Posted on 12/31/2009 11:48:00 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly held a press conference Monday afternoon at the State Department focused almost exclusively on State's role in the visa process for the underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Here are the important parts:
Abdulmutallab received his State Department visa on June 16, 2008. It was good for two years. As for what was the classification under which he applied for a visa, "We don't talk about what's on his application," Kelly said. "You damn well better start talking about it because you're about to have the hammer of God come down on your head," a reporter responded.
As for why the visa was granted, there was no alarming or disqualifying information on the visa application, Kelly said. He was a student at a reputable school and had ample financial resources, meaning he wasn't seen as an illegal immigration risk, according to Kelly.
After Abdulmutallab's father raised concerns with the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria on Nov. 19, the embassy sent what's known as a Visa VIPER
cable to the State Department and the counterterrorism community on Nov. 20, but "he information in this VISAS VIPER cable was insufficient for this interagency review process to make a determination that this individual's visa should be revoked," Kelly said.
The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) would be the one to make that call, not the State Department, Kelly said. "We were obliged to report this information and we reported it." While State was not required to notify in the VIPER cable that he had a visa already and didn't in this case, "Everybody has access to this database, or everybody who wanted to check could see that this individual had a visa," Kelly went on.
(Excerpt) Read more at thecable.foreignpolicy.com ...
BRIEFing on the underwear bomber?
Maybe these idiots could just send AQ a notepad of blank visas with an engraved invitation to come visit.
If State Dept did ANY checking at all they would have seen Pantyboy had ALREADY traveled to Houston to attend an Islamic school and still had a VALID Visa.
Inspector Closeau has more smarts than our nat’l security ‘experts’
Let's not be proactive here, let's just hope some guy in some other agency happens to look at this record in the database and realize something needs to be done.
Best yet - it’s scary how natural that photoshop first appeared to me. I thought, “well, yeah,” and then I thought, “wait a minute...”
Is Hillary too busy sniffing Huma’s undies to hold her own presser?
Related threads:
CIA rejects charge it failed to share bomb suspect intelligence
And
Spy chief Blair faces scrutiny after incident--White House defends him in wake of botched attack
Ya, das unterseeboot-y!
LOL. That’s GOOD!
Ernest, my dear, this would be such a comedy of errors were it not deadly serious and were it not for the fact that Rahm and Axelrod are sitting in on national security and war council meetings. Yes, those two political henchmen have somehow managed to gain top security clearances. Rahm is intent on making this into a political issue and it’s been leaked to the American Spectator that he is so determined that he has threatened to declassify secret documents to make his point if necessary.
Some folks just need hanging....
Oh yes, he’s involved in everything.
I will find the other “prowler” for you.
It was posted today.
I am not surprised....
This guy makes the Abu Ghraib underwear ‘torture’ seem like justice incarnate.
If I were Dubya, I would make a scorching call to the Bummer to tell him that it was NOT funny and remind him that I had never blamed Clinton for the sorry conditions that I inherited. Probably go in one ear and out the other though.
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