When besieged National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) Director Michael Leiter, a veteran intelligence practitioner, disclosed last week at a Senate committee hearing looking into the failure of the Intelligence Community (IC) to uncover the botched Christmas Day bomb plot by Yemeni Al Qaeda franchise directed recruit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, that known and suspected terrorists on US terrorist watch lists are sometimes secretly allowed into the country for clandestine counterterrorism intelligence collection purposes, there was a delayed, palpable surprise on the part of some lawmakers … and certainly conspiracy theorists.

Leiter’s revelation drew surprisingly negligible attention from the media, but the reportage it did garner was written with a near audible intonation that implied the practice not only is unusual IC tradecraft, but that it’s somehow the wrong thing to do.

Then, on Wednesday, Patrick Kennedy, Under Secretary of State for Management, expanded on Leiter’s revelation during his appearance before the House Committee on Homeland Security hearing, "Flight 253: Learning Lessons from an Averted Tragedy."

The public disclosures that individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism are knowingly allowed into the US first emerged in response to questioning by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich) during the public portion of the January 20 Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing, “Intelligence Reform: The Lessons and Implications of the Christmas Day Attack."

Leiter told the committee “that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another.”

While Leiter didn’t go into any further detail during the hearing, veteran IC counterterrorists (CT) explained in interviews with HSToday.us that there are times when individuals in terrorism databases and suspected and known terrorists who’ve deliberately been left off the No Fly and terrorist watch lists necessarily must be allowed into the country so that CT agents can gather vital intelligence on them, their movements, activities, and associations. The intent of such risky operations is to bust terrorist attacks against the United States.

Expanding on what Leiter disclosed last week, Kennedy, while responding to House HS Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson’s (D-Miss.) questions about when and how the State Department revokes US visas of persons suspected or known of involvement in terrorism, stated that the department doesn’t just “unilaterally” revoke the visas of an individual because the person may be the subject of an important CT intelligence gathering operation.

At the behest of federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies, Kennedy explained in rather surprising detail, the department sometimes is asked to not revoke, and/or to provide visas to suspected or known terrorists in order to allow them into the United States so that their activities here can be monitored.

Kennedy explained: “We had a request from a law enforcement agency to not, revoke the visa [of a person suspected of terrorist activities]” that the Department had “come across information” indicating “this is a dangerous person. We were ready to revoke the visa,” but “we then went to the [intelligence] community and said, ‘should we revoke this visa?’ And one of the [IC] members said, ‘please, do not revoke this visa. We have eyes on this person. We are following this person who has the visa for the purpose of trying to roll up an entire network, not just stop one person.’”

“So,” Kennedy told the panel, “we will revoke the visa of any individual who is a threat to the United States, but we do take one preliminary step [first] … we ask our law enforcement and intelligence community partners, ‘do you have eyes on this person, and do you want us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may potentially break a larger plot?’”

Kennedy’s point, though, seemed to be lost on Thompson, who in response said, “but I think the point that I’m trying to get at is, is this just another box you’re checking, or is there some security value to adding that box to the list” of things you check off as part of the routine process of revoking someone’s visa.

“The intelligence and law enforcement community tell us that they believe, in certain cases, that there’s a higher value of them following this person, so they can find his or her co-conspirators, and roll up an entire, plot against the United States, rather than simply knock[ing] out one soldier in that effort,” Kennedy answered.

In his prepared testimony, Kennedy stated “expeditious coordination with our national security partners is not to be underestimated. There have been numerous cases where our unilateral and uncoordinated revocation would have disrupted important investigations that were underway by one of our national security partners. They had the individual under investigation and our revocation action would have disclosed the US Government’s interest in the individual and ended our colleagues’ ability to quietly pursue the case and identify terrorists’ plans and co-conspirators.”

“No visa is issued without it being run through security checks against our partners’ data,” Kennedy added, noting that “we [have] specifically designed our systems to facilitate comprehensive data sharing. We give other agencies immediate access to over 13 years of visa data, and they use this access extensively. In November 2009, more than 16,000 employees of DHS, the Department of Defense, the FBI and [Department of] Commerce made 920,000 queries on visa records ...”

Covert intelligence collection endeavors like this have been part of basic intelligence tradecraft 101 for a very long time, going back to counterintelligence operations during the Cold War against the Soviet Union, its East Bloc satellites and its other allies around the world.

Unidentified intelligence officials unofficially acknowledged several years ago that known and suspected terrorists had been allowed into the country in order to gather crucial intelligence, and that some of these individuals are not necessarily entered into the government’s consolidated Terrorist Screening Data Base (TSDB) from which individuals are nominated to be placed on the No Fly and terrorist watch lists.

Intelligence officials explained at the time that crucial counterterrorism investigations necessitated not putting the names of some specific known and suspected terrorists under investigation on any list, including the No Fly list, so as to not tip them off that US counterterrorists have them under surveillance.

Last July, the unclassified version of the DHS Inspector General (IG) report, Role of the No Fly and Selectee Lists in Securing Commercial Aviation, disclosed that “not all known or reasonably suspected terrorists are prohibited from boarding an aircraft.” Details about the “factors that merit consideration and might mitigate the decision to place an individual on the No Fly or Selectee list” were redacted from the report.

In his March 17, 2009 memorandum to Acting Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Administrator Gale Rossides regarding TSA’s comments to the draft report, the DHS IG noted that “some individuals are not included on the [No Fly and Selectee] lists who may also prevent vulnerabilities to aviation security …”

The IC officials interviewed by HSToday.us said, “you can look to what Leiter and Kennedy had to say” to infer what the classified reasons are for “these individuals being allowed entry into the United States,” as one of the authorities said.

Nevertheless, some lawmakers and media covering the January 20 Senate HS committee hearing expressed near outrage that known and suspected terrorists are secretly allowed to enter the country, even if it’s done to gain additional vital intelligence on what they’re up to.