I WAS GOING TO LET THIS GO...

but I think this false story has gotten too much notice. Last week on his radio show, Mike Malloy said that a State Dept. official admitted that an intelligence agency asked State NOT to revoke the crotch bomber's VISA. Mike got the story from The Detroit News and I looked up the testimony¹ on LexisNexis and found that the official said no such thing. (I e-mailed the transcript to Mike & Kathy but I didn't get a reply.) There was a question from a Congressman about current procedures and the official let him know there were occasional exceptions to VISA revocation. Now that this has appeared on BuzzFlash,


it's time to post the relevant part of the transcript.


REP. THOMPSON: So my understanding is even though this was an unfortunate situation, nobody's been disciplined. We understand the president took responsibility, and that's good. But the question in the minds of a lot of us is, is that good enough?

Now, my next question to each one of you is if that situation occurred today, would it be any different?

MR. KENNEDY: On the State Department, it would be different, Mr. Chairman.

We had a process that had been worked out with the interagency community, and we have discovered that we did not have sufficient check marks in. There was no requirement in our previous rubric when we reported on a Visa Viper, meaning somebody coming into an American embassy and saying, we have concerns about a third party.

We reported that immediately, but we did not have in that process a check mark that this individual had a U.S. visa. I cannot tell you why that wasn't included; I can tell you probably because we had already pass to the law enforcement and intelligence community the list of everyone who gets a visa on a daily basis.

We have now added that to our process. So any person who comes in the embassy and makes a report of terrorist concern, not only to report that individual in our Visa Viper message to the community, but we add then, this person has a United States visa.

And we've also enhanced the name-checking capability in that system, to make sure that if there's a misspelling, it will -- (inaudible).

REP. THOMPSON: Okay. So -- all right. So he has a visa. So what does that do? In the process, does it revoke the visa? Does it --

MR. KENNEDY: We -- as I mentioned in my statement, Mr. Chairman, if we unilaterally revoked a visa -- and there was a case recently up -- we have a request from a law enforcement agency to not revoke the visa.

We came across information; we said this is a dangerous person. We were ready to revoke the visa. We then went to the community and said, should we revoke this visa?

And one of the members -- and we'd be glad to give you that out of -- in private -- said, please do not revoke this visa. We have eyes on this person. We are following this person who has the visa for the purpose of trying roll up an entire network, not just stop one person.

So we will revoke the visa of any individual who is a threat to the United States, but we do take one preliminary step. We ask our law enforcement and intelligence community partners, do you have eyes on this person, and so you want us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may potentially break a larger plot?

REP. THOMPSON: Well, I think that the point that I'm trying to get at is, is this just another box you're checking, or is that some security value to add in that box, to the list?

MR. KENNEDY: The intelligence and law enforcement community tell us that they believe in certain cases that there's a higher value of them following this person so they can find his or her co-conspirators and roll up an entire plot against the United States, rather than simply knock out one soldier in that effort.
¹Federal News Service
January 27, 2010 Wednesday
HEARING OF THE HOUSE HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE;
SUBJECT: FLIGHT 253: LEARNING LESSONS FROM AN AVERTED TRAGEDY;
CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE BENNIE THOMPSON(D-MS);
WITNESSES: DEPUTY HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY JANE HOLL LUTE; UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR MANAGEMENT PATRICK KENNEDY;
MICHAEL LEITER, DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER;
LOCATION: 311 CANNON HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.
SECTION: PRESS CONFERENCE OR SPEECH
LENGTH: 25909 words
HEARING OF THE HOUSE HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE SUBJECT: FLIGHT 253: LEARNING LESSONS FROM AN AVERTED TRAGEDY CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE BENNIE THOMPSON
(D-MS) WITNESSES: DEPUTY HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY JANE HOLL LUTE; UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR MANAGEMENT PATRICK KENNEDY; MICHAEL LEITER, DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER LOCATION: 311 CANNON HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C. TIME: 10:03 A.M. EST DATE: WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2010