Iran, a Terror State But Latin America Also?

Posted on March 17, 2015March 17, 2015 by Denise Simon

Iran has a long history of killing Americans and has several proxy armies including Hezbollah, Qods and the Madhi Army. No one seems to ask deeper questions but personally I have been quite concerned over the Iranian influence in Central and South America, our own hemisphere. For years I have been watching this closely. Why?

Bombshell report alleges Argentina, Iran, and Venezuela were once all bound together by sex, drugs, and nuclear secrets

Three former Venezuelan government officials who defected from Hugo Chavez’s regime spoke to the Brazilian magazine Veja about an alleged alliance between Argentina, Venezuela, and Iran, which included a deal in which Argentina would get Interpol to remove from its database the names of Iranians suspected of bombing a Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994.

Alberto Nisman, an Argentine prosecutor, had been investigating the deadly bombing before he was found dead in his apartment in January with a gunshot wound to the head. He was about to testify to Argentina’s legislature that the administration of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner had helped cover up Iran’s hand in the bombing.

Nisman alleged that the Fernandez regime engaged in the cover-up to secure an oil-for-grain deal with Iran (Argentina is energy poor), but Veja’s sources take it a step further. They say the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez helped broker a deal between Argentina and Iran that secured cash for Argentina (including funds for Fernandez’s 2007 presidential run) and nuclear intelligence for Iran on top of derailing the AMIA probe.

“Not only is [the Veja report] credible, but it underscores the allegations prosecutor Nisman put forth about Iran’s longstanding desire to have Argentina restart nuclear cooperation with Iran,” Toby Dershowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Business Insider.

Nisman believed the bombing of the Jewish center, called AMIA, may have been about more than Iran’s attitude toward Israel and the Jewish people. He believed it was a punishment directed at Argentina. Back in the 1980s, Iranian nuclear scientists receieved training at Argentine nuclear plants.

Iranian nuclear scientist Ali Akbar Salehi was mentioned in Nisman’s report as being among the back-channel negotiators who reportedly wanted to clear the names of Iranians from an Interpol database. He spent six months learning about nuclear technology in the 1980s. In 1987, Argentine scientists went to Iran to help upgrade a Tehran research reactor.

“The DOJ and other USG agencies should be concerned about who killed a prosecutor with whom it had an important relationship and whether it was aimed at silencing him and his work implicating Iran,” Dershowitz said. “Nisman’s work was akin to a canary in a coal mine, and his suspicious death is a matter I hope the next attorney general and others will pursue impartially even if it comes at an inconvenient time as the P5+1 negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.”

kerry zarif REUTERS/Rick Wilking US Secretary of State John Kerry, left, with Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif before a meeting in Geneva in January.

To Dershowitz, Nisman’s report was about more than just AMIA. It was about how Iran operates in Latin America — how it recruits, how it uses resources, how it activates sleeper cells.

According to a member of the military who said he was in the room during negotiations between Venezuela and Iran, here’s how a conversation between Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then Iran’s president, on January 13, 2007, went down (via Veja):

Ahmadinejad — It’s a matter of life or death. I need you to help me broker a deal with Argentina to help my country’s nuclear program. We need Argentina to share its nuclear technology. Without their collaboration it would be impossible to advance our nuclear program.

Chávez — Very quickly, I will do that Comrade.

Ahmadinejad — Don’t worry about what it costs. Iran will have all the money necessary to convince Argentines … I need you to convince Argentina to continue to insisting that Interpol take Iranian officials off their list.

Chávez — I will personally take charge of this.

ReutersMahmoud Ahmadinejad, left, then Iran’s president, with his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez at Miraflores Palace in Caracas in 2012.

The kind of nuclear technology Iran was looking for, specifically, was a heavy-water nuclear reactor. It’s expensive, complicated, and old-fashioned technology, but it allows plutonium to be obtained from natural uranium. That means the uranium doesn’t have to be enriched, which makes the whole operation more discreet.

To sweeten the deal for Argentina, Venezuela allegedly bought $1.8 billion worth of Argentine bonds 2007 and $6 billion worth in 2008. Remember that Argentina has been a pariah of international markets since it defaulted in 2002. The Kirchners (Cristina and her husband, late-president Nestor) each thanked Venezuela for these purchases publicly.

Also in January 2007, Ahmadinejad and Chavez allegedly hatched the plan for “aeroterror,” as Chavistas came to call it. It was a flight from Caracas to Damascus to Tehran that was made twice a month. It flew from Caracas carrying cocaine to be distributed to Hezbollah in Damascus and sold. The plane then went to Tehran carrying Venezuelan passports and other documents that helped Iranian terrorists travel around the world undetected.

tehran iran skyline Tehran, Iran.

Where this story makes a turn for the bizarre is that the woman who was allegedly handling the Argentine side of negotiations was former defense minister Nilda Garre, who is now Argentina’s ambassador to the Organization of American States.

Veja’s sources say she had a sexual relationship with Chavez.

“It was something along the lines of ’50 Shades of Grey,'” the former Venezuelan official said, adding that when the two were together, all of Miraflores (Venezuela’s presidential palace) could hear it.

“I cannot say that the Argentine government gave nuclear secrets, but I know it received much by legal means (debt securities) and illegal (bags of money) in exchange for some valuable asset to the Iranians.”

Another former Chavista said: “In Argentina, the holder of secrets is the former ambassador Garre.”

On Wednesday the House Foreign Affairs Committee is having a meeting — this should probably come up.

Cristina fernandez nilda garre ReutersKirchner with defense minister Nilda Garre, right, during a meeting with Chavez at the Casa Rosada Presidential Palace in Buenos Aires in 2009.

Don’t Count on John Kerry to Rescue Americans

Posted on March 17, 2015March 17, 2015 by Denise Simon

There are millions of Americans that work in various positions across the globe. Each day many of them are in peril and there are some Americans being held in Iran. The go-to agency to deal with the release of Americans is the State Department. In dealing for several months with Iran over their nuclear program, has John Kerry demanded one of the issues to be resolved is for Americans to be released? Sadly, no one is saying. This also begs the question, will the American government come to the aid of Americans in jeopardy in a foreign country? Recent history tell us no when it came to the U.S Marine in a Mexican prison.

Marine Veteran Requests Deportation From Iran

By RICK GLADSTONE

Increasingly desperate to return to the United States, a Marine veteran of Iranian descent who has been incarcerated in Iran for three and a half years has renounced his Iranian citizenship, requested deportation and accused Iran of using American prisoners as “bargaining chips,” his family said Monday.

“Once deported, he promises never to return,” the family of the Marine veteran, Amir Hekmati, a dual citizen of the United States and Iran, said in a statement.

The statement also detailed what it described as a litany of previously undisclosed torture and other abuses — including feet whippings, Taser hits to the kidneys, sleep deprivation and extended solitary confinement — suffered by Mr. Hekmati in the Iranian penal system since he was arrested in August 2011.

There was no immediate comment from the judicial authorities in Iran or from Mr. Hekmati’s Iranian lawyer, Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei, about Mr. Hekmati’s renunciation of citizenship or new assertions of mistreatment. Mr. Tabatabaei has said before that he would try different approaches to secure his client’s freedom.

The family released a copy of a letter it said Mr. Hekmati had written, addressed to the Iranian interests section of the Pakistan Embassy in Washington, where he acquired his Iranian passport so he could visit relatives in 2011.

Mr. Hekmati stated in the letter that it had “become very clear to me that those responsible view Iranian-Americans not as citizens or even human beings, but as bargaining chips and tools for propaganda.”

For that reason, the letter stated, “I formally renounce my Iranian citizenship and passport.”

Mr. Hekmati, 31, who was born in Flagstaff, Ariz., grew up in Flint, Mich., and served with the Marines in Iraq, is one of at least three American citizens of Iranian descent known to be imprisoned in Iran.

The Iranian authorities do not recognize dual citizenship. They regard all three as Iranian citizens, regardless of birthplace, and have treated them accordingly, denying them the consular access that is afforded to foreign inmates.

Their cases have acquired added significance as Iran and the United States have intensified efforts to reach an agreement on Iran’s disputed nuclear program. The deal, if completed, could potentially lead to a broader thaw in the longstanding estrangement between the two countries.

It was not clear from the family’s statement why Mr. Hekmati believed that renouncing his Iranian citizenship might be a means of leaving the country. Iranian human rights advocates said they had not seen this strategy used before.

“It’s creative,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a group based in New York. “I’m not sure that it will work.”

Mr. Hekmati was convicted of espionage after what the family has described as a forced confession. He was sentenced to death, but the verdict was reversed and he was convicted of the lesser charge of aiding a hostile country, meaning the United States, and sentenced to 10 years.

He and his family have repeatedly asserted that he is innocent and have implored the Iranian authorities to release him, if for no other reason than so he could return to Flint and see his father, Ali, who has terminal brain cancer.

Obama administration officials say they have raised his case — and those of the other prisoners — numerous times on the sidelines of the nuclear talks.

The new accusations that Mr. Hekmati has been tortured in prison were based on what the family’s statement described as accounts from “his family in Michigan, his extended family in Iran and from Amir himself.”

They said he had been held in solitary confinement for the first 17 months, often in stress positions for extended periods, and had not been allowed to speak with his family by phone for 20 months. “Cold, foul-smelling water was repeatedly poured into his cell to prevent him from sleeping,” the statement said.

He was also forcibly given drugs including lithium, Tasered in the kidneys during interrogations, whipped on the feet with cables and subjected to “mental torture through threats, insults and humiliations,” the statement said.

It repeated a complaint Mr. Hekmati made last December about the conditions of his imprisonment, asserting that he had been housed with hardened criminals and drug dealers and that “he experiences recurring lung infections, his cellmates have lice, and he is surviving on a diet of only rice and lentils.”

The release of the statement coincided with a new report by the United Nations human rights investigator for Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, asserting that political repression and use of the death penalty in Iran are rising.

The other Americans incarcerated in Iran are Jason Rezaian, 39, of Marin, Calif., The Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent, who has been held on unspecified charges since July; and Saeed Abedini, 34, of Boise, Idaho, a pastor sentenced in 2013 to eight years in prison on charges of disturbing national security through a private network of churches.

A fourth American, Robert A. Levinson, disappeared while visiting Iran in 2007. Iranian officials say they have no information on his whereabouts. Last Tuesday, on the eighth anniversary of Mr. Levinson’s disappearance, the United States quintupled, to $5 million, its reward for information that could lead to his safe return.

When the DoJ Sues Corporations, Where Does the $$ Go?

Posted on March 16, 2015March 16, 2015 by Denise Simon

The Department of Justice has sued corporations and banks with wild abandon. No one ever goes to jail but corporations pay massive sums of money for penalties, fine and in settlements. The Department of Justice under Eric Holder decides who gets those billions without your knowledge or consent. Sure many of these corporations and bank do deserve to be prosecuted and valid cases are made, but people make these decisions not the name of the bank or the logo. So one must ask, why no jail time? Paying legal extortion to the Federal government has become a simple operating expense and a budget item on financial statements.

The Justice Department Is Giving Away Your Money (Without Your Permission)

By Paul J. Larkin Jr.

For the past decade, the U.S. Justice Department has engaged in the dubious practice of giving away the public’s money when it settles a case, by sometimes conditioning a settlement on a company’s agreement to donate money to a third-party of the government’s (or the defendant’s) choosing.

For example, the Justice Department settled cases last year with Bank of America and Citigroup over unlawful mortgage lending practices. The settlements required the banks to pay money to outside organizations—such as legal aid societies—from a government-approved list. In another instance, the Gibson Guitar Corp. had to contribute to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to end a criminal investigation.

That practice is of questionable legality and clearly is bad public policy. Government attorneys are obligated to represent the interests of the public, not those of selected groups. Moreover, when federal agencies collect money, that money should be spent as Congress directs that it be spent, not according to the whim or the agencies.

The U.S. legal system rests on the principle that every lawyer owes a duty of loyalty to a client and cannot engage in self-dealing. For example, if John Doe’s attorney settles a case for Doe, the attorney cannot tell the opposing counsel to write a check for 95 percent of the settlement to Doe and to give the rest to someone else.

The attorney general occupies a similar position for the public—the attorney for the federal government, which means the responsibility of representing the public in court.

No law authorizes the attorney general to act like Bill Gates and dispense money to private organizations, but that is what sometimes happens when the federal government settles a case. That money is not the attorney general’s to give away. It belongs to the public and should be paid in full to the U.S. Treasury.

What is worse is that these giveaways violate federal law. Federal statutes, such as the Miscellaneous Receipts Act, require that all money received by the Justice Department be paid into the Treasury. It then becomes Congress‘ duty, under the Constitution’s appropriations clause, to decide how to spend it.

Those laws are not hypertechnical accounting requirements. They reflect a basic allocation of federal decision-making authority regarding the proper expenditure of the public’s money. The Justice Department’s third-party contribution requirements in settlement agreements enable the executive branch to perform an end run around Congress‘ paramount role in the appropriations process.

The Justice Department’s practice also denies the public the opportunity to hold representatives and senators accountable for their spending choices. Executive branch officials cannot spend money without Congress’ approval, which forces every member of Congress to vote for annual appropriations bills. That practice informs every voter what each member does with the public’s money, knowledge that voters can use every two or six years to decide whether to “throw the bums out.”

Third-party contribution requirements are also rife with opportunities for political cronyism. There are scores of organizations that benefit the public, but this practice permits the Justice Department to disburse funds to particular favored groups that benefit the political party in power, clearly an unseemly and illegitimate practice. At a minimum, the practice creates an obvious appearance of impropriety.

The public’s money belongs to the public, not to whatever recipients an attorney general may decide to favor, and Congress is responsible for saying how it can be spent. Congress does not give the president a lump-sum allowance to spend as he sees fit. Instead, in the annual appropriations bills Congress specifies in detail exactly who can receive appropriated funds, how much money each one may be paid and for what purposes that money can be used. Congress should reclaim that responsibility by ending this Justice Department practice.

Congress has signaled that it is aware of this practice. The public would be well-served if Congress puts an end to it.

Anyone Notice the Genocide of Christians?

Posted on March 16, 2015March 16, 2015 by Denise Simon

ISIS’ dark agenda: Terror group’s tweets show more destruction of sacred Christian sites

Chilling new images released Monday show ISIS thugs advancing the Islamist army’s dark agenda of eradicating Christianity from Iraq by smashing crosses, toppling statues and destroying sacred relics that have been in place for thousands of years.

The latest batch of photos, culled from the Internet by watchdog Middle East Media Research Institute, show ISIS members in the heart of Iraq’s once-thriving Assyrian Christian community of Nineveh, destroying symbols the Islamist terror group considers polytheistic and idolatrous. The images show the men removing crosses from atop churches and replacing them with the black ISIS banner, destroying crosses at other locations such as atop doorways and gravestones, and destroying icons and statues inside and outside churches. The sickening images are just the latest evidence of ISIS’ ongoing effort to cleanse its so-called caliphate of its Christian heritage.

“They don’t care what it’s called; they are just following their ideology and that means getting rid of churches and minorities,” said MEMRI Executive Director Steven Stalinsky. “It is the Islamic State, and there’s no room for anyone else.

“This has been going on for some time, a systematic campaign to rid the region” of any vestiges of Christianity.

Although the United Nations has condemned the acts, Islamic State, as ISIS is also known, has enthusiastically circulated photos of its fighters destroying the sacred symbols and relics.

“We cannot remain silent,” Irina Bokova, head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said Friday. “The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime. I call on all political and religious leaders in the region to stand up and remind everyone that there is absolutely no political or religious justification for the destruction of humanity’s cultural heritage.”

Bokova spoke after ISIS reportedly used heavy equipment to demolish the site of the ancient Assyrian capital of Nimrud, 18 miles south of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Statues, tablets and other relics have been taken from churches and destroyed or possibly sold on the black market. While the humanitarian crisis facing Iraq’s Christian community is of paramount concern, religious leaders also lament the loss of the religion’s most ancient artifacts.

In Iraq, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako last week called on the central government and the international community “to act as soon as possible for the protection of innocent civilians and to offer them the necessary assistance in lodging, food and medication.”

ISIS “is burning everything: human beings, stones and civilization,” he said in a March 9 statement.

Sako said thousands of families have been displaced by the fighting, and he called for an emergency meeting of Iraq’s Council of Ministers and the National Assembly deputies “to discuss this situation that threatens to deteriorate from bad to worse.”

“This is obviously a human catastrophe that cannot suffer any silence,” he said.

Nimrud, built more than 3,000 years ago, was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire after 883 B.C. The Neo-Assyrian Empire, whose rulers spoke a language distantly related to Arabic and Hebrew, ruled Mesopotamia, the ancient name for Iraq and parts of Syria, until approximately 600 B.C. For centuries, the region along the Tigris River retained monuments, frescos, temples and a ziggurat, the stepped pyramid characteristic of Mesopotamian civilizations.

But earlier this month, ISIS released video showing men smashing statues with sledgehammers in the Nineveh Museum, in Nineveh, the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire after 705 B.C.

In recent weeks, ISIS has also set off bombs around Mosul Central Library, destroying as many as 10,000 priceless and irreplaceable books and manuscripts.

Many relics have been taken to museums in Baghdad or around the world for safekeeping, but artifacts in churches, including murals and statues, have been left where they stood for millennia, until the rise one year ago of the black-clad terrorist army. Last summer, ISIS fighters used explosives to blow up the tomb of a key figure in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The holy site in Mosul was believed to be the burial place of the prophet Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale in the Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions.

The mob beat them and broke their legs so they would not be able to flee. “They picked them up by their arms and legs and held them over the brick furnace until their clothes caught fire. And then they threw them inside the furnace.” — Javed Maseeh, family spokesman, to NBC News.

The attack was not an isolated one. Rather it seems to be part of systematic killings, community by community.

Imagine you are a person of Christian faith living as a citizen in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan: every moment your life is at risk. Imagine a Pakistani Muslim shouting that you have burned a page of holy Quran when you have not; or accusing you of having desecrated the Prophet Mohammed: you have hardly any chance of saving yourself. There would be no question of providing evidence or proof against you. You would be killed either by the mob or by the country’s legal system.

If you were one of the 3% minority Christians of Pakistan, you would fear for your life every moment among the majority Muslims; any one of them could shout and point at you as the Nazi collaborators did during the Second World War against the Jews. You inevitably would be beaten to death by your fellow countrymen.

This month in Pakistan, a Christian couple and their unborn child were burned to death, because of a false accusation of burning pages of a Quran.

Christians riot in Pakistan after attacks targeting churches kill 14
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Members of the Christian community rampaged through the streets of Lahore on Sunday after suicide bombers attacked two churches during morning services, killing at least 14 people and wounding more than 70.

The Pakistani Taliban took credit for the attacks, reviving concerns that the Islamist militant group will increasingly target religious minorities in a bid to further divide Pakistanis and distract them from ongoing military operations against extremists.

Failed Immigration Policy/Systems led to 9/11

Posted on March 13, 2015March 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

While reading the long and factual summary below on the 9/11 hijackers, ask yourself the following questions:

Note the date of this summary, 2010

Have immigration policies changed today?
Are there new systems in place?
Do members of Congress still standing with the 9/11 Commission Report?

The Complete Immigration Story of 9/11 Hijacker Satam al Suqami

By Janice Kephart September 2010

This Memorandum is in memory of Danny Lewin, whose incredible life was ended by hijacker Satam al Suqami on American Airlines Flight 11 prior to its tragic crash into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

I dedicate this Memorandum to my former colleague on the September 11 Commission, Walt Hempel, who gave me confidence that our investigation was as accurate and as thorough as possible. The collating of the digital images you find here was due primarily to his work.

The past year and a half has provided a litany of examples, some tragic, that America is not safe from terrorist conspiracies and acts. Our processing and informational analysis has improved greatly since September 11 at our air and land ports of entry, but our southwest border is suffering from a near national security crisis due to Mexican narco-insurgency. Meanwhile, aviation security remains subject to incomplete vetting procedures and issues of international cooperation. What is becoming increasingly clear is that despite some real gains in border and aviation security, we are not safe. Thus, the value of continuing to learn from the terrorist travel story of September 11 remains relevant today as we continue to rummage through panoplies of choices about immigration and border security. If any immigration issue should rise above the fray and remain a standalone, it should be border security. This Memorandum is an attempt to help inform that debate more fully, by providing never-before seen digital images that back up previously published material in the September 11 border team’s monograph, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel.

Background. In January 2009, the National Archives made available some of the 9/11 Commission work product that revealed to the public for the first time much of the evidence that resulted in the 9/11 Commission Report published (as required by law) in July 2004. Among those archives was some of the most precious work the border team had uncovered after numerous and arduous document requests to the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation: hard copies or digital images of travel documents of the hijackers.

In 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, my team and I were able to include images of about one-quarter of the physical evidence we had accumulated that aided fact development and recommendations for both the 9/11 Final Report and 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, which was written to provide substantive support for the 9/11 Final Report recommendations. But the remainder of those images has remained buried these past years.

As the ensuing five years have passed since the publication of the 9/11 Commission materials, one hijacker in particular stands out for a number of reasons – not only for the tragic story of his likely murder of Daniel Lewin on American Airlines Flight 11 before the crash – but also because he was the only hijacker (of two total) well aware that he was an illegal overstay on September 11. We know this because this hijacker had attempted to enter the Bahamas in May 2001 in order to re-enter the United States and obtain a six-month length of stay like his “muscle” co-conspirators (i.e., those who were not the pilots). He was also the only such hijacker that had only received a business traveler one-month length of stay upon entry. He failed, and thus was the only hijacker not to use his travel documents to obtain a state-issued driver’s license or ID, causing him again to be one of the few hijackers who we know used his passport for check-in on the morning of September 11, rather than a U.S.-issued ID card. In addition, because we did not – and still do not—have an Exit system in place that logs visitors out of the country, authorities were initially confused as to whether or not he was even in the United States on September 11. Both these issues – illegal overstays and failure to implement an Exit system – remain outstanding issues in the United States, affecting the national discussion of immigration and border security. The goal this story is to better inform that discussion.

Below is a consolidation of the 9/11 and Terrorist Travel facts, verbatim, about Satam al Suqami as developed by myself as immigration counsel and my colleague, Tom Eldridge, who conducted the visa analysis. Supporting our work are the digital images of Suqami’s passport culled from reams of materials, mostly done by Walt Hempel. One small miracle in our investigation was learning that Suqami’s passport survived the attack; having its images to review helped solidify findings.

I have not changed our words, but added in the heretofore unseen images alongside source information of Suqami’s travel documents, providing more depth to 9/11 Commission final work products and reiterating the basic message that our borders matter to national security. Detecting a terrorist through his travel documents and records, coordinated with intelligence – and today with biometrics and programs that assure we know who is entering and exiting our country – is equally important to economic and national security. This story of Suqami reiterates that point.

On September 11, Daniel Lewin was on board American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles, which crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. However, Lewin was likely murdered prior to the crash by 9/11 hijacker Satam al Suqami. Two months before his death, Lewin was named as one the 100 most important people in the national information industry. He was survived by his wife and two sons.

Daniel Lewin, 31, a mathematician and entrepreneur, co-founded and ran Akamai Technologies, nearly becoming a billionaire in the dot-com stock boom. At the time of his death, he was a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was said to have become a paper-billionaire when Akamai stock first became available. Lewin was born in Denver and raised in Jerusalem, where he served in Sayeret Matkal, a counter-terrorism unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. He had previously worked for IBM’s research lab in Haifa, Israel.

The FAA memo’s summary of the Flight 11 shooting incident, real or not, is the most detailed and specific – not to mention shocking – of the four hijacking summaries. It says Lewin, sitting in seat 9B, was “shot by passenger Satam al-Suqami,” sitting behind him in seat 10B. (Both names match those on the manifest released by the airline.) However, we do not know if he was shot or stabbed; the on-flight phone call between flight attendant Betty Ann Ong and the FAA states that Ong relayed that Lewin, sitting in seat 9B, was killed by the passenger in seat 10B at approximately 8:20. That passenger in 10B was later identified as Satam M. A. Al Suqami.

— Walt Hempel, professional staff member, 9/11 Commission

The 9/11 hijackers and conspirators on American Airlines Flight 11 – North Tower of the World Trade Center were: Mohamed Atta Hijacker (Pilot), Abdul Aziz al Omari, Waleed al Shehri, Wail al Shehri, and Satam al Suqami.

Introduction: Factual Overview of the September 11 Border Story

Entering the United States as tourists was important to the hijackers, since immigration regulations automatically guaranteed tourists six months of stay. Thus the 14 muscle hijackers who entered the United States in the spring and early summer of 2001 were able to remain in the country legally through September 11. The six-month tourist stays also assured the hijackers of sufficient time to make such preparations for their operation as obtaining the identification some of them used to board the planes on September 11.

Fourteen of 15 operatives and all of the pilots acquired one or multiple forms of U.S. state-issued identification. Only Satam al Suqami did not, possibly because he was the only hijacker who knew he was out of immigration status: His length of stay end date of May 20, 2000, was clearly inserted in his passport.

November 21, 2000. State Department records show that Satam al Suqami, a Saudi, applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There is strong evidence that the passport Suqami submitted with this application had fraudulent travel stamps now associated with al Qaeda. These stamps remain classified, and are not contained here.

Suqami’s Saudi Arabian passport with numerous travel stamps, some of which were determined to be fraudulent. They include multiple travel to Instanbul, Malaysia, Oman, and Egypt. There are no travel stamps from Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Iran, all three locations likely destinations.

Although Suqami had false travel stamps in his passport as of 9/11, we do not know if these stamps were placed in his passport before or after submission of his visa application, although the dates on some of the false stamps pre-date the date he applied for his visa.

Suqami left blank the line on which he was asked to supply the name and street address of his present employer.

Suqami’s visa application. The stamp with the “No” crossed states: “Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization?”

The consular officer who issued the visa said he interviewed Suqami because he described his present occupation as “dealer,” the word Saudis often put on their applications when they meant “businessman.” The officer testified that he asked Suqami a number of questions, including, he believes, who was paying for the trip. Although the officer stated that notes were always taken during interviews, none were written on Suqami’s application, raising the possibility that the officer’s memory of having conducted an interview was false. In any case, Suqami evidently raised no suspicions and his application was approved.

April 23, 2001. According to INS records, Waleed al Shehri and Satam al Suqami, both Saudis, entered together at Orlando from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Suqami was the only Saudi muscle hijacker admitted on business, and only for one month. Both were admitted by the same primary immigration inspector.

Above is Suqami’s U.S. visa issued on November 21, 2000. The Final Report states that Satam al Suqami and Mojed Moqed flew from Iran to Bahrain in late November 2000, in all likelihood as soon as the plotters were assured that Suqami had obtained his U.S. visa, critical to al Qaeda for entry into the United States. Also note on page 18 a U.S. entry on April 23, 2001, and re-entry on May 16, 2001, after the failed attempt to enter the Bahamas.

Biographic pages of Suqami’s passport

FBI reports revealed that Suqami’s passport was recovered by NYPD Detective Yuk H. Chin from a male passerby in a business suit, about 30 years old. The passerby left before being identified, while debris was falling from WTC 2. The tower collapsed shortly thereafter. The detective then gave the passport to the FBI on 9/11. Later analysis showed that it contained what are now believed to be fraudulent travel stamps associated with al Qaeda. In addition, the forensic document analysis of Satam al Suqami’s passport indicates that on page 8, “An Arabic stamp impression located near the top of page 8 has been partially covered with correction fluid,” as stated in an INS letter from John Ross, INS Supervisory Forensic Document Examiner, to Lorie Gottesman, FBI Document Examiner, on November 2, 2001.

Correction fluid on top right stamp, indicating fraudulent travel stamps

Upon reviewing color copies of the document, the inspector who admitted Suqami told the Commission he did not note any such fraud. Indeed, he could not have been expected to identify the fraud at the time of Suqami’s admission – it was not discovered by the intelligence community until after the attacks.

May 16, 2001. Waleed al Shehri and Suqami again traveled together, this time out of the country to the Bahamas, where they reserved three nights at the Bahamas Princess Resort. INS records show that they turned in their arrival record, which was now acting as an exit record, boarded the plane, and arrived in Freeport. Ramzi Binalshibh, a key facilitator and organizer for the 9/11 conspiracy who was denied a U.S. visa, stated during interrogations that the trip was intended to extend Suqami’s legal length of stay in the United States.

Bahamian immigration refused the two entry, however, because neither had a Bahamian visa. They therefore had to return to their starting point, in this case Fort Lauderdale. Because they never entered the Bahamas, under U.S. immigration law they had never left the United States. After being refused entry by the Bahamian INS at Freeport, they were sent through U.S. “pre-clearance” before boarding the plane back to Miami. By making possible immigration inspections of U.S.-bound travelers prior to their arrival, pre-clearance helped ease the burden of admission at busy U.S. airports. These stations also prevented travelers deemed inadmissible from boarding U.S.-bound planes. Pre-clearance stations existed prior to September 11 in Canada, Ireland, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean. In this pre-clearance process, immigration waived them through but customs stopped Shehri. The inspection lasted one minute; Shehri was not personally searched, nor was his luggage x-rayed. Customs records showed they boarded a plane and returned to Miami.

The attempted three-day jaunt by Shehri and Suqami to the Bahamas would cause difficulty for the INS in assisting the FBI’s investigation into 9/11 since the INS records indicated the two had left the United States and not returned. This is because when the two left Miami for the Bahamas, they handed in their I-94 departure records as required. When they were turned around in the Bahamas for a lack of visas, under U.S. immigration law they never left the United States. However, they were not given new arrival records when they physically returned to the United States. Therefore, when the attacks occurred, investigators thought that Suqmai and Shehri had departed the United States, which is what the INS records indicated.

May 20, 2001. Suqami joined the millions of overstays in the United States after failing to file for an extension of stay with the INS after he returned from the Bahamas. Had he been allowed into the Bahamas, upon his return to the United States he would have likely been granted an additional length of stay in the country as a tourist. As it was, he remained in illegal status until September 11.

September 11. As the hijackers boarded four flights, American Airlines Flights 11 and 77, and United Airlines Flights 93 and 175, at least six used U.S. identification documents acquired in the previous months, three of which were fraudulently obtained in northern Virginia. Airline check-in personnel remembered that Suqami, the only hijacker who did not have a state-issued identification, used his Saudi passport as check-in identification for American Airlines Flight 11.

An Entry-Exit System. The INS also was unable to enforce the rules regarding the terms of admission of visitors to the United States because there was no national tracking system designed to match a person’s entry with that person’s exit. Inspectors were similarly unaware of whether a visitor had overstayed a previous visit.

In 1996, expressing frustration at the apparent number of overstays in the United States and the inability of INS to enforce the law, Congress took action. It passed a law requiring the attorney general to develop an automated entry-exit program to collect records on every arriving and departing visitor. Congress provided about $40 million over four years to fund the development of such a system. By contrast, Congress provided nearly $1 billion to increase the Border Patrol’s presence in the southwest in order to stem the flow of illegal immigration from Mexico. Countering terrorist entry was not a rationale for the system.

Leaders of border communities along the Canadian and Mexican borders, where more than a million people move back and forth daily, denounced the system. They argued that it would inhibit border trade. Some members of Congress, along with senior INS managers, agreed and decided to automate only the entry process. Prior to September 11, even these efforts were unsuccessful. Thus, while the hijackers were preparing for the planes operation in the United States, immigration authorities had no way to determine whether any of them had overstayed their visas or traveled in and out of the country. The lack of an entry-exit system was especially significant for Satam al Suqami and Nawaf al Hazmi, as both were illegal overstays.

(In June 2010, CIS held a symposium of high-level officials and policy thinkers on the issue of implementing an Exit control. A report can be found at http://cis.org/exit-panel.)

The Immigration and Naturalization Service Overview

A review of the entries and immigration benefits sought by the hijackers paints a picture of conspirators who put the ability to exploit U.S. border security while not raising suspicion about their terrorist activities high on their operational priorities. Evidence indicates that Mohamed Atta, the September 11 ringleader, was acutely aware of his immigration status, tried to remain in the United States legally, and aggressively pursued enhanced immigration status for himself and others.

Despite their careful efforts to understand and operate within the legal requirements, however, the hijackers were not always “clean and legal.” For example, they used fraudulent documents and alias names as necessary. And when the hijackers could, they skirted the requirements of immigration law. Ziad Jarrah, for example, failed to apply to change his immigration status from tourist to student, and Satam al Suqami failed to leave the country when his length of stay expired. They thus were vulnerable to exclusion at ports of entry and susceptible to immigration law enforcement action. In this section, we explore how the hijackers succeeded in making it through U.S. airports of entry in 33 of 34 attempts, drawing on interviews of the immigration and customs inspectors who had contact with the hijackers, immigration law, port of entry policy, training, and resources available to inspectors in primary and secondary inspections.

The four pilots, who went in to and out of the United States 17 times, were admitted on business four times. Only one muscle hijacker, Suqami, was given a one-month stay as a business traveler when he entered at Orlando on April 23, 2001, with Waleed al Shehri. Both hijackers had filled out their Customs declarations stating that they intended a 20-day stay. The immigration arrival record did not require information about the length of stay, however; and since immigration inspectors checked the Customs declarations only for completeness and not for substance, the 20-day stay request was ignored – to their advantage, in fact.

Indeed, the 30-year INS veteran inspector who admitted both hijackers told the Commission that the Customs declaration had no bearing on the length of stay he gave Suqami, which was based solely on Suqami’s answer regarding the purpose of his visit. That Suqami was limited to a business instead of a tourist stay meant that he and Nawaf al Hazmi (who overstayed his tourist visa despite filing for an extension of his stay in July 2000) were the only operatives who had overstayed their authorized lengths of stay as of September 11. The four pilots, who went into and out of the United States 17 times, were admitted on business four times. Only one muscle hijacker, Suqami, was given a one-month stay as a business traveler when he entered at Orlando on April 23, 2001, with Waleed al Shehri.

Immigration Violations Committed by the Hijackers in the United States

Once a non-U.S. citizen is admitted to the United States, he or she remains subject to U.S. immigration laws and may be deported if any are violated. The hijackers violated many laws while gaining entry to, or remaining in, the United States. Here are the violations pertaining to Suqami:

Every hijacker submitted a visa application falsely stating that he was not seeking to enter the United States to engage in terrorism. This was a felony, punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 1546 by 25 years in prison and under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 by 5 years in prison, and was a violation of immigration law rendering each one inadmissible under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(c).
The hijackers, when they presented themselves at U.S. ports of entry, were terrorists trained in Afghan camps who had prepared for and planned terrorist activity to further the aims of a terrorist organization – al Qaeda – making every hijacker inadmissible to enter the United States under 8 U.S.C.§ 1182(a)(3)(b).
At least two (Satam al Suqami and Abdul Aziz al Omari) and possibly as many as seven of the hijackers (Suqami, Omari, Mohand al Shehri, Hamza and Saeed al Ghamdi, Ahmed al Nami, and Ahmad al Haznawi) presented to State Department consular officers passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner, a felony punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 1543 by 25 years in prison and a violation of immigration law rendering them inadmissible under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(c).
At least two hijackers (Suqami and Omari) and as many as 11 of the hijackers (Suqami; Omari; Waleed, Wail, and Mohand al Shehri; Hani Hanjour; Majed Moqed; Nawaf al Hazmi; Haznawi; and Hamza and Ahmed al Ghamdi) presented to INS inspectors at ports of entry passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner, a felony punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 1543 by 25 years in prison and a violation of immigration law rendering them inadmissible under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(c).
Nawaf al Hazmi and Suqami overstayed the terms of their admission, a violation of immigration laws rendering them both deportable under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(B).

Walt Hempel
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
Commission hearing January 26, 2004
Senate Office Building

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