Whatâs
Wrong Today:
Another just-released
Inspector Generalâs Report damns another federal agency. This time it is the
Justice Departmentâs IG, and according to the May 2013 IG’s Report:
USMS [US Marshallâs Service] stated that it was unable to locate two former
WITSEC participants identified as known or suspected terrorists, and that
through its investigative efforts it has concluded that one individual was and
the other individual was believed to be residing outside of the United States.
The USMS
now believes both terror suspects are âresiding outside the United Statesâ. This
means that two
suspected terrorists placed in the federal witness security (WITSEC) program
have managed to elude the USMS, even
though their status as suspected terrorists meant they should have appeared on
federal no-fly lists. And not allowed to leave!
It could
be worse, but CNNâs Jake Tapper reported last Thursday that
only two former terrorists have entered witness protection in the last six
years. Guess that means we donât have to worry about any more sneaking out of
the country.
From the
IG:
known or suspected terrorists to fly on commercial airplanes in or over the
United States and evade one of the governmentâs primary means of identifying
and tracking terroristsâ movements and actions…
The
evasion of the No-Fly List by two terrorists in witness protection apparently
wasnât a problem for the Justice Department until the Inspector General brought
it to the attention of law enforcement and homeland security officials, the
report states.
Before May
2012, there wasnât even a process to
share witness protection information on terrorists with the FBI.
Without informing the FBIâs Terrorist Screening
Center
about new terrorist identities, thereâs no way the No-Fly tracking database that
feeds off the Centerâs information can know about them.
According
to the IG, the Justice Department didnât even âdefinitively knowâ how many
known or suspected terrorists were in witness protection.
Who is in
charge of this asylum?
Did you even
know that there is
a witness-protection option
for terrorist suspects?
But the IG
says some snitches have âprovided invaluable and critical information and
testimonyâ in cases ranging from the Oklahoma City bombing to the 2007 attempt to blow up jet
fuel tanks at New Yorkâs JFK Airport.
The
underlying problem is almost laughably absurd: Once the terrorists get new
identities, those identities arenât provided to the Transportation Security
Agency (TSA) for inclusion on the federal No-Fly List.
The Justice
Department told CNN that:
the country years ago, they left the program [witness protection] years ago, and
they have been accounted for. There has been no information provided that they
have ever returned to the United States.
So, maybe
we know where they went, maybe we donât, maybe they didnât come back to the US.
Typical bureaucratic gibberish.
The
Justice Department doesnât contest the IGâs findings about absconded
terrorists. Here is Armando Bonilla, a senior counsel to Deputy Attorney
General James Cole:
requirements historically employed in administering the Program should be
enhanced for terrorism-linked witnesses.
Bonilla went
on to say that the Marshals Service and the Justice Department Criminal
Divisionâs Office of Enforcement Operations have now disclosed to the FBI and
other agencies âthe true and new identities and known aliasesâ of âall
identified former known or suspected terrorists admitted into the WITSEC
Program.â
It is
difficult to count the failures demonstrated by Mr. Holderâs Justice Department
in this stunning fail:
- We
absolved them of their possible guilt
- We
gave them new identities
- We
gave them money
- We
stopped watching them
- We
let them get away
And they potentially
endangered others while traveling on the plane they left on. After all, they
might have downed the planes.
We have âinvestedâ
multi-billions of dollars in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in the FBI
and in the surveillance state that targets
the rest of us. But this failure proves again that it is really a
multi-billion security theater system.
No
security expert has claimed the TSA improves our security; rather, most of the
world’s leading experts have called it out for the lame garbage it is. The real
purpose of the DHS and the TSA is to siphon your tax dollars into a multi-$billion
fund for the defense/security industries, while politicians say âlook, we did
somethingâ!
That’s all
it’s for. The anti-terror-attack value is precisely zero.
No
connected process, no contemporaneous oversight. We have heard since 9/11 that we did not connect the dots. The
Congress and Presidents Bush and Obama have made a huge investment of people,
process and technology in the DHS, FBI, TSA and the National Security Agency (NSA)
specifically to âfixâ those problems.
Along the
way, our constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms have been eroded, we are not
safer, we are weaker. No mad bomber, no lunatic, no fanatic with explosives can
destroy America, only we can do that â by being so frightened that we forget to
defend our rights. We must refuse to be cowards.
We should
require top quality management of our national security investment, one that matches
the scale of that investment.
Mr. Holder
must go. It will be an example to security establishment bureaucrats
everywhere.
I guess I don’t see the failure as Holder’s so much as this being one more example of agencies keeping their info to themselves, and seeing no honest effort to integrate intelligence or to remove the duplication of effort that plagues all of government.
we saw this when homeland security was created – a failed creation as it turns out. but we also see this with the armed forces, and even with congressional committees (far too many).
@Terry: As the saying goes, there is a straw that breaks the camel’s back. Holder has had a problematic tenure. The DOJ on its best day is a rat’s nest of internal intrigue. From failing to prosecute the TBTF banks, to winking at the constitution, (including the AP thing), Holder has shown that he is a captive of corporatists and the neo-con security meme. Now, he loses track of people in the Witness Protection program? In corporate life, the #1 guy takes the fall for poor performance. It is only in government that plausible deniability is part of your career path.