Why Did INS Give Visas to Terrorists?
ANNOUNCER: THE POINT with Anderson Cooper. Student visas for the hijackers.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I was stunned and not happy. Let me put it another way. I was plenty hot.</s>ANNOUNCER: How did the paperwork stay in the pipeline for six months after September 11th, and who else may be falling through the cracks?</s>ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: It is a very important matter. It is also a very embarrassing matter.</s>ANNOUNCER: Flash Point: Your bureaucracy at work! A city of political heavyweights OK's a heavyweight fight, and some people say, gives itself a black eye. And, could mixing business with pleasure cost Jack Welch a lot of money? THE POINT, now from New York, Anderson Cooper.</s>ANDERSON COOPER: Good evening. It certainly wasn't the way anyone would have chosen to mark the occasion. But last Monday at the Florida aviation school, where two of the September 11th hijackers trained, what should arrive in the mail but their student visas, signed, sealed, approved, and delivered six months to the day after Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shahi (ph) flew two airliners into the World Trade Center.</s>RUDI DEKKERS, PRESIDENT, HUFFMAN AVIATION: I was shocked. I was shocked when I opened the letters. It was like a letter from Hell. I mean these two names are in my memory as animals, as the worst people I ever met in my life. If he would stand in front of me like you're doing right now, you're leaving in a box. I mean this is how I feel about these people. These people did damage, not just to the World Trade Center, not just to the United States of America, but to the whole world.</s>COOPER: In lieu of three cheers for the efficiency of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, let's get to our Flash Point, Your Bureaucracy at Work! Joining us from Wilmington, Delaware a law professor and former INS Assistant Commissioner Jan Ting, and here in New York, a civil rights attorney, Stanley Cohen. Thanks very much for being with us. Stanley, I want to start off with you. Is the INS in its current configuration hopelessly broken beyond repair?</s>STANLEY COHEN, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: Absolutely. You know the irony here is because the INS deals with the most vulnerable among us, aliens, documented or otherwise, there's no incentive. There's no oversight. There's absolute discretion. Judges are rubber stamps. Commissioners and regional directors do what they want. Agents have no clue what's going on, and that's the result, that there's no one there concerned about the rights of the people. There's no one there looking over the shoulder of the bureaucrats to make sure they're doing what they're hired to do, and that's what the result is.</s>COOPER: Jan Ting, you were Assistant Commissioner of the INS in 1990-1993. What is going on in that agency? Is it a question of leadership? Is it the bureaucracy? Is it the system in place? What is wrong in your opinion?</s>JAN TING, FORMER INS OFFICIAL: Well, it's been known for a number of years that the INS has never had the capacity to track students or any visitors once they enter the United States. What's happened here is really a template for government inefficiency and bureaucracy, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the only injury caused by this delayed letter was to the INS itself. It made the INS itself look foolish. The bigger scandal here is why the INS doesn't have the capacity to track these students. In 1996, Congress passed a law, which directed the INS to put into place a student tracking system. That law was never implemented. Why wasn't it implemented? Because of political pressure brought on the government by universities, by colleges, by trade and vocational school associations that had a vested interest in the free flow of students to the United States. They said, "wait a minute. If you implement that, that's going to cost us money. The burden is going to fall on the schools. The real scandal here is that these individuals, these terrorists were able to complete their flight training in Florida, even though the INS had not yet approved their student visas.</s>COOPER: Well, Jan. Jan.</s>TING: There's something wrong with that system.</s>COOPER: Jan.</s>TING: It's not the INS's fault.</s>COOPER: Jan. Well, Jan, I hear you blaming universities. I hear you blaming politicians. I hear you blaming a lot of people. I don't hear you saying anything about the INS itself. Is there something wrong within the INS?</s>TING: Sure. There's something wrong in the INS. There's a bureaucratic lethargy within the INS that needs to be fixed. I don't know whether it can fixed by fooling around with the organizational charts or not. That's been the traditional way to try and address the INS's problems. I sort of think it's more of a personnel and recruitment problem myself.</s>COOPER: All right, Stanley.</s>TING: But it's not the only problem.</s>COHEN: I could not disagree more. The problem with the INS is from top to bottom, that because they're dealing with people that have absolutely no rights, there's no incentive and no concern that the job gets done right, because no one really cares. They're just aliens. You've got folks that have no idea what's going from one region to another. You've got agents that have no clue what's going on. You've got judges that work for INS, that rubber stamp what they do. You've got commissioners, deputy commissioners and regional directors that make up policy as they go. And then when something like this, which is just the tip of the iceberg hits, everyone says, "oh my God, it's the fault of the students. It's the fault of Congress."</s>COOPER: I got -- Jan. Jan.</s>TING: It's a mistake to look at the INS in isolation. The INS exists in a political climate that has constituencies out there that put pressure on it, not the least of which is the travel industry. Let's remember that these guys were already in the United States when they applied for this change of status.</s>COHEN: Look you've got --</s>TING: The students visas did not admit them to the United States. They were already admitted.</s>COHEN: Professor.</s>TING: The problem is, which is widely acknowledged now, is we had a huge intelligence failure</s>COOPER: OK.</s>COHEN: Professor, you've got thousands and thousands of people in jail. You've got all the money, all the resources, and all the cops you need. What you don't have is an understanding of a mission, and what you don't have is accountability because no one essentially cares, because they're just aliens.</s>COOPER: Jan, let me jump in here.</s>COOPER: Jan. Jan, let me -</s>TING: There's big scandals and there's little scandals --</s>COOPER: Jan.</s>TING: The big scandal is the intelligence failure and the pressure on the consular officials...-</s>COOPER: All right.</s>TING: ... to approve these applications...</s>COOPER: I understand your point, Jan.</s>TING: ... to bring those people in.</s>COOPER: Jan, I want to ask, Representative James Sensenbrenner, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has suggested basically creating two separate agencies. Do you support that idea?</s>TING: I don't think it's going to make any difference. That's not going to solve the problem. Anyone who thinks that you can solve the problems of the INS through reorganization, through changing the organizational chart is, I think, fooling themselves. The problems run deeper and they're outside the INS. They're the intense political pressures that are brought on the organization. These are new burdens. You know, Congress is trying to approve this thing called 245-I extension that's going to dump another, you know, 400,000 cases onto the INS's back. So there are all kinds of political problems out there. There's constituencies out there like the travel industry that wants more people brought to the United States. They don't -- they want to maintain visa waiver, the system by which Europeans can come to the United States without visas. Is that a good idea? Zacarius Mousssaoui, the 20th hijacker, Richard Reid, the shoebomber were able to get on an American airplane without having to get an American visa.</s>COOPER: Jan.</s>TING: We're talking about the visa problem. There's people coming to the United States without visas. That problem needs to be fixed. That's not an INS problem. I think a lot of the INS bashing that's going on right now is because people want to cover up the fact that there are political problems that they're responsible for that they don't want to take the responsibility for.</s>COOPER: All right, Jan. Stanley, you get the final thought tonight, and I just want to add in, I've spent a lot of time down at the INS in New York, and I have never had a good experience there. I got to say the people who work there are unbelievably rude to the aliens who are there.</s>COHEN: Anderson.</s>COOPER: That's just one personal opinion. That's just what I've seen.</s>COHEN: Anderson, every -</s>COOPER: Stanley, your final thought.</s>COHEN: Every single agency has problems. Every single law enforcement agency, and that's what the INS really is ultimately, has political pressure. The difference is they operate in a vacuum. No one knows what's going on. No one holds them accountable, and until the INS is held accountable, they will continue to create and perpetrate an environment that makes this disaster, not the exception but the rule. It will happen again and again and again.</s>COOPER: We got to leave it there tonight. Stanley Cohen, Jan Ting, thanks very much. You both argued your positions well. I appreciate you coming in tonight. Thanks a lot.</s>COHEN: Thank you.</s>TING: Thanks, Anderson.</s>COOPER: Well, there once was a fight nobody seemed to want until this week. That's when Washington stepped into the ring. Put up your dukes. We'll take a swing at that when THE POINT returns.