Posted on 06/25/2002 11:05:18 AM PDT by browardchad
The room in the Rayburn House Office Building where congressional staffers on the Judiciary Committee were to have received a briefing on Visa Express from State Department officials yesterday afternoon sat empty. No, the event did not suffer from lack of demand. In fact, quite the contrary: A large number of staffers were planning to cut away from their busy schedules to learn more about the program that let in three of the Sept. 11th hijackers in the three months it was in operation before 9/11 in just one country: Saudi Arabia.
At 2:25pm Friday, an e-mail went out to all staff on the House Judiciary Committee, and those who work for members on the committee, inviting them to a briefing conducted by officials from Consular Affairs, the agency within the State Department that oversees consulates and visa issuance. Response from staffers was immediate and overwhelming. After reading about the Visa Express program in NR, many had to hear with their own ears how anyone could defend this gaping hole in our border security.
When word of the rising popularity of what was intended as a small, closed-door briefing hit the executive office at CA, panic set in. Less than two hours later, at 4:18pm, a follow-up e-mail went out to the very same staffers as before: "Regrettably, the Congressional Liaison Office of the Consular Affairs Office of the U.S. State Department has notified me that the briefing on its Visa Express program scheduled for Monday at 3:00 PM has been cancelled." This was not a cancellation born of scheduling difficulties, as the e-mail finished, "They have no plans to reschedule another such briefing at this time."
As a CA official explained yesterday, "The executive office [at CA] is running scared." What has the entrenched agency so shaken? Congress is finally looking behind the curtain to examine the culture and practices at CA that have lead to a disturbingly lax attitude toward law enforcement, which quite predictably has resulted in CA becoming the weakest link in our border security. In the vast majority of countries around the world, visa applicants are only interviewed if they fail on paper first — a marked departure from just a decade ago, when almost everyone was interviewed at least once before obtaining a visa to enter the United States.
With hearings in the civil-service subcommittee Wednesday afternoon (at which, in full disclosure, I will be testifying) Congress is focusing squarely on Rep. Dave Weldon's (R, Fla.) proposal to take Consular Affairs out of the State Department and place it in the new Department of Homeland Defense (DOHD). In Washington, hearings are a part of everyday life, but very little action ever results. Not this time.
In the midst of the congressional action to create the DOHD, this is the opportune moment for Congress to shore up our borders and enact Weldon's reform plan — and CA knows that his idea is gaining steam. As one senior congressional staffer commented, "Consular Affairs smells their own blood in the water."
On Friday, the day after CA's first public response, John Naland of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the U.S. Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) union, sent out an e-mail to all AFSA members complaining, "Lawmakers [might] go beyond the President's proposal by seeking to move all responsibility and staffing for visa adjudication out of the State Department." He branded this action a product of "immigration opponents," "disgruntled former FSOs," and "various self-appointed 'experts.'"
The executives at CA — from the head honcho, Mary Ryan, on down — have been lighting up the phone lines, busy calling in favor after favor. And after "fixing" visas for friends of many Very Important Politicians (and others) over the years, Ryan and company presumably have a deep favor bank with which to work. But with the way Congress is reacting to the unmitigated disaster that is CA, they're going to need it.
CA executives passionately want to remain in the State Department — and why wouldn't they? They live in a penalty-free environment, where they simply choose to ignore the impact of consequences in the real world. Consider an alarming example.
For about a decade now, CA has had a terrorist-screening program called Visa Vipers, which is intended to keep bad guys from our shores — a rather important goal. Unfortunately, many consulates disregard the program outright, sometimes for years on end. When enough consulates had blown off the requirement that corrective action needed to be taken, Ryan sent out a cable to consulates reminding everyone that Visa Vipers is "a vital component of U.S. border security." The punishment for failing to utilize this tool to screen out terrorists? Ryan, in the same cable, used harsh words like "disturbed" and "simply no excuse" — but did little else. This cable went out just last month, eight months after 9/11.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, according to news reports, made an angry phone call last week to Tom Ridge about rumors that State would lose the visa-issuance function to the DOHD.
Though the exact contents of that call are unknown, the general argument for Powell's position is that State needs the visa power as a tool in its diplomacy efforts, so it can give visas to countries who otherwise would not be able to send its citizens here. In other words, potential bad guys would be given visas, security concerns notwithstanding, because bureaucrats at the State Department bribed a foreign government as a way of making nice with that country. That is exactly why visa-issuance powers — if not the entire CA bureau — need to be removed from State.
But aside from the very real and legitimate concerns of the State Department loosening visa procedures in a transparent attempt to curry diplomatic favor with a tyrant or despot, there is a more compelling and profound reason for transferring CA out of State: CA is a broken agency.
At congressional hearings last fall, Ryan blamed the FBI and CIA for failing to fully share information, and now acts as if affairs at CA are much better nine months after 9/11. But people in the lookout system — a watch list with 5.7 million names worldwide — are still getting into the United States. In a South Asian nation, a young woman, after two refused applications, merely changed her date of birth by two years for the third try — and she was approved. The consular officer merely missed her name with the changed birth date. That was four months ago. Even more recently, a Colombian national, who was a suspected drug dealer and thankfully on the watch list, slipped by consular officers and received a visa. This is the same lookout system in place in the Middle East and elsewhere.
But the most disturbing, not to mention alarming, aspect of CA after 9/11 is that nothing has changed. Visa applicants who clear the lookout system are still screened primarily on financial factors — specifically, one's ability to purchase a fancy travel package — as if members of al Qaeda would be unable to clear that hurdle. Written policy, to this day, dictates that someone able to buy a "tour package" will face "little further examination," meaning no interview. Not that an interview would help much.
CA's press new press flak, Ed Vazquez, practically bragged on Fox News last week that 12 of the 15 Saudis who helped make 9/11 possible were interviewed by consular officers, and that all 12 got in. In the real world, that kind of track record would prompt immediate action. Not at CA, though. The interview training for new consular officers lasts less than five hours and law-enforcement techniques designed to screen out terrorists are nowhere to be found. This is exactly as it was before 9/11. Is it any wonder Rep. Weldon's subcommittee is holding hearings to take CA out of its ensconced environment?
— Joel Mowbray is a Townhall.com columnist and an NRO contributor.
Talk about a department that needs re-organizing worse than the CIA and FBI combined, can you say DOS?
A family member who worked at the embassy in Bogotá would become very upset, when people she had denied would have a member of Congress tell them to admit the applicant. A member of Congress--overriding the rules that they themselves had made. And now blaming Consular Affairs for not following the rules.
Another aspect, as this family member recently wrote me, is that visas bring in millions of dollars to the US govt. Other agencies would love to have this source of income, such as the Homeland Security people; and the State dept. would pretty well die--as the amount allotted by Congress by itself does not support State. Now, some may think this would be a good thing. But I think we will find that adding another layer of bureaucracy with Homeland Security will not add competence. The same problems will exist there. The people will not be able to fight Congressional pressure any better just by having procedures in a different agency.
I have no doubt that Congress interferes with the visa process, however Mowbray is not talking about Bogota; he is talking about Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 hijackers came from, and where DOS CA officials interviewed 12 of the 15 and gave them visas. They have therefore displayed bad judgement in the interview process, but yet continue to promote a program that involves judgements based on paperwork only.
An under secretary told a congressional committee last week that the Visa Express program was no longer in existence, and yet it is still very much in existence, as Mowbray and others have proved.
If, as you contend, the DOS is so dependent on the funds derived from visas, all the more reason to strip them of the responsibility, since their judgement in granting visas may very well be skewed by the profit motive, in addition to their oblivious attitude toward Arab terrorists.
I have no illusions about the effectiveness of yet another bureaucracy, but continuing to allow the DOS to control visas, when they demonstrate no inclination to change their attitudes or procedures, is suicidal. At the very least, the fight to strip the DOS of this power shines a national spotlight on yet another contributory factor in our continuing national insecurity.
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