I’m glad the FBI was capable of crack the iPhones of the Pensacola naval air base shooter, which confirmed that radicalized Royal Saudi Air Pressure second lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani had communicated with al-Qaida to hold out a “particular operation.” Three younger American patriots died in Alshamrani’s December 2019 assault. The extra data now we have to forestall the useless slaughter of U.S. navy members on U.S. soil the higher.
However Lawyer Normal William Barr’s announcement of the Pensacola jihadist’s unlocked telephones yesterday raises extra questions than it solutions. Why haven’t the American folks been knowledgeable but of primary particulars concerning how Alshamrani obtained into our nation? Why have we resumed overseas flight coaching whereas lockdowns have put practically 37 million residents out of labor — and whereas nationwide safety considerations in regards to the A-2 visa for overseas navy trainees stay unresolved? Why weren’t all momentary overseas visa packages for each civilian and navy pilots from around the globe instantly frozen as a part of President Donald Trump’s so-called immigration ban?
In January, Senate Homeland Safety and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and fellow committee members Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked Homeland Safety Secretary Chad Wolf for a “timeline of Alshamrani’s nonimmigrant visa vetting course of, the precise vetting actions carried out, whether or not he was interviewed by U.S. officers and whether or not the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) was made conscious of any paperwork offered by the Saudi authorities indicating terrorist sympathies.”
The letter additionally sought data on “what number of A visa holders had been refused entry by Customs and Border Safety and what number of of these refusals had been Saudi nationals, in addition to particulars on DHS monitoring of visiting overseas navy personnel’s social media and any such monitoring carried out in Alshamrani’s case.”
Was biometric information collected?
Have been any purple flags shared by Saudi Arabia, and did our consular officers comply with up on any warnings?
The three GOP senators additionally requested Wolf about what “diplomatic courtesies or different variations from common nonimmigrant visa arrivals are afforded on arrival to people on an A visa?”
It’s historical historical past, however these of us who care a couple of functioning immigration and entrance system keep in mind how lazy and pandering State Division bureaucrats didn’t even trouble to interview the 9/11 Saudi hijackers in particular person once they utilized for fast-track visas. The Bush administration arrange the so-called “Visa Express” program to permit Saudis to skip the traces and wait occasions.
ORDER IT NOW
We additionally do not forget that when the FBI was warned earlier than 9/11 by Phoenix-based agent Kenneth Williams that Arab Muslim pilots must be monitored as a result of his investigation discovered “a coordinated effort by Usama Bin Laden to ship college students to the US to attend civil aviation universities and school,” the FBI ignored Williams. He had referred to as on his superiors to conduct nationwide sweeps of aviation colleges and surveillance of suspicious visa candidates. Had the feds accomplished so, in fact, Muslim grievance-groups would have been up in arms and hindsight hypocrite columnists like former New York Instances’ finger-wagger Maureen Dowd would have screamed “Islamophobe” sooner than a rushing bullet.
As a substitute, the Bush administration did nothing to cease the influx of terrorists into our homeland via an alphabet soup of visa packages, together with F-1 pupil visas, B-1 vacationers visas, J-1 cultural trade visas, range visas and the A-2s. In 2018-2019, the variety of foreign students from Saudi Arabia within the U.S. totaled greater than 37,000, 30.2% of whom had been admitted to check in STEM/Engineering fields. Furthermore, our U.S. navy has been training Saudi airmen since 2012 at Sheppard Air Pressure Base, Texas; Eglin AFB, Florida; Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina; and Pensacola Naval Air Station, Florida.
Authorities officers insist that the vetting is rigorous. However a 2017 report by the Particular Inspector Normal for Afghanistan Reconstruction uncovered how untold numbers of A-2 overseas pilot trainees from the Center East have merely disappeared for greater than a dozen years. In 2014, I reported on the alarming phenomenon of Muslim deserters in 2014 who had been granted visas for serving as interpreters in Afghanistan and Iraq. “We usually don’t know who we are training. We’ve got little dependable data,” one U.S. official instructed RAND Corp. researchers. Their examine “discovered important issues with present U.S. vetting practices in relation to safety help.”
Why would we proceed to place our troopers, pilots, sailors and residents at such pointless threat? Comply with the cash. The Pensacola joint coaching program was a part of the $30 billion sale of F-15s to the Saudis — engineered by Hillary Clinton and her pay-for-play State Division.
Is it an excessive amount of to ask President Trump, who campaigned on “America first,” “construct the wall” and “drain the swamp,” to place some flesh on these bones and shut down the Saudi terror pilot pipeline?
Michelle Malkin’s e mail handle is [email protected] To search out out extra about Michelle Malkin and browse options by different Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, go to the Creators Syndicate web site at www.creators.com.
