Posted on 11/14/2002 5:54:58 AM PST by madfly
On April 14, 2001, U.S. border officials detained John Allen Muhammad and two Jamaican women at Miami International Airport.
The agents verified Muhammad's U.S. citizenship and permitted legal entry. The Jamaicans' documents were fraudulent, and they were immediately deported.
That's the way it's supposed to happen.
On Dec. 19, 2001, Bellingham police responded to a domestic dispute involving the same John Allen Muhammad and two other Jamaicans, Uma Sceon James and her son, John Lee Malvo.
James told police that Muhammad was trying to manipulate her son. No crime was apparent, but when neither James nor Malvo could produce legal identification, Border Patrol agents Raymond R. Ruiz and Keith Olson arrested James and Malvo, classified them as ``illegal stowaway'' and recommended
That's the way it's supposed to happen, too.
But James and Malvo were never deported.
Fortunately, in processing Malvo, the agents also took the fingerprints that became the critical break in the sniper case -- nine months and a dozen murders later. Otherwise, even more people might have died.
What went wrong?
Now that two suspects are safely behind bars, it's fair to consider what went right, what went wrong and what should change.
First up is the question of deportation.
According to a column by Bill O'Reilly published last week in the Journal, James and Malvo were not deported because shortly after their arrest INS Chief BLAKE BROWN ordered a change in their status. O'Reilly, columnist Michelle Malkin and others report that Blake ordered the Border Patrol to change their designation from ``illegal stowaway'' to ``illegal entry without inspection,'' which affords more legal rights. As part of that process, a hearing was set for next Wednesday.
That hearing was never going to happen. Within three weeks of their arrest, the INS released James and Malvo despite the obvious likelihood that they would flee rather than face deportation. Malvo is now back in custody, but James, of course, is nowhere to be found.
This appears to be one more blunder by the INS, the same agency that made the spectacular mistake of upgrading visas for terrorists Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehi and sending them to their flight schools six months after the two men died in the suicide attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
In light of the Malvo case, a new congressional investigation of the INS is in order. And we'll probably get one.
What else?
* Paperwork: A restraining order for domestic violence should have prevented Muhammad from legally buying a weapon after March 2000, but the News Tribune of Tacoma reported that, due to a computer glitch, at least 14,000 orders filed in Pierce County did not register in the federal database used for firearm background checks between December 2000 and July 2002.
* Gun sales: The primary murder weapon, a .223-caliber Bushmaster XM15 assault rifle, is reportedly one of hundreds of firearms that Bull's Eye Shooter Supply of Tacoma cannot document, as required by federal law. The gun may have been stolen or it may have been sold illegally. We don't know.
* Cooperation: Local police failed to enter information about unsolved murders now linked to Muhammad and Malvo into an FBI computer program developed to help catch serial killers, according to the Seattle Times.
* Competence: In a note to police, the snipers claimed to have committed additional murders to get the attention of authorities after junior FBI agents and others brushed off the killers or failed to recognize them in multiple phone calls.
What went right?
Several private citizens did their part.
* The Rev. Al Archer, director of a Bellingham homeless shelter, reported Muhammad to the FBI as a possible terrorist in October 2001, after Muhammad began controlling and indoctrinating Malvo.
* Harjee Singh, a Bellingham resident who met Muhammad and Malvo through workouts at the YMCA, reported to police that Muhammad was trying to equip a gun with a silencer and threatening to kill police officers.
* Robert E. Holmes of Tacoma turned in his former Army buddy with evidence that helped close the case.
What next?
Are we safer than we were before Sept. 11?
Hard to say. But the good news is that it won't take much effort -- or even much money -- to improve.
Tom Wolfe is editor of the Eastside Journal. His column runs every Tuesday. Readers can reach him by phone 425-453-4230, e-mail tom.wolfe@eastsidejournal.com or fax 425-635-0603.
I work with truck drivers & they were all very proud that night.
.."it's not enough we deliver everything, now we have to solve crimes too!"
Yes! By all means, let's do that. The Pentagon shouldn't have to wonder where you went today--or what route you took to work this morning. All that info belongs in the dosier they are about to build on you. You have no right to travel freely unless the government knows where you are at all times.
If you don't know what I am talking about, read this:
Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/785815/posts
John Gibson has talked about it for 2 days. Hanity & Colmbs even discussed it with their guest. Of course, they won't be able to do all 280M of us at first, but they'll get there. You can count on it.
There's a reason the government won't control the borders or defeat the terrorist states--the politicians and others in power need American deaths to establish their police state in preparation for the NWO.
Hoping to prevent a database from being built of every American is futile. First of all, hundreds of government, commercial, and private databases already do that. Computer technology is so cheap now that a single $120 disk drive has enough capacity to store every name, address, birth date, personality type, employment, and basic history of every American. If you can afford that, you can guess what the NSA can afford. It wouldn’t surprise me if they store every long distance phone call made and have it scanned by computer for keywords. I’m sure they have found the Internet to be a treasure trove. And since they employ the majority of mathematicians they’ve probably figured out by now how to factor very large numbers. Anything based on public key cryptography is probably an easy read for them.
The courts have ruled that when you are out in public there is no expectation of privacy. If you’re driving a car on a public highway then anyone that wants to can observe you and record that. They don’t even need your license plate, a computer-determined video signature could identify you. If a private party can do that, so can the government. Today’s bumbling law enforcement may eventually be able to catch crooks again.
The only safeguard we have against socialist tyranny is gun ownership. A small handgun cannot defeat an army, but if enough of them are in circulation Hillary will eventually lose power through “attrition” of her officers.
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.