State Department official blasts intelligence agencies

A State Department official on Friday blasted U.S. intelligence agencies, saying their failure to provide the agency's visa officers with information about the suspected Sept. 11 hijackers' links to terrorists was to blame for the hijackers' entry into the United States. Ambassador Mary Ryan, head of the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, told members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information, that consular officers in American embassies and consulates could have stopped some of the terrorists from entering the country if agencies such as the CIA and FBI shared more information with the State Department. "It is a colossal intelligence failure, or there was information that wasn't shared with us," Ryan told subcommittee chairman Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., and other senators. "What went wrong is we had no information on [the hijackers] from intelligence and law enforcement." Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James Ziglar said Thursday that 13 of the 19 suspected hijackers were issued legal visas. INS has no record of the other six terrorist suspects.

Ryan said that Mohamed Atta, suspected to be a leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, received a visa in May 2000. But intelligence agencies know now, and possibly knew before May 2000, that Atta had met with operatives associated with Osama Bin Laden in January 2000. "I'm surprised how much we learned in the immediate aftermath" of Sept. 11, she said. The Bureau of Consular Affairs issues visas to people who wish to enter the United States. The INS then processes people with visas at border entry points, and is responsible for tracking people who overstay their visas. The FBI, CIA and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies are supposed to provide information to the INS and the Bureau of Consular Affairs so that their officers can block potential terrorists from entering the country. When Feinstein said the Sept. 11 attacks revealed a failure of the visa system, Ryan interrupted the senator and defended consular officers, reiterating her contention that the attacks demonstrated a failure of intelligence, not visa issuance.

Ryan said consular officers, who are members of the Foreign Service, are distraught that they allowed entry to the men who hijacked four commercial jetliners, plowing two of them into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and crashing a fourth into the Pennsylvania countryside. "I have to live with that for the rest of my life," one consular officer told Ryan. Feinstein responded: "This was a failure of the system. I hear one agency blame another, and it's very upsetting to me." The exchange came after a two-hour session in which senators, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, INS's Ziglar and Ryan described an immigration system in which numerous agencies fail to share information or work together on technology projects that could prevent terrorists and other criminals from entering the country. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said that he and Feinstein would write a letter to new Office of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge asking him to help improve coordination among INS, State, the FBI, the CIA, Customs and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Ryan said the FBI has refused for a decade to provide the State Department with access to its National Crime Information Center (NCIC) databases, including a database on gang and terrorist group members. The FBI's reason: The State Department is not a law enforcement agency. The INS' Ziglar said the FBI only recently granted the INS-a fellow Justice Department agency-access to the NCIC databases, and then only at two entry points into the United States. Similarly, the INS and the FBI developed separate fingerprint identification databases beginning in 1989. The agencies also developed separate criminal information systems. The lack of integration contributed to the ability of Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, a Mexican citizen, to enter the country several times and commit numerous murders in 1999. The lack of integration may also have contributed to the ability of several of the Sept. 11 terrorists to enter the country undetected. "We are only as good as the information that we have in the system," Ryan said. "We must have more information sharing." Ziglar and Ryan reported that agency representatives have been working more closely over the past month. Ziglar said the INS is about to roll out new workstations that enable Border Patrol agents to search both FBI and INS fingerprint databases. In Congress, several members have introduced bills that would force the FBI to share NCIC information with the State Department. Feinstein said the agencies need to get together and create a single database with information about terrorists. "I am concerned about continuing to appropriate money to systems that don't talk to each other," she said. The INS' Ziglar also said that two laws impede the INS' ability to keep terrorists out of the country. Under the first, the INS is barred from installing its fingerprint identification system at all U.S. entry points until it integrates its system with the FBI's system. Under the second, the INS is required to clear international flight passengers in 45 minutes or less. Feinstein and Kyl said they would look into repealing those laws.