues that the district court’s decision to naturalize Appellees was fundamentally flawed. The district court dealt admirably with this complex case over a long period of time. Because, however, the district court committed legal errors that caused it to analyze Appellees’ naturalization applications incompletely, we must reverse and remand for further proceedings.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

A. ■ Hovsepian’s and Yacoubian’s Convictions and Sentencing

In 1982, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) discovered, through intercepted telephone calls, that Appellees Viken Hovsepian and Viken Yacoubian were planning to bomb the offices of the Honorary Turkish Consul General in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Appellees allegedly were associated with the Justice Comman-does of the Armenian Genocide, an organization dedicated to exacting revenge against…