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Posted on 08/22/2002 6:52:06 PM PDT by USA21
Edited on 04/13/2004 3:29:43 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
WASHINGTON - Despite a post-Sept. 11 emphasis on sharing information, the government each year deliberately shreds millions of unsuccessful immigration applications containing personal details and photographs that some officials say could help in the war against terrorism.
Many applicants are from countries the U.S. government considers sponsors or harborers of terrorists, officials said.
(Excerpt) Read more at bayarea.com ...
Leave it to AP to spin this into an anti-Bush "scandal."
put them on a pc dis
Philip Shenon, New York Times Thursday, August 22, 2002
Washington -- A worldwide alert for a Saudi man was issued by the FBI this week after agents examined a CD-ROM received three months ago that contained an image of his passport and photographs of some of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers, government officials said Wednesday.
The officials said they could not explain why the CD-ROM, which was turned over to the United States by a foreign government in May, was not analyzed by the FBI until last week, except to say that the bureau has been overwhelmed with evidence in its investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks.
On Tuesday night, the FBI announced it had issued an alert to law enforcement agencies around the world to be on the lookout for the Saudi, Saud A.S. al-Rasheed, 21, describing him as potentially armed and dangerous. A copy of his passport photo, showing a smiling young man in a red-and-white Arab headdress, was placed on the bureau's Web site, www.fbi.gov.
A senior FBI official, Bruce Gebhardt, said there is no proof that Rasheed was involved with the hijackers or with the al Qaeda terrorist network.
"He's with some other individuals that were of interest to us: the hijackers. And we're not saying that he's connected to them; we're not saying anything like that. But we obviously have to be prudent and make sure that we notify everyone," he said.
The passport information on the CD-ROM showed that Rasheed was born on Jan. 30, 1981, in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, and that the passport was issued in Riyadh on May 29, 2000. The Saudi Embassy in Washington did not return calls for information about Rasheed. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Saudi citizens.
Officials said the country that had originally obtained the CD-ROM had asked not to be identified because of concern that cooperation with the United States might arouse the anger of local opposition groups.
American officials said they do not know who prepared the CD-ROM or exactly where it was seized. They said the photos of the Sept. 11 hijackers on the disc are similar to the passport photo of Rasheed, suggesting that someone had prepared a disc as a way of memorializing images of members of the terrorist cell that carried out the suicide hijackings.
The FBI has been frustrated in its inability to find others who were involved in the Sept. 11 conspiracy. So far, only one person, Zacarias Moussaoui, a 34-year-old French citizen, has been charged in the conspiracy. Moussaoui, who was in a jail cell in Minnesota on immigration charges on the day of the attacks, has pleaded not guilty.
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