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October
10, 2002, 10:15 a.m. |
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ow
that the world knows that the State Department was responsible for granting
visas to the 9/11 terrorists in direct violation of the law, top State
press flak Richard Boucher is playing political three-card monty: pretending
there was nothing wrong with the way things used to be, but then stressing
that things are now much better.
The best Boucher could muster was a meek excuse: "The fact is that with 20/20 hindsight, I'm sure one can always find a reason that you might have turned down a visa." One reason? Actually, many reasons — for each visa.
Take Saeed al Ghamdi. Aside from listing "HTL" as the address where he intended to stay in the U.S., al Ghamdi appears to have lied on his July 12, 2001, application when he checked "No" as his answer to the question, "Have you ever been in the U.S.A.?" Al Ghamdi was issued a B-1/B-2 Max Visa — which should have been valid for 24 months, for pleasure and/or business — just ten months earlier, on September 4, 2000. Because NR has obtained his initial visa application, it is clear that al Ghamdi lied in answering "No" to the question, "Have you ever applied for a U.S. nonimmigrant visa?"
If nothing else, the consular officer should have inquired why al Ghamdi had never used his original, seemingly still-valid visa. If he had admitted using the original visa, however, al Ghamdi would have been caught lying on the present form, resulting in a denial — or so one would hope.
When pressed by a
reporter if State had an official position on whether or not the visas
were issued properly under the law, Boucher answered succinctly, "No."
This can be construed as a tacit acknowledgement that State made a mistake
(why else wouldn't they defend the issuances?) — although a "mistake"
might not be the best word to describe actions that helped pave the way
for the death of 3,000 innocent Americans.
The deeply flawed visa-application forms speak for themselves, and even State can't justify the unjustifiable. But it also refuses to take the blame for its own reckless actions.
As sad as it, this is actually an improvement for State. When NR first broke the Visa Express story, State dug in its heels and defended the program on the merits. Bad idea. There was no rational explanation for allowing people from the country that sent us 15 of the 19 September 11 terrorists to submit their visa applications to travel agents after 9/11.
Even before the advent of Visa Express, though, Saudis enjoyed ridiculously relaxed standards for obtaining a visa: They didn't need to list the names and addresses of their employers or schools, they didn't need to show proof that they could actually self-finance months-long trips to the U.S., they didn't need to give a destination more specific than "Hotel," and they apparently didn't need to fill in basic information such as their sex or nationality.
Abdulaziz Alomari, Mohammed Atta's right-hand man, listed a hotel as his home address. With such temporary digs, he couldn't have gotten a Blockbuster card to rent movies, yet State gave him a visa to come to the United States.
State's incredibly high tolerance for incomplete forms full of red flags is not just dangerous in a post-9/11 world; it was direct violation of the law even before 9/11. The law insists that each visa applicant is saddled with the burden of proving his eligibility to receive a visa.
Despite the hard evidence — the visa applications themselves (complete here with explanations about the many problem areas) — Boucher adamantly maintained, "We turn down the people who don't deserve visas, who don't clearly qualify for visas." Really?
Even if he's talking about current procedures while glossing over State's deplorable record in (at least) Saudi Arabia before 9/11, the U.S. embassy in Riyadh's claim that the present refusal rate is a scant three percent for Saudi nationals shows even today procedures are too lax.
The current and former consular officers who reviewed the applications all noted that it is simply not possible that 97 percent of any group could overcome the high burden of proof for visa eligibility established by law.
Perhaps that's why Boucher is using diversionary tactics to throw reporters off the trail that inevitably points to State's 9/11 culpability.
Repeating a mantra State was fond of using earlier this year, Boucher reiterated, "We had no information on any of these people in the namecheck system or any other indications that they didn't qualify for a visa." They didn't have "any other indications"? They did — they had the law. Boucher tried dancing around it, but the fact remains that the State Department did not — and cannot — contend that the visas were issued properly under the law.
Even though State has no "official" position on whether or not the terrorists actually qualified under the law for a visa, Boucher made an eerie comment: "[T]he consular officers determined [that the terrorists did qualify for visas at the time]. And in the end, that's what matters." Sadly, it did, indeed, matter.
— Joel Mowbray is an NRO contributor and a Townhall.com columnist.