March 3, 2010
Exclusive: Delays in ‘Virtual’ Border Fence Puts U.S. at Further Security Risk
Michael Cutler
When it comes to the idea of a “virtual fence” on our border with Mexico, I the government should simply refer to this fiasco as “Operation Back-Rub,” along with all of the other military-sounding projects aimed at protecting our nation from the massive influx of illegal aliens, among whom are criminals and, undoubtedly, terrorist sympathizers and terrorists.
What do I mean by that? When a child awakens from his sleep in the middle of the night, the dutiful parent will generally speak to him in a soothing voice, administer a gentle back-rub and tell the child whatever is necessary to calm him so that he will go back to sleep and the parent, too, can go back to sleep.
For far too long, our government has been able to get away with creating illusions that do not match reality. It has whittled away at our expectations of privacy and freedom in the name of national security and yet refuses to truly secure our borders and create an immigration system that has real integrity. In the quest for the creation of the illusion of living up to its obligations, our nation's "leaders" have squandered billions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars while our borders are as porous as a sieve. Additionally, the immigration bureaucracy that alleges to represent the "legal" process for aliens to seek to secure resident alien status and even United States citizenship rewards massive levels of fraud and makes an absolute mockery of those true immigrants whose lifelong dream is to legally immigrate to the United States, play by the rules and follow our nation's laws to become a part of this nation.
The fence on the border in and of itself will not protect our nation. However, it should be an integral component of an immigration system that secures the sovereignty of our nation's borders and aids in protecting our nation and our citizens from the unlawful entry of illegal aliens, including criminals and terrorists, as well as a wide variety of contraband such as narcotics, counterfeit goods that may compromise public health and safety, and even weapons of mass destruction.
Perhaps a part of the reason that our government has been so inept is that there is no competition where the securing of our nation's borders is concerned. Our citizens are at the mercy of a government that has no sense of obligation to its own citizens. Our government has established a track record that would cause a comparable business to file for bankruptcy and, indeed, our government's financial situation does not give me any comfort either.
Every unsecured mile of border provides criminals, terrorists and other illegal aliens ample opportunity to enter our country without detection. Think about how much destruction just 19 terrorists inflicted on our nation on September 11, 2001.
In fact, our nation has been attacked numerous times by terrorists, some of those attacks happening before 9/11. Many of those attacks occurred overseas but in 1993, our nation suffered casualties from two terrorist attacks carried out on our soil. In January, 1993 an individual by the name of Amir Kansi, a Pakistani national who secured political asylum by committing fraud, stood outside the CIA in Langley, Virginia and opened fire upon the cars streaming into that complex of buildings on a cold winter morning. When the shooting subsided, two CIA officers lay dead and three were wounded. Kansi fled from the scene and left the United States. He was ultimately captured and returned to the United States to stand trial. Following his being found guilty, he was executed. The death and suffering he caused, however, could not be undone.
Just one month later, in February, 1993, a truck bomb was detonated in the basement of the World Trade Center complex resulting in massive damage to that iconic landmark, estimated at half a billion dollars. More importantly, six people were killed and hundreds were injured. The individuals involved in that attack committed immigration fraud and gamed the immigration bureaucracy, yet the Clinton Administration did absolutely nothing to address these fatal flaws in the system – leading to the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Those attacks occurred 17 years ago. The attacks of 9/11 occurred eight and a half years ago. Yet thanks to deep budget cuts, another six years may be necessary to secure our nation's border with Mexico, meaning it will not be completed until 2016.
When our nation was attacked at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 it took just about 44 months for the United States, acting in concert with its allies, to build fleets of ships and aircraft that had never existed before. All sorts of new technology had to be created and even nuclear weapons fashioned and deployed with scarcely proven technology. That was American "Can do" spirit at its best.
When President John F. Kennedy established the goal of sending American astronauts to the moon and returning them safely to the earth, this audacious proposal was to be carried out in less than a decade, marking the last time that the American “Can do!” spirit was applied.
Today, our nation is the nation of "Can't do" with an explanation and an excuse explaining yet another failure.
Is this acceptable?
Mr Cutler is right about the physical aspects of weakness regarding the fence, virtual or physical. What is even more insiduous in immigration is the government hiring policies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and within the Citizenship Immigration Service (CIS). Congress and the public should look directly into the qualifications of the employees of the DHS Analysis and Intelligence section and the CIS Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS). The programs are ostensibly run (and required to be under US Intelligence Community [IC] guidelines) by intelligence professionals under the US Federal Government job series as GS-0132 series. This also means that those with intelligence training, intelligence experience, and proven ability would and should be hired. This is a totally incorrect assumption on the public's part (and as testified to Congress by CIS and FDNS). The hiring has long been going on a part of a job sinecure and buddy system, rather than hiring intelligence professionals. The CIS FDNS program, of which fully one half of its program is "intelligence" is staffed almost totally and fully of adjudicators rather than intelligence personnel. This becomes rather laughable, as each adjudicator takes a few week school and presto - now an Intel professional. The FDNS part of the CIS Academy which is at Dallas, TX now, once given at Glynco Georgia, but it was too professional of a location and CIS couldn't insure that their own "adjudicators" were taken care of so off to Dallas it moved into convention facilities and hotels. The FDNNS personnel are "qualified" as intel by this unapproved, non-IC course, that is not even approved by CIS's own FDNS leadership, Don Crocetti, who is also a puffed up adjudicator, running an intelligence agency. [remember there was once an overall Director of Intelligence supposed to oversee "all" US Intelligence, just not here in CIS] Anyway, each of these new Intel professionals are able to occupy an intelligence funded position and add next to nothing to any intelligence (it is amazing that so few intelligence reports HSIR HIR from CIS have been published from so many FDNS assigned persons. A Texas FDNS supervisor Ms Rachel Knowles stated in Feb 2009 - "We do not do intelligence here" and later stated to the sole intelligence research specialist person in the unit "You will not do any intelligence until headquarters tells me to do it". She has no intelligence training other than the in house CIS training (great). There is no one (out of 30)in the Texas FDNS center with any intelligence background, not one. Texas FDNS (also called FDU and CFDO TX) is one of the five FDNS centers. FDNS headquarters is in Washington DC and is almost finished with its purge of actual intelligence personnel, leaving those great immigration adjudicators. FDNS publishes an intel product of regurgitated intel from other agencies, not much else. With new impetus they have a one week report writing course that "qualifies" attendees as a reports officer - to report within DHS and FDNS (ask CIA/DoD how much training a HUMINT reports officer must do). With DHS Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) its almost more of the same, no one responsible for the floundering efforts and again the job sinecures for those unqualified to do much else. No policing of the ranks here. Yes the US is at further risk, but it is even deeper than you know.
posted by: Robert
Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 04:21 PM
