Free Republic

October 29, 2002 Dear U.S. Senators, When our loved ones died on September 11, we took solace in President Bush's determined leadership to aggressively wage the War on Terror. We want nothing less to honor the memory of our loved ones than the triumph of freedom over tyranny. It is in this spirit that we write to express our deep concern about the nomination of Maura Harty to become the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs. Reading the press accounts about Harty, there is little indication that she has the leadership of strength of character necessary to implement tough...

October 30, 2002, 10:35 a.m. Controversial State Department nominee Maura Harty is likely to face more trouble in the Senate than she was already headed for a week ago. Even though she has yet to be confirmed by the Senate to take over State's visa office, Harty, for the past week or so, has been assuming control of that position, according to a senior official at the State Department. Someone prematurely making decisions in a Senate-confirmed post — before the Senate has actually confirmed the nominee — is verboten, and possibly against the law. Either way, the mere appearance of...

Visas that Should Have Been Denied A look at 9/11 terrorists’ visa applications. The cover story in National Review's October 28th issue (out Friday) details how at least 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers should have been denied visas — an assessment based on expert analyses of 15 of the terrorists' visa-application forms, obtained exclusively by NR. In the year after 9/11, the hand-wringing mostly centered on the FBI and CIA's failure to "connect the dots." But that would not have been a fatal blow if the "dots" had not been here in the first place. If the U.S....

October 3, 2002, 12:00 p.m. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday is holding a perfunctory hearing in advance of a likely rubber stamp for the nominated replacement of the pioneer of Visa Express, former Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mary Ryan, with her protégé, Maura Harty. Unless a senator on the committee is willing to stand up to the State Department, Harty could soon be confirmed as the head of Consular Affairs (CA), the agency within State that oversees consulates and sets policies for visas regarding who gets in this country — and who does not. Harty has...

The White House has chosen to ignore pleas from conservatives and family groups and decided to pick a fight with the parents of kidnapped kids. The Bush administration has announced its intention to replace the now-fired head of Consular Affairs, Mary Ryan — the pioneer of the "Visa Express" program — with a woman who raises the ire of American parents struggling to recover children abducted in foreign lands.As fellow NRO's Deroy Murdock noted two weeks ago, Ambassador Maura Harty, the White House's pick to succeed Mary Ryan, had two stints running the Office of Children's Issues (OCI), the...

July 16, 2002, 2:45 p.m. State Accounting Congress gets involved in the Mowbray retention saga. By Sen. Charles Grassley & Rep. Dave Weldon. July 16, 2002 The Honorable Colin Powell Secretary Department of State 2201 C Street, NW Washington, DC 20520 Dear Secretary Powell: We are writing to express our concern about the detention and questioning of reporter Joel Mowbray at the State Department on Friday, July 12th. As a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and chairman of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Civil Service, we have concerns that government agencies not take inappropriate actions that cast...

July 12, 2002, 6:00 p.m. Free Joel Mowbray! A wild afternoon at the State Department. By NRO Staff Would that the State Department were as tough on the Saudis. NRO contributor Joel Mowbray was detained this afternoon at the State Department after an acrimonious exchange with top Foggy Bottom press flack Richard Boucher. Mowbray had challenged Boucher on his account of events at State this week, which had to fire its longest-serving career diplomat in response to the congressional uproar created by Mowbray's reporting on the "Visa Express" program (the program gives the Saudis easy access to U.S. visas —...

The room in the Rayburn House Office Building where congressional staffers on the Judiciary Committee were to have received a briefing on Visa Express from State Department officials yesterday afternoon sat empty. No, the event did not suffer from lack of demand. In fact, quite the contrary: A large number of staffers were planning to cut away from their busy schedules to learn more about the program that let in three of the Sept. 11th hijackers in the three months it was in operation before 9/11 in just one country: Saudi Arabia. At 2:25pm Friday, an e-mail went out to...

Since news of my NR story called "Catching the Visa Express" hit the airwaves last Thursday, Consular Affairs — which oversees visa issuance and implemented the open-door policy for Saudi terrorists — has come under fire from both the public and Capitol Hill for the Visa Express program, which is how three of the Sept. 11 hijackers got in this country. Despite mounting criticism, Consular Affairs (CA) took fully one week to respond to the charges leveled at it about Visa Express. On The Big Story with John Gibson on Fox News yesterday, the new PR flack for CA, Ed...