(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Four of the 9/11 plane hijackers had been in the U.S. on expired visas, and one person linked to the Oklahoma City bombing was also in the country illegally.
With a record-high 853,955 visa overstays in 2022, is another such attack looming?
Judicial Watch thinks so. The government watchdog released a scathing response to a recent DHS report that downplays the severity of America’s broken visa system.
“A persistent crisis involving visa overstays has gripped the nation in years following the 2001 attacks … DHS tries to downplay the severity of the situation by shining a light on the positive, that the overstay rate is a mere 3.67% compared to 96.33% of over 23 million nonimmigrants that departed the country on time in accordance with the terms of their admission,” Judicial Watch said last week.
“The reality is that the latest available overstay figure is an alarming record-breaker for the U.S. and it indicates that national security is not being taken seriously by the government.”
While visa overstays are linked to the two deadliest terrorist attacks in American history—OKC and 9/11—the issue isn’t as simple as terrorists slipping through a porous immigration system.
To the contrary, the U.S. government was aware of the visa overstayers in both cases. Moreover, evidence suggests that the U.S. government allowed the visa overstayers to operate with impunity in the leadup to the attacks.
In the Oklahoma City bombing, the overstayer in question was Andreas Carl Strassmeir, a Hebrew-speaking, ex-military German who lived in a Nazi-infested religious compound during the 1990 and had dealings with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh—as Headline USA detailed in this story.
Given his connections to various intelligence assets, researchers have suggested that Strassmeir was a government informant. Strassmeir has denied being an informant and being involved in the attack.
In any event, the ATF had been investigating both Elohim City and Strassmeir in late 1994 and early 1995. During that investigation, the ATF discovered from a confidential informant that Strassmeir was in the country illegally.
Some in the ATF wanted to raid Elohim City in early 1995, but the FBI squashed that plan—bureau spokesman Bob Ricks claimed that the U.S. government didn’t want another Waco disaster on its hands.
Months later, the OKC bombing took place, and Strassmeir left the country before the FBI interviewed him about the matter.
In 2001, the U.S. government would again be monitoring at least one visa overstayer, Nawaf al-Hazmi, in the runup to a major terrorist attack. Instead of apprehending al-Hazmi, the CIA allegedly tried to make him an informant, according to a sworn statement from Office of Military Commissions investigator Don Canestraro.
In a sworn statement published earlier this year, Canestraro said at least two FBI agents told him that the CIA had attempted to recruit two of the hijackers—al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, the latter who had a valid visa.
“According to [one FBI agent], prior to the 9/11 attacks, the CIA was under pressure to recruit informants within al-Qaeda,” said Canestraro. “Responding to this pressure, [an unidentified CIA official] and his/her colleagues at the CIA were attempting to recruit al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar via a liaison relationship with the Saudi GID.”
Along with the FBI agents, Canestraro spoke with former Deputy National Security Advisor Richard Clarke, who has spoken about the CIA-recruitment theory publicly.
Clarke reportedly told Canestraro that the reason the CIA was recruiting the hijackers was for a “false flag operation.”
“According to Mr. Clarke, this ‘false flag’ operation would have involved al-Bayoumi befriending the two hijackers by attempting to convince them that he was sympathetic to their cause,” Canestraro said in the court filing.
More recently, DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari revealed in a June 28 report that U.S. Border Patrol agents blundered last year, when they released a Colombian national on the FBI’s terrorism watch list. While that wasn’t a visa overstay issue and the Colombian was arrested about a month after his improper release, it does further illustrate the U.S. government’s unwillingness or inability to keep terrorist foreigners out of the country.
Judicial Watch didn’t go so far as to suggest that the U.S. government is purposely allowing visa overstayers to plot the next terrorist attack, but the organization did call for congressional inquiries into the matter.
“The latest figures included in the Fiscal Year 2022 Entry/Exit Overstay Report illustrate that the problem is much worse than previously reported,” Judicial Watch said. “This is very disturbing and deserves congressional scrutiny.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
