Attempted airline bombing prompted changes
A terrorist similar to the suspected Christmas Day bomber likely could not threaten a US-bound flight today because new procedures enacted since Dec. 25 would prevent such a terrorist from boarding the airplane, State and Homeland Security officials told a House panel Thursday.
The father of suspected bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab reported his son to the US Embassy in Nigeria in late November 2009, but US consular officials misspelled the name when checking his visa records, testified David Donahue, deputy assistant secretary of State for Visas, before the House Homeland Security Committee.
But after the Christmas bombing attempt, the State Department implemented a new search engine to check visa records, conducting searches that allow for variations in the spelling of names and differences in dates of birth, places of birth, and nationalities, Donahue revealed.
As such, a State officer in Nigeria today would know Abdulmutallab was in possession of a US visa when his father reported him, Donahue said.
"I think we would have decided to revoke the visa and ask him to come back in an interview. He wouldn't have had a visa and would not have been able to travel at all," Donahue told the Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counter-Terrorism.
No one with a similar alert currently holds a US visa, Donahue stressed.
Interestingly, although consular officials misspelled Abdulmutallab's name when they ran a visa check on him, they did spell his name right when entering it into the Consular Lookout and Support System (CLASS) database. Consular officials would have screened his name against that database if he re-applied for a US visa, but State officials also send CLASS information to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for use in their lookout systems.
That landed Abdulmutallab on the lookout system used by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which staffs an Immigration Advisory Program (IAP) office in Amsterdam, where Abdulmutallab boarded his US-bound flight.
But CBP flagged the would-be bomber for questioning upon arrival in Detroit, Mich., rather than stopping him in Amsterdam, acknowledged Thomas Winkowski, CBP assistant commissioner of Field Operations.
Today, CBP generates hot lists of travelers to be questioned and dispatch them to their overseas field offices, but the agency did not have that practice in place on Christmas Day, Winkowski said.
"Our office in Amsterdam would have been notified; we would have gotten the passenger; and we would have questioned him in Amsterdam," Winkowski said, describing what would occur today under similar circumstances.
Visa Security Units
After the Christmas Day bombing attempt, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reprioritized its list of nations where it would like to establish Visa Security Units, testified Raymond Parmer, director of ICE's Office of International Affairs.
As such, Nigeria and other high-risk nations moved up the list of locations of US consular offices where ICE would like to have officers work with the State Department to investigate visas, Parmer elaborated.
Presently, ICE staffs only 14 such visa adjudicating posts in 12 nations. After Jan. 19, ICE asked the State Department about opening four additional Visa Security Units and augmenting staff at two existing units, Donahue revealed. State approved the four new units and one request for expansion while the other expansion request is under review still.
In the first years of DHS, Parmer confirmed, ICE encountered some skepticism from the State Department as to the value of the Visa Security Units.
"But now, without exception, the naysayers have been overcome and I feel our programs are complementary and serve as force multipliers," Parmer stated.
Had ICE officers been staffing a Visa Security Unit in Nigeria, they could have run a routine check of the CLASS database and revoked Abdulmutallab's US visa.
ICE received $7.3 million for expanding Visa Security Units in its fiscal 2010 budget, Parmer noted, which would fund the four new posts requested. Parmer did not disclose the locations of those four new posts.
On March 4, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) introduced companion bills, titled the Secure Visas Act of 2010 (HR 4758), to fund the addition of 16 Visa Security Units in high-risk nations.
In so doing, the congressmen revealed that ICE presently maintains Visa Security Units in Canada, Egypt, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela.
The bills would add more units in Algeria, Colombia, India, Iraq, Jerusalem, Kuala Lumpur, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Syria, Tel Aviv, Turkey, United Kingdom, and Yemen.
There was no discussion of the proposal at Thursday's hearing.
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