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February 10, 2009
Exclusive: CIA Warns Obama that British Terrorists are the Biggest Threat to the U.S.
I’m sure that I am not the only person who wished that our world was not plagued by the threat of terrorism. I’m also not alone in my wish that our nation's economy and those of many other countries had not been shaken to the core, and wishing that international criminals and terrorists were not on the move around the globe, plying their trades wherever they can, seeking weaknesses and exploiting those weaknesses.
These critically important challenges confront our nation and most other nations on the face of this planet.
Therefore it is imperative that our nation's leaders put political differences aside and stop pandering to the various special interest groups and business interests, and make our nation's security the unequivocal number one priority.
This article from the UK Telegraph was forwarded to me by one of the many folks I have been in touch with ever since I decided to provide my insights concerning immigration in the wake of 9/11. It addresses two of the many areas of concern I have been hammering away at: the Visa Waiver Program and the lack of resources devoted to enforcing the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States. And this article is from the Washington Post entitled, "Obama's NSC Will Get New Power."
If the whole point is to seek out and then devise strategies to protect our nation, then our nation's leaders must incorporate the issues of border security and the enforcement and administration of the immigration laws into their national security strategies.
Let's start out by considering the Visa Waiver Program that the Bush administration, in its final weeks, expanded from 27 participating countries to 34 countries. The travel and hospitality interests hired Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security, to be their "talking head" to hawk their program called "Discover America." As I have pointed out on many occasions, Mr. Ridge and his deep-pocketed friends in the travel and hospitality industries appear to have forgotten that al Qaeda and other terrorist and criminal organizations have already discovered America. And remember that citizens of Great Britain are eligible to seek to enter the United States without first applying for a visa.
Click here for my review of the benefits to be found in requiring foreign visitors to obtain visas before setting foot on our shores. These benefits do not apply when aliens are admitted under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program. On May 11, 2006 I was called to testify before a Congressional hearing conducted by the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives on the topic "Visa Overstays: Can We Bar the Terrorist Door?”
As you read about the resources being poured into the development of informants in Great Britain within the Pakistani community, I want you to consider another issue of vital importance. The cultivation of informants is, arguably, one of the most important endeavors of intelligence services and law enforcement agencies. It is extremely important to make use of sophisticated surveillance techniques to keep track of potential terrorists and their plots to attack our nation and our allies, but it is also important to understand that the use of informants – especially in conjunction with those high-tech surveillance methods – is vital for the successes upon which the security of our nation and the lives of our citizens depend.
It is not enough to know the name, for example, of a bad guy who may be involved in a terrorist or criminal plot – we must be able to put a face with the name. That is where informants often come in to play.
Additionally, terrorists and criminals are not stupid. They know that if phones may be tapped or electronic communications may be intercepted, that they may have to resort to low-tech tactics such as using rented mail drops or courier services to communicate. Again, informants who can infiltrate an organization or a community may well make the difference between a bunch of terrorists being caught before they have the opportunity to strike, or a devastating attack that kills many people. As a former INS special agent, I was intimately involved in "flipping," or cultivating, informants.
The challenge our country faces is that while much has been made about the security of our nation's borders (a critical issue, to be sure), almost no attention has been paid to the enforcement of the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.
Most people seem to think that the interior enforcement of the immigration laws begin and end with the investigation of unscrupulous employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. Certainly this is a significant area of concern, but there are precious few resources allocated to going after aliens who commit immigration fraud in order to secure lawful status in the United States, including obtaining United States citizenship by committing fraud on their applications.
To make the importance of this aspect of immigration law enforcement simple to understand, you must think of fraud as a lie placed on an application by an alien or a person who files an application for that alien to provide him with a benefit that would not be possible if the truth was known.
Informants constitute a vital tool to combat immigration fraud, narcotics trafficking, terrorism and all sorts of other violations of law. In order to help to make this effort as effective as possible, given the high-stakes nature of these efforts (especially when you consider the potential for devastating terrorist attacks), our nation needs to have many more special agents at ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) who can enforce the immigration laws and, in the process, develop informants to act as the "eyes and ears" of our law enforcement and intelligence officers.
On May 18, 2004, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee who, at that time, was the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims, requested that I testify at a hearing that was convened to explore the topic “Pushing the Border Out on alien Smuggling: New Tools and Intelligence Initiatives.” Part of that hearing dealt with the issue of informant development.
Too many of our nation's leaders are, at the least, naïve in considering the role that immigration can and must play to address these critically important national security threats that confront our nation, each and every day.
Several days ago, former Vice President Dick Cheney assailed the current administration and went on about the threat that terrorism poses. Meanwhile, the Bush administration ignored the threat posed by our utter lack of security on our borders. A responsible homeowner would lock his doors and windows, especially if he was concerned about burglars breaking in. The Bush administration did not only failed to lock the back door, but essentially took that door off of its hinges.
The previous administration created the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) that merged Customs and Immigration and then split the former INS into three separate and distinct agencies: CBP (Customs and Border Protection), ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services). This unwieldy arrangement, in my judgment, hobbled efforts to effectively enforce the immigration laws.
The process by which visa applications are processed obviously need to be understood from a national security perspective. Immigration law enforcement needs to also be conducted with an understanding that not only must our borders be secured against the entry of illegal aliens, among whom may well be criminals and terrorists, but that the entire immigration bureaucracy must be mindful of the potential for so-called "sleeper agents" – seeking to enter our country and acquire lawful resident status and even United States citizenship that can then enable spies and terrorists to get sensitive jobs in industry and within the government, itself, to spy on our nation and gain access to critical infrastructure.
What also needs to be considered is that critical infrastructure can include many industries that have the potential to harm or kill large numbers of our citizens.
For example, food processing plants can be as significant as power generating plants. Schools, hotels, malls and hospitals are as important as national landmarks.
In our interconnected society, there are many pressure points that need to be protected. The presence of perhaps as 20 million illegal aliens whose identities, backgrounds, affiliations and intentions are unknown and unknowable represents a huge threat to our safety and the survival of our nation.
Any massive amnesty program will only make matters worse because any such program has the real potential of providing criminals and terrorists with official immigration status even though their true names are unknown.
During the campaign, President Obama promised us, "Change we can believe in." Here’s some change I would love to see: an end to the Visa Waiver Program. I would also love to see the President, once and for all, make it clear that illegal aliens will not be rewarded with lawful status after they violated our nation's laws and our nation's borders.
Let us remember that each and every year, the United States furnishes more aliens with lawful immigrant (resident alien) status than do all of the other countries of the world combined (more than one million).
Remember, the difference between and immigrant and an illegal alien is comparable to the difference between a houseguest and a burglar.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michael Cutler is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a recognized authority who addresses the implications of immigration on national security and criminal justice. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org
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