Free Republic

In an epic-sized 567-page report, the 9/11 Commission glossed over one of the most important aspects of the attack: all 19 of the hijackers entered the United States on legal visas, even though at least 15 of them didn’t qualify to do so under the law. And the panel mostly shrugged off the U.S. policy that Saudis were granted easier access to visas than any other Arab country. The commission’s latest interim report emphasizes, perhaps unintentionally, the importance of easy visas to the 9/11 plot. The panel revealed that one of the biggest difficulties faced by al-Qaeda was getting...

Continuing the State Department’s efforts to undermine President Bush in Iraq, Consular chief Maura Harty recently filled two key Iraq-related positions with people whose track records suggest nothing but incompetence—or worse—coziness with the House of Saud.  Supposed “agent of change” Harty recently named a former top deputy of “courtesy culture” pioneer Mary Ryan (Harty’s predecessor who was pushed out last summer) to a high-level State Department task force, and then she chose as the consular chief for the new Baghdad embassy a woman who enjoys very close relations with the Saudi royal family. Continued

Good riddance to James Ziglar, the hopeless head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service who announced his resignation last week. This is a man whose main qualifications for the nation's top immigration enforcement job were his boyhood friendship with Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott and his effortless ability to suck up to Sen. Ted Kennedy. This is a man whose law enforcement background consisted of less than three years as the U.S. Senate's sergeant-at-arms and doorkeeper, protecting the Senate gavel and playing Senate hall monitor. This is a man who freely admitted before his confirmation that he had "no discernible...

AT LAST, a head has rolled since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Mary Ryan, assistant secretary for Consular Affairs, has “retired” from the State Department. She was pressured out on July 9 after suffering severe criticism for a program she pioneered called Visa Express. Unique to Saudi Arabia, it fast-tracked visa applications for Saudi citizens and alien residents hoping to come to America. Rather than visit U.S. diplomatic posts, visa applicants were expected to hand their papers to Saudi travel agents who would deliver them to American consular personnel. So long as they could afford passage and did not have...

<p>Colin Powell has done the unthinkable: He's fired a State Department careerist, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mary Ryan. Given her rank as a career ambassador and the most senior woman in the foreign service, this is a big one. As an official told us, "The news is all over the corridors."</p>