State Dept. Reviews Visa Program
By SUZANNE GAMBOA
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The State Department is reviewing a program that allows people from 29 countries to enter the United States without visas.
Mary Ryan, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, told Congress Friday the State Department is reviewing the "visa waiver program," which allows people with passports to enter and stay for 90 days. About 23 million people came to the United States through the program last year.
Agency personnel are visiting six countries "to discuss with them their passport controls and border control" and perhaps drop them from the program, Ryan told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism. She would not name the countries.
According to the State Department Web site, the participating countries are: Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Uruguay.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service said Thursday that 13 of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks entered the country on legal visas. No records have been found on the other six.
Ryan said State Department officials had no information on the 13 hijackers that would have caused them to reject them for visas. She said the agency needs better access to intelligence information to prevent terrorists from getting visas.
Ryan complained that the CIA and FBI have refused to share intelligence information with her agency, because it's not involved in law enforcement. She urged Congress to require the FBI, CIA and other law enforcement agencies to share pertinent intelligence information with the State Department.
Hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi were placed on a watch list this summer after U.S. intelligence received information they might have been meeting with suspected terrorists. By the time they were added to the watch list, they'd already entered the United States, officials said.
"I think it was a colossal intelligence failure in which we had information or there was information that was not shared with us, who are the outer ring of border security," Ryan said.
Subcommittee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she's upset by the lack of coordination among federal agencies.
"I am really concerned about continuing to appropriate money for systems that don't talk to each other. This is a colossal failure of our visa system. It doesn't keep out people who would come in and destroy us," Feinstein said.
Glenn Fine, Department of Justice inspector general, cited as an example the separate fingerprint database systems of the INS and FBI. He said the two systems began development in 1989 and were supposed to overlap, but wound up being incompatible because each agency wanted different things.
Ryan suggested creation of a central database that would serve as a clearinghouse for information on suspect foreigners and be accessible by all agencies deemed to need the information.
Feinstein agreed.
"Absent this, it seems to me there's a piece in this agency, a piece in that agency, there's another piece in a third agency," Feinstein said, "and it never develops into a complete picture that can ring a bell and say, 'Whoops! there's a problem here.'"
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