111,000 Immigration Files Lost

American Free Press | December 11, 2006
James P. Tucker Jr.

An investigation by a government oversight agency recently revealed that in 2005 U.S. immigration authorities either “lost” or could not account for an estimated 111,000 files on immigrants to the United States, resulting in tens of thousands gaining citizenship without any indication as to whether authorities had checked to see if any of them had a criminal history.

The shocking loss was discovered in a study by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) sought by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). As many as 30,000 immigrants obtained citizenship with limited scrutiny as a result.

“In 2002, we had a person who was a threat to the United States that got citizenship and the file wasn't even reviewed,” Grassley said on the Lou Dobbs TV show Dec. 4.

“How can this happen? Basic incompetence of paperwork or the fact that even paperwork exists as opposed to having this stuff on computer where it can be saved.”

There only has to be “one mistake” and the United States could again become a victim of terrorism, Grassley said, “A terrorist has to be right once,” he said. “We have to be right every time.”

Grassley was referring to an individual who received his U.S. citizenship and was a known supporter of the Lebanese militia group, Hezbollah, which the United States considers a terrorist organization. Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and Israel also consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The rest of the world considers it a legitimate resistance organization that defends southern Lebanon from Israeli incursions.

“If they can't handle legal immigration, how are they going to give amnesty to 12 million people that are here illegally?” Dobbs asked.

“A test on that will come next year when we have a debate on an amendment that there can't be any guest worker programs or even any consideration of legalizing illegality if we don't control the borders in the first place,” Grassley responded. “In other words, control the borders in the first place and then look at all these other issues as a next step.”

In a prepared statement issued earlier, Grassley said “It takes one missing file of somebody with links to a terrorist organization to become an American citizen. A terrorist can be unsuccessful thousands of times, but we have to be perfect all the time. We can't afford to be handing out citizenship with blinders on.”

The 30,000 missing files represent about 4% of the 715,000 total applications handled by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2005. The CIS is an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. The files, known as “A files,” contain information such as arrest warrants and the results of immigration proceedings. The losses can be attributed to “poor training” and “a lack of emphasis by managers,” the report said.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.), who also called for the investigation, observed that some of the 9-11 hijackers entered the country legally, disappearing until the terrorist attacks.

She called it “unthinkable” that the U.S. immigration system could still grant citizenship to a potential terrorist “simply because they can't find a person's file.”

CIS officials told auditors that case adjudicators are not required to document whether they use A files. This means some of the 30,000 could have been reviewed but they don't know. Auditors recommended CIS tell employees to note whether an A file was used to adjudicate an application—something any clerk-typist would recommend.

Skilling won't have to report to prison: WSJ

Mon Dec 11, 10:17 PM ET

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court will allow ex-Enron Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling to stay out of prison while it considers granting him bail, according to a report published on the Wall Street Journal's Web site on Monday.
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Skilling was scheduled to report to a federal prison in Minnesota on Tuesday to begin a 24-year sentence for his role in hiding Enron's financial condition from investors as the company's fortunes eroded prior to its 2001 collapse.

Skilling attorney Daniel Petrocelli told the paper he found out Monday evening the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would allow Skilling to remain under house arrest while it considers granting him bail during his appeals of fraud and conspiracy convictions.

A Houston jury convicted Skilling in May.

Since being sentenced in October, Skilling has been under house arrest in Houston and required to wear an electronic monitoring device on his ankle.

Have a look at this photo.

Believe it or not, there was a time when people would have doubted a picture like this could have been taken in America. No one would believe it -- probably some third-world despot or Eastern European dictatorship.

In fact, it was taken in Durham, North Carolina by a college photojournalist, and recently won in the "Spot News" category of the College Photographer of the Year competition.

Here's the description:

    A member of the Durham Police Department Selective Enforcement Team escorts a child to use the bathroom after serving a search warrant at a suspected drug house. Working closely with the police department's Gang Units, SET is responsible for making high-risk entries into dwellings to serve search warrants. Gang Unit Two made two controlled buys, or drug purchases, from the home with the help of an informant, giving them probable cause for a search warrant.

The Iranian central bank is to convert the state's foreign dollar assets into euros and use the euro for foreign transactions.

McVeigh Video Destroys OKC Bombing Official Story
Shows McVeigh was in military receiving instruction in "explosives and demolition" over a year after official story says he was discharged, whistleblower harassed for years while unknowingly in possession of bombshell tape

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Prison Planet
Monday, December 18, 2006

A video that shows Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh at a U.S. military base that specializes in explosives and demolition training over a year after he supposedly left the army puts the official story of the April 19 1995 federal building bombing under serious doubt and mandates a re-opening of an investigation into the terror attack that killed 168 people.

The video was released by Bill Bean, a film producer who has suffered intense surveillance and harassment since taking the footage, and is the subject of a February 2007 Hustler Magazine feature story.

On August 3rd 1993, Bean was given a tour of the Camp Grafton military facility in North Dakota as part of a research effort to scout possible shooting locations for a film he was working on. Bean met the Camp Superintendent Col. Dahl and was permitted to film every location he visited.

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Bean takes up the story, "I videotaped all locations as possible future shot sites even if there was no actual scene written for that location. Mess Hall, Rec Room, Armory, etc. About an hour into the tour we passed by a long row of tanks and I was informed these had been used in the Gulf War. In fact I believe I was told there were captured tanks there also. While videotaping and viewing this location, two soldiers began to offload what I was told was an armored personnel carrier from a flatbed. One soldier driving the other directing from the ground. I watched them for a moment and then did a slow 360 with my camera and came back to them."

Given permission to board the tank, Bean walked over and pointed the camera inside, at which point one of the soldiers turned around and, appearing somewhat shocked to see the camera, uttered a brief response to Bean's question and attempted to push past him.

That individual has now been positively identified to be Timothy McVeigh, who according to the official timeline as endorsed by the FBI, was honorably discharged from the military for the last time in May 1992. And yet he is seen here on tape at a U.S. military base over a year after that date in August of 1993.

"I did not realize how significant what I had was, for many years," states Bean, "It was not until Mcveigh’s trial that I realized it was Mcveigh in the tank. Even then the larger point escaped me. That point is, McVeigh was not supposed to be in the military at that time. His military record shows him enlisting in 1988, being honorably discharged from the Army, on Dec. 31, 1991. His records then show he was in the Army reserve in Buffalo New York, from January 1992 until May 1992, he was then honorably discharged from the Army reserve. After May of 1992 he was never again in uniform on any base anywhere, never again part of the military. He was totally out of military service. The FBI states the only time they lose track of McVeigh, in his entire life, is the late summer of 93. They think he was somewhere between Kingman Arizona and Decker Michigan. Probably at gun shows, meeting antigovernment rightwing militia types. But he wasn’t, he was at Camp Grafton, in uniform, learning explosives and demolition!"

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To confirm that the individual in the tape was indeed McVeigh, Bean presented the video to Prof. Blomgren of the University of Utah, who then undertook a voice forensics analysis. The results produced an 86% match for the voice characteristics heard in the video compared to those taken from a 60 Minutes interview with McVeigh.

Though in a response to Hustler the North Dakota National Guard denied McVeigh was ever present at Camp Grafton, they did confirm that demolitions training is part of the regimen at the facility.

Bean provided us with a list of suspicious telephone calls, examples of harassment and surveillance that he had been targeted for in the seven year period after filming McVeigh, starting in 1994. Much of the surveillance and spying occurred even before Bean became aware that he had filmed Timothy McVeigh.

"On Wed June 19th 2002, my mother who lived with me was talking to a relative in Washington state. The relative said the line sounded “strange” my mother said “Yea, the phone is tapped!” At that point the phone went dead," claims Bean.

"Or, look at January 14th Tues 2003. We lived on the third floor of an apt. building. A green station wagon, Illinois plates HYB115, parked down two doors and sat there with the engine on. For over 25 minutes a woman sat in the driver’s seat looking up in our window. All the while she kept a running dialogue with someone who wasn’t there. She held a device, thin, dark plastic or metal up to her mouth and then would read something on it. She did this for more than 25 minutes. When my mother who was suffering from cancer, walked into the room, I whispered in her ear what was happening. Being a sick old woman she said out loud, “who is looking in our window from a car?” At that point the woman shoved the car in gear and sped away tires screeching!”

The fact that McVeigh was still involved with the U.S. army long after his supposed honorable discharge only amplifies long-standing questions that severely undermine the official explanation behind the Oklahoma City bombing.

- In early April 1995 a Ryder truck identical to the one used in the bombing was filmed by a pilot during an overflight of of an area near Camp Gruber-Braggs, Oklahoma. A June 17th, 1997 Washington Post article authenticates the photos as being exactly what they appear to be, photos of a Ryder truck in a clandestine base at Camp Gruber-Braggs. Why were the military in possession of a Ryder truck housed in a remote clandestine army base days before the Alfred P. Murrah bombing?

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- In a 1993 letter to his sister, McVeigh claimed that he was approached by military intelligence and had joined an "elite squad of government paid assassins." McVeigh often contradicted himself and changed his story on a whim to fit in with the latest government version of events. Is the Camp Grafton footage evidence of McVeigh's enrollment in such a clandestine program?

- The August 1993 footage neatly fills in an unexplained gap in McVeigh' timeline that even the FBI cannot explain. Was this gap deliberately left ignored to avoid a probe into McVeigh's activities at Camp Grafton?

- The FBI claimed McVeigh scouted the Alfred P. Murrah building weeks before the bombing and yet on the morning of the attack he stopped at a local gas station to ask directions.

- Multiple reports of Arabs at the scene assisting McVeigh were ignored and surveillance tapes were withheld under national security. The likely reason for this was the fact that Bush senior and Clinton were responsible for bringing in nearly 1,000 Iraqi soldiers captured by U.S. forces during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, some of whom were involved in the bombing.

- Original reports of two explosions and several failed devices being defused by bomb squads were buried by the establishment as the official explanation that McVeigh acted alone was pushed.

- Many eyewitnesses reported that bomb squads in full reaction gear were seen around the building immediately before the blast.