Posted on 05/22/2002 5:56:03 AM PDT by reillyoburbank
HOMELAND INSECURITY FBI still careless on flight schools Arab student pilots, some from terror states, continued to stream into U.S. after Sept. 11 Posted: May 22, 2002 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Paul Sperry © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON ? Even after Sept. 11, the FBI let young Middle-Eastern men from terrorist states train at U.S. flight schools ? some in President Bush's home state ? much to the dismay of immigration inspectors who wanted to bar them.
The FBI is reeling from the recent embarrassing disclosure that a field agent in Phoenix warned headquarters a full two months before the attacks that al-Qaida operatives could be training at U.S. flight schools.
The FBI says it didn't act on the so-called "Phoenix memo" because there was no information indicating terrorists tied to Osama bin Laden might turn hijacked airplanes into missiles. The classified memo reportedly didn't even make it to the desk of Attorney General John Ashcroft or Bush.
But what has the FBI done since Sept. 11 to stop a potential new crop of terrorists from training at flight schools with similar suicide missions in mind?
Apparently not much.
Several weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, groups of foreign nationals from Arab countries that sponsor and harbor terrorists were allowed to waltz into a major international airport on visas to attend flight schools.
The FBI, despite concerns expressed by Immigration and Naturalization Service agents, chose not to detain them even for questioning. They were allowed to enroll ? "business as usual, as if Sept. 11 never happened," one INS agent said.
In October, as WorldNetDaily first reported, 14 Syrian men entered the U.S. through Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to attend flight schools in Fort Worth.
Syria is one of the seven countries on the State Department's terrorist blacklist. Planes from the Syrian national airline are banned from entering the U.S.
The men further alarmed airport INS officers because they arrived in two groups. They were clean-shaven and in their mid-20s, as were most of the 19 hijackers, which also raised suspicions.
Another red flag: They were enrolled in a flight school run by a wealthy Middle Eastern man who lives in Arlington, Texas. In fact, half the flight schools at Fort Worth Meacham International Airport are run by Middle Eastern men, according to airport records reviewed by WorldNetDaily.
A flight-school instructor said the school that accepted the Syrians, Delta-Qualiflight Aeronautics, allowed students to speak in Arabic, even though the Federal Aviation Administration requires pilots speak English, the universal language of aviation around the world.
The FBI's Dallas office has received "thousands of leads" about suspicious Middle Eastern men at area flight schools, a spokeswoman said in an interview. And agents have investigated some of them.
One government witness in the embassy-bombing trial, Essam al-Ridi, testified that he had attended flight school in Fort Worth. The Egyptian also said he bought bin Laden a used Saber-40 aircraft for $210,000 and flew it to him from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Meacham field in Fort Worth is one of the busiest civil-aviation airports in the country. Yet "ownership of, and express responsibility for, maintenance and operation of essential runway facilities has yet to be transferred to the FAA ? years after the facilities were constructed and officially commissioned," said a former FAA employee at the agency's southwest region headquarters in Fort Worth.
The FBI was criticized in the Dallas media for not turning back, or at least detaining and investigating, the Syrian student pilots. At the time, federal authorities said the flight students entered the country legally under valid visas and did not show up on any terrorist watch lists. Of course, none of the 19 hijackers did, either.
The FBI did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment for this story.
WorldNetDaily's Oct. 16 exclusive ? which was picked up by the Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, UPI, syndicated radio shows, and cited by Fox News Channel's Rita Cosby and the Washington Times ? "set off a minor panic" in Bush's home state of Texas, according to an editorial in the San Antonio Express-News. (Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch is among the FAA's half dozen or so post-Sept. 11 prohibited commercial flight zones around the country. So is the Pantex nuclear assembly and storage facility in Amarillo, Texas.)
Back here in Washington, a correspondent asked the State Department spokesman about the 14 Syrian student pilots at an Oct. 18 press briefing (the official responded that he hadn't heard about the development and would look into it. State approves such visa applications).
And Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and John Kyl, R-Ariz., cited the incident in support of their proposal to reform the foreign student-visa program, which included a six-month moratorium on visas.
But despite the publicity, the Bush administration did not reform its visa policy even for flight schools, and Arab student pilots continued to stream into the U.S.
Two weeks after the Syrians arrived, a group of Algerian men entered the U.S. to train at another Texas flight school, this one in Tyler, as WorldNetDaily also first reported. All are either Algerian or French citizens, according to a spokesman for Tyler International School of Aviation Inc., and were scheduled to be there for 14 weeks.
The alleged 20th hijacker in U.S. custody, Zaccarias Moussaoui, is a French Algerian.
Home to the Armed Islamic Group and al-Qaida cells, Algeria has been identified by State as a growing hub of Islamic terrorist activity.
A federal authority in Dallas says there are no plans to follow up on the foreign visitors to see if they leave when their visas expire. In fact, the INS isn't even required to track such high-risk visitors.
"The U.S. very much still has an open-door policy regarding high-risk groups entering the country on student visas, despite what has happened," an INS officer said. "There hasn't even been so much as a time-out. And there is no follow-up."
The 14 Syrians' M-1 visas expired in April. Did they go back to Syria? Khaled Miloud, who enrolled them at his Delta Qualiflight school, did not return repeated calls to his office. And his wife, reached at home, would not say.
Previous stories:
Syrians flood flight schools
Algerians follow on Syrians' heels
I can't believe the Mexicans fired upon our border patrol. /sarcasm
We need to keep pressing officials to follow up on reports of suspicious activity. With all the blatent disregard that seems to be exuding from the FBI, I won't be surprised when we start hearing details of a pattern of shutting down investigations of mid-eastern men.
Mohammed Atta - Florida flight school belatedly received notification from the Immigration and Naturalization Service that Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, two Osama bin Laden disciples--both of whom had enrolled in a professional flight program--had been approved for student visas.
Rabid dog allegedly smuggled into U.S.
Dan J. Williams
El Paso Times
A rabid dog, El Paso's first since 1982, apparently was smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border Sunday by its owners, who were taking it to a veterinarian because it was sick, officials said.
County health officials said there is no apparent danger to the community because only the owners and veterinarians were in contact with the 6- to 10-week-old puppy.
"This is an imported case ... and a very good lesson for us," said Dr. Jorge Magaña, director of the El Paso City-County Health and Environmental District. "In this case, we were lucky."
The infected puppy's owners said it had been bitten by a skunk at a small ranch near the village of Villa Ahumada, about 150 miles south of Juárez, said Lorenzo Hinojos, director of the Animal Regulation and Disease Control Center. When the owners noticed it was sick, they brought it to a veterinarian in El Paso, who immediately diagnosed a serious problem and notified county authorities.
The puppy was killed and its brain tissue sent to a laboratory, which confirmed Tuesday that it had rabies.
Officials did not identify the animal's owners, U.S. citizens from McAllen who own property in Chihuahua State. Mexican health authorities were informed, and the puppy's owners were advised to undergo rabies treatments, Hinojos said.
Hinojos said there have been no other confirmed cases of rabies in El Paso, Juárez or Chihuahua this year.
Magaña said he was worried that a diseased animal was able to be taken from Mexico to the United States, especially with the current precautions against bioterrorism.
"The fact that there was an animal moved from one country to another without proper certification of the animal -- that was our concern," he said. "In these days we live in, ... a possible bioterrorist act can come from anywhere. But when we think of bioterrorism, most people think of bombs and things; most never stop to think it could be through water, food or animals that could be carriers of diseases that have no cure and can be passed on to humans.
"In this case, we were lucky because the puppy became sick and the owner took him to a vet. The second act of luck was the vet saw right away that something serious was wrong with this puppy," Magaña said.
Roger Maier, spokesman with U.S. Customs Service, said the puppy "was probably sneaked across" one of El Paso's ports of entry. He said agents are accustomed to dealing with animals crossing the border and would have stopped any sick animal from entering the United States.
"If they encountered an animal that was obviously ill or posed a threat, they obviously would have taken action," Maier said. "What this incident does is certainly raise the awareness of the potential for these types of things."
He said that for dogs to be allowed across the border, they must be free of evidence of disease communicable to humans. Dogs more than 3 months old must have proof of vaccination.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.