Sid and Hillary’s Personal Spy Network, ServerGate

Posted on January 10, 2016January 10, 2016 by Denise Simon

There are only a handful of results of the FBI investigation into Hillary. 1. The DoJ’s Loretta Lynch will give Hillary as pass if there is a criminal referral. 2. Barack Obama will give Hillary full protection under ‘Executive Privilege’ under the excuse of national security. 3. There will be a full blown revolt by the whole intelligence community. 4. Leaks will come out forcing a criminal referral of Hillary Clinton and we could see a Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren ticket.

Hillary’s EmailGate Goes Nuclear

Does the latest release of Hillary’s State Department emails include highly classified U.S. intelligence?

Schlinder: Back in October I told you that Hillary Clinton’s email troubles were anything but over, and that the scandal over her misuse of communications while she was Secretary of State was sure to get worse. Sure enough, EmailGate continues to be a thorn in the side of Hillary’s presidential campaign and may have just entered a new, potentially explosive phase with grave ramifications, both political and legal.

The latest court-ordered dump of her email, just placed online by the State Department, brings more troubles for Team Hillary. This release of over 3,000 pages includes 66 “Unclassified” messages that the State Department subsequently determined actually were classified; however, all but one of those 66 were deemed Confidential, the lowest classification level, while one was found to be Secret, bringing the total of Secret messages discovered so far to seven. In all, 1,340 Hillary emails at State have been reassessed as classified.

There are gems here. It’s hard to miss the irony of Hillary expressing surprise about a State Department staffer using personal email for work, which the Secretary of State noted in her own personal email. More consequential was Hillary’s ordering a staffer to send classified talking points for a coming meeting via a non-secure fax machine, stripped of their classification markings. This appears to be a clear violation of Federal law and the sort of thing that is a career-ender, or worse, for normals. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee termed that July 2011 incident “disturbing,” and so it is to anyone acquainted with U.S. Government laws and regulations regarding the handling of classified material.

Part 1

But the biggest problem may be in a just-released email that has gotten little attention here, but plenty on the other side of the world. An email to Hillary from a close Clinton confidant late on June 8, 2011 about Sudan turns out to have explosive material in it. This message includes a detailed intelligence report from Sid Blumenthal, Hillary’s close friend, confidant, and factotum, who regularly supplied her with information from his private intelligence service. His usual source was Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA senior official and veteran spy-gadfly, who conveniently died just before EmailGate became a serious problem for Hillary’s campaign.

Part 2

However, the uncredited June 8 memo, which Mr. Blumenthal labeled as “Confidential” – his personal classification system, apparently – but which the State Department has labeled Unclassified, doesn’t appear to be from Drumheller, whose assessments were written just like CIA intelligence reports. This is not.

Part 3

Remarkably, the report emailed to Hillary by “sbwhoeop,” which was Mr. Blumenthal’s email handle, explains how Sudan’s government devised a clandestine plan, in coordination with two rebel generals, to secure control of oil reserves in the disputed region of Abyei. This is juicy, front-page stuff, straight out of an action movie, about a region of Africa that’s of high interest to the American and many other governments, and the report is astonishingly detailed.

Part 4

Its information comes from a high-ranking source with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials, and Mr. Blumenthal’s write-up repeatedly states the sources – there turn out to be more than one – are well-placed and credible, with excellent access. It’s the usual spytalk boilerplate when you want the reader to understand this is golden information, not just gossip or rumors circulating on the street, what professionals dismiss as “RUMINT.” Needless to add, this is generating a lot of talk in Sudan, where the media is asking about this shady affair – and how Sid Blumenthal, who’s not exactly an old Africa hand, knew all about it.

Part 5

But the most interesting part is that the report describes a conversation “in confidence” that happened on the evening of June 7, just one day before Mr. Blumenthal sent the report to Secretary Clinton. It beggars the imagination to think that Sid’s private intelligence operation, which was just a handful of people, had operators who were well placed in Sudan, with top-level spy access, able to get this secret information, place it in a decently written assessment with proper espionage verbiage, and pass it all back to Washington, DC, inside 24 hours. That would be a feat even for the CIA, which has stations and officers all over Africa.

In fact, the June 8, 2011 Blumenthal report doesn’t read like CIA material at all, in other words human intelligence or HUMINT, but very much like signals intelligence or SIGINT. (For the differences see here). I know what SIGINT reports look like, because I used to write them for the National Security Agency, America’s biggest source of intelligence. SIGINT reports, which I’ve read thousands of, have a very distinct style and flavor to them and Blumenthal’s write-up matches it, right down to the “Source Comments,” which smack very much of NSA reporting and its “house rules.”

But is this an NSA assessment? If so, it would have to be classified at least Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information, a handling caveat that applies to most SIGINT, and quite possibly Top Secret/SCI, the highest normal classification we have. In that case, it was about as far from Unclassified as it’s possible for an email to be.

No surprise, NSA is aflutter this weekend over this strange matter. One Agency official expressed to me “at least 90 percent confidence” that Mr. Blumenthal’s June 8 report was derived from NSA reports, and the Agency ought to be investigating the matter right now.

There are many questions here. How did Sid Blumenthal, who had no position in the U.S. Government in 2011, and hasn’t since Bill Clinton left the White House fifteen years ago, possibly get his hands on such highly classified NSA reporting? Why did he place it an open, non-secure email to Hillary, who after all had plenty of legitimate access, as Secretary of State, to intelligence assessments from all our spy agencies? Moreover, how did the State Department think this was Unclassified and why did it release it to the public?

It’s possible this Blumenthal report did not come from NSA, but perhaps from another, non-American intelligence agency – but whose? If Sid was really able to get top-level intelligence like this for Hillary, using just his shoestring operation, and get it into her hands a day later, with precise information about the high-level conspiracy that was just discussed over in Sudan, the Intelligence Community needs to get him on our payroll stat. He’s a pro at the spy business.

*******

Hillary Clinton was battered with questions by CBS host John Dickerson on Sunday about new revelations from her private email server.

Appearing on Face The Nation, Clinton was asked about ordering an aide to send information through “nonsecure” channels and her hypocritical surprise that another State Department employee was not using a government account at the time.

The Free Beacon reported:

In the June 2011 email exchange, Jake Sullivan, then-Secretary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, discussed forthcoming “TPs,” appearing to refer to talking points, that Clinton was waiting to receive.

“They say they’ve had issues sending secure fax. They’re working on it,” Sullivan wrote of the forthcoming information in an email dated June 17, 2011.

“If they can’t, turn it into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure,” Clinton wrote Sullivan in response the same day.

“Aren’t you ordering him to violate the laws on handling classified material there?” Dickerson asked.

“No, not all, and as the State Department said just this week, that did not happen, and it never would have happened, because that’s just not the way I treated classified information,” Clinton said. “Headings are not classification notices, and so, oftentimes, we are trying to get the best information we can, and obviously what I’m asking for is whatever can be transmitted, if it doesn’t come through secure, to be transmitted on the unclassified systems. So, no, there is nothing to that, like so much else has been talked about in the last year.”

Dickerson said the email was “striking” because it suggested she knew how to get around restrictions for sending classified information.

“You’re saying there was never an instance, any other instance, in which you did that?” Dickerson asked.

“No, and it wasn’t sent,” Clinton said. “This is another instance where what is common practice, namely, I need information. I had some points I had to make, and I was waiting for a secure fax that could get me the whole picture, but oftentimes there’s a lot of information that isn’t at all classified, so whatever information can be appropriately transmitted, unclassified, often was. That’s true for every agency in the government and everybody who does business with the government.”

Clinton said the “important point” was she had “great confidence“ she wasn’t in breach of government regulations on classification.

“In fact, as the State Department has said, there was no transmission of any classified information, so it’s another effort by people looking for something to throw against the wall … to see what sticks, but there’s no ‘there’ there,” she said.

Dickerson wasn’t finished, though, pointing to a 2011 email showing Clinton expressing surprise that another State Department staffer wasn’t using a government account, even while she was flouting rules by using a private email to do business.

That was “what you were doing,” Dickerson said, so “why was that a surprise to you?”

“Well, I emailed two people on their government accounts, because I knew that all of that would be part of the government system, and indeed, the vast majority of all my emails are in the government systems, so that’s how I conducted the business,” she said. “I was very clear about emailing anything having to do with business to people on their government accounts.”

In other words, Clinton did not answer the question about her fairly blatant hypocrisy.

ISIS in the Caribbean and Michelle’s SOTU Guest, Sigh

Posted on January 10, 2016January 10, 2016 by Denise Simon

Top US General Offers Warning on IS Fighters in Caribbean

PENTAGON—

VoA: A top U.S. general is concerned that a small number of motivated Islamic State fighters could commit acts of terror in Caribbean nations.

General John Kelly, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, told reporters Friday at the Pentagon that about 150 Islamic extremists left the Caribbean region to join Islamic State fighters in the Middle East last year, about 50 more than in the previous year.

However, he said, the biggest threat might not be the extremists who leave to train and fight with the Islamic State, but the ones who stay behind.

Kelly said Islamic extremist groups seem to have a new message for would-be jihadists.

“And that [message] is, ‘Rather than coming here to Syria, why don’t you just stay at home and do San Bernardino or do Boston or do Fort Hood?’ ” the general said, referring to attacks in the U.S. perpetrated by Muslims sympathetic to extremist groups. As recently as Thursday, a gunman claiming allegiance to the Islamic State ambushed a police officer as he sat in his car in Philadelphia.

“They [Caribbean nations] don’t have an FBI, they don’t have law enforcement like we do,” Kelly said, adding that the U.S. military provides as much information as it can to agencies in those countries.

Iraq, Afghanistan

When asked about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kelly praised recent comments made to USA Today by General John Campbell, commander of the NATO-led Resolute Support Mission, that the president should delay the drawdown of U.S. troops and maintain the current force of 9,800 because of the volatile security situation in Afghanistan.

He also appeared to pointedly disagree with the U.S. decision to withdraw all troops in Iraq by the end of 2011, telling a reporter there were “other ways to have done it.”

“I believe this war stuff is hard, and it’s not for the untrained and the unadvised,” he said.

Kelly, who served in Iraq’s Anbar province, said the removal of U.S. troops took away vital mentors the Iraqi army needed as it continued to develop.

“The equipment is important, but it doesn’t come close to having people who are just with them,” he said.

Kelly, a Marine, said there would eventually be “pressure” to lower standards for women so more of them could advance in combat roles, such as the Marine infantry and the Army Rangers.

Last year, the Marine Corps asked that certain combat jobs remain closed to women, but Defense Secretary Ash Carter overruled the request.

Pentagon officials have vowed that standards for those jobs will not be lowered.

***

Meanwhile, who will be Michelle Obama’s guest at the State of the Union address? Whoa….

Syrian refugee among first lady’s guests for State of Union

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Syrian scientist stricken with cancer and seeking a new start for his family in Michigan will represent Syrian refugees as a guest of first lady Michelle Obama for the president’s final State of the Union address.

President Barack Obama has committed to accepting an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees, but some Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates are critical of the expansion. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, for example, noted the recent arrest of two Iraqi refugees. During an interview with CNN that aired Sunday, Cruz emphasized that they came to the United States “using the same vetting that President Obama wants us to trust with Syrian refugees.”

Refaai Hamo, his son and three daughters landed at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in December, anxious to rebuild their lives. Hamo fled to Turkey from Syria after a missile attack killed his wife and one other daughter. Hamo was profiled on the popular photo blog Humans of New York and identified as “The Scientist.”

The White House said Sunday that Hamo will be among about 20 guests who will sit near the first lady on Tuesday. The guests include several veterans and service members, including one of the three Americans who thwarted a terrorist attack aboard a Paris-bound train.

Those on the guest list will highlight issues that Obama has attempted to prioritize during his tenure, such as expanded health insurance coverage, and issues that he hopes to work on during his final year, such as criminal justice reform. The guest list includes a California man whose partner was killed in the San Bernardino attack, the first female Army Reserve officer to graduate from the Army’s elite Ranger School and a plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case that found same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. One seat will be empty, to represent the victims of gun violence.

Obama read about Hamo’s story last month. His cancer had gone untreated because he lacked health insurance. The actor, Ed Norton, set up for the Hamo family an online fundraising campaign that raised more than $450,000. The White House described Hamo as living the kind of life in Syria that is associated with the American dream. He married his college sweetheart, and they built a life together before a missile tore through the complex he helped design and where his family lived.

Obama told Hamo through a Facebook posting that, “Yes, you can still make a difference in the world, and we’re proud that you’ll pursue your dreams here. Welcome to your new home. You’re part of what makes America great.”

Other guests include:

— Staff Sgt. Spencer Stone of Sacramento, California, who, along with Anthony Sadler and U.S. Army Specialist Alex Skarlatos, stopped a man from opening fire on passengers aboard a crowded Paris-bound train.

— Oscar Vazquez of Fort Worth, Texas, a veteran who came to the U.S. as a child from Mexico, and now works as a business analyst and advocate for Latino students.

— Sue Ellen Allen of Scottsdale Arizona, co-founder of a nonprofit that helps former prisoners re-enter society.

The Ted Cruz Birth Citizenship Facts

Posted on January 8, 2016January 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

Donald Trump and a few others including John McCain are formally challenging Ted Cruz on his birthright eligibility to be President. These arguments were not cast at Barack Obama’s eligibility even though Hillary Clinton was the first ‘birther’ laying into public judgment questions about his history. This question has never officially been answered as Obama signed an executive order terminating all access to his historical family records.

Below are the facts on Ted Cruz.

Eleanor Darragh, mother of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), was born in Delaware on Nov. 23, 1934, establishing her citizenship by birth–and, according to U.S. law, that of her son, even though he was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on Dec. 22, 1970.

Breitbart: The Cruz for President campaign provided Breitbart News exclusively with the birth certificate.

Later, Ted Cruz’s own birth certificate listed his mother as “Eleanor Elizabeth Wilson.” “Elizabeth” was her mother’s first name, and “Wilson” is a surname from a previous marriage.

Eleanor Darragh Birth Certificate

The Cruz campaign was responding to inquiries from Breitbart News about a document showing that both of Cruz’s parents had been named on a list of voters in Calgary for the 1974 Canadian federal election.

Only Canadian citizens were (and are) able to vote in federal elections. The lists were compiled through a door-to-door process of “enumeration” by registrars, and were publicized partly so that mistakes could be corrected.

According to Elections Canada–the independent, non-partisan agency that runs Canadian elections–“voters were sent a copy of the list showing the name, address and occupation of all voters in the relevant poll.”

Mistakes were frequent (i.e. “Raphael” instead of “Rafael”), and voters were given the opportunity to fix errors.

Ezra Levant, a Canadian conservative journalist who was born and raised in Calgary, recalled the process of enumeration.

“It was like a census… they were very quick and non-obtrusive visits, someone standing in your doorstep,” he told Breitbart News via e-mail. “They certainly didn’t ask for ID.

“It is not surprising to me that there may be a spelling error in someone’s name. A name appearing on the list would not necessarily indicate that they were a citizen, or that they themselves had even spoken to the enumerator—someone else in the household may have spoken for them,” Levant added.

The Cruz campaign told Breitbart News on Friday that Cruz’s mother had never become a Canadian citizen.

“She was in Canada on a work permit and never became a permanent resident, let alone a citizen,” said Jason Johnson, chief strategist for the Cruz campaign.

“She never registered to vote and never applied for Canadian citizenship.”

In a subsequent statement to Breitbart News, Johnson added:

“Eleanor was never a citizen of Canada, and she could not have been under the facts or the law. In short, she did not live in Canada long enough to be a Canadian citizen by the time Cruz was born in 1970: Canadian law required 5 years of permanent residence, and she moved to Canada in December 1967—only 3 years before Senator Cruz’s birth.”

The campaign could not provide her Canadian work permit.

Canadian immigration authorities could not provide Breitbart News with additional documents, citing Canadian privacy laws.

41 Cases in USA on Foreign Born Terror Cases, Growing

Posted on January 8, 2016January 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

Take a look in part to the White House, Obama refugee program in 2011. At this point, the FBI is just barely able to do clean up and investigations that the Obama administration completely created and messed. Sheesh….

The 76,000 admissions numbers shall be allocated among refugees of special humanitarian concern to the United States in accordance with the following regional allocations (provided that the number of admissions allocated to the East Asia region shall include persons admitted to the United States during FY 2012 with Federal refugee resettlement assistance under section 584 of the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 1988, as contained in section 101(e) of Public Law 100-202 (Amerasian immigrants and their family members)):

Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,000
East Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18,000
Europe and Central Asia . . . . . . . . 2,000
Latin America/Caribbean. . . . . . . . 5,500
Near East/South Asia. . . . . . . . . . . 35,500
Unallocated Reserve . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000

The 3,000 unallocated refugee numbers shall be allocated to regional ceilings, as needed. Upon providing notification to the Judiciary Committees of the Congress, you are hereby authorized to use unallocated admissions in regions where the need for additional admissions arises.

Additionally, upon notification to the Judiciary Committees of the Congress, you are further authorized to transfer unused admissions allocated to a particular region to one or more other regions, if there is a need for greater admissions for the region or regions to which the admissions are being transferred. Consistent with section 2(b)(2) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 (22 U.S.C. 2601(b)(2)), as amended, I hereby determine that assistance to or on behalf of persons applying for admission to the United States as part of the overseas refugee admissions program will contribute to the foreign policy interests of the United States and designate such persons for this purpose.

Consistent with section 101(a)(42) of the Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(42)), and after appropriate consultation with the Congress, I also specify that, for FY 2012, the following persons may, if otherwise qualified, be considered refugees for the purpose of admission to the United States within their countries of nationality or habitual residence:

a. Persons in Cuba
b. Persons in Eurasia and the Baltics
c. Persons in Iraq
d. In exceptional circumstances, persons identified by a United States Embassy in any location

You are authorized and directed to report this determination to the Congress immediately and to publish it in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

Disclosure: Another 41 Foreign-Born Individuals Snagged On Terror Charges

FreeBeacon: Following the discovery of a terrorist cell in Texas allegedly operated by an Iraqi who entered the United States as a refugee, the Free Beacon has learned of an additional 41 individuals who have been implicated in terrorist plots in the United States since 2014, bringing the total number of terrorists discovered since that time to 113, according to information provided by Congressional sources.

Since August, however, the Obama administration has stonewalled Congressional efforts to obtain more detailed immigration histories of these individuals, prompting frustration on Capitol Hill and accusation that the administration is covering up these histories to avoid exposing flaws in the U.S. screening process.

The disclosure of these additional 41 individuals linked to terror operations—many already identified as immigrants, others shrouded in secrecy—has stoked further concerns about flaws in the U.S. screening process and is likely to prompt further Congressional inquiry into Obama administration efforts to withhold details about these suspects, sources said.

As the number of legal immigrants connected to terrorism continues to grow, the Obama administration has sought to quash congressional inquiries and rally its allies behind an effort to fund efforts to boost the number of immigrants and refugees from the Middle East.

Many of these immigrants have been caught by authorities planning terrorist attacks on American soil, while others were found to be involved in efforts to provide funding and material to ISIS, according to an internal list codified by congressional sources and viewed by the Free Beacon.

“A growing number of foreign-born terrorists are being identified operating within the United States, and yet the Administration will not provide any information about their immigrant histories,” said one senior congressional source apprised of the issue. “And one can only imagine that for every identified terrorist, there are many more individuals around them who are radicalized, extreme or otherwise detracting from American society in ways beyond the threat of terrorism alone.”

As congressional calls for increased screening methods go mostly ignored, local authorities are dealing with an uptick in terror-related crimes committed by legal immigrants.

On Thursday, the Justice Department accused two Iraqi refugees legally in the U.S. of conspiring to provide support to ISIS.

Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, a 24-year-old Palestinian born Iraqi refugee who had been living in Texas, was charged with aiding ISIS. The man had been granted legal permanent residence in Houston in 2011, though it was later determined that he “swore untruthfully on his formal application when applying to become a naturalized U.S. citizen,” according to the Justice Department.

Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, also a Palestinian born Iraqi, allegedly“traveled overseas to fight alongside terrorist organizations and lied to U.S. authorities about his activities,”according to the Justice Department

Al-Jayab entered the U.S. as a refugee in 2012 and later travelled back to Syria, where it is believed that he resumed “fighting with various terrorist organizations,” according to the charges.

Late Thursday, a Philadelphia police officer was reportedly ambushed by an assailant sporting “Muslim garb and wearing a mask,” according to local reports.

Additional information viewed by the Free Beacon outlines another 20 previously unknown individuals brought up on similar terrorism-related charges in 2015 alone.

Those who have been charged were legally residing in the U.S. after entering from countries such as Egypt, Uzbekistan, Albania, Pakistan, and Syria, according to information provided by Congressional sources.

“The terrorism-related arrests of two more Iraqi refugees on American soil proves once again our screening process is weak and needs to be updated,” Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill,) said in a statement Friday.

With incidents and indictments of this nature continuing to rise, critics of the Obama administration’s immigration policy are expressing concern about a last-minute funding effort in 2015 to fully fund refugee resettlement and visa programs.

These priorities, which were granted full funding as part of a yearly spending bill approved by Congress last year, will permit around 170,000 new migrants from Muslim-majority countries to enter the United States in 2016, according to the Senate’s immigration subcommittee.

“The omnibus gave the green light for the administration to continue this failed immigration policy over the objections of the electorate,” the senior Congressional source quoted above said.

The Senate continues to uncover dozens of cases in which individuals accused of terrorism entered the country legally.

“Preventing and responding to these acts is an effort encompassing thousands of federal agents and attorneys and billions of dollars: In effect, we are voluntarily admitting individuals at risk for terrorism and then, on the back end, trying to stop them from carrying out their violent designs,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) warned last year as Congress considered the spending bill.

Student Visas Equal Terror and Spies?

Posted on January 7, 2016January 7, 2016 by Denise Simon

US student visa program’s ‘many vulnerabilities’ raise spying, terror fears

FNC: From potential terrorists who enroll at phony schools only to melt into the U.S. population, to foreign scientists who come to study weapons technology at America’s top schools, the student visa program is allowing dangerous enemies into the country, a former top federal official told FoxNews.com.

Recent attention has been focused on refugee programs and illegal border crossings, but the Achilles heel in America’s immigration system may be the program that invites 1.2 million foreigners into the U.S. each year, according to Claude Arnold, retired special agent in charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Los Angeles bureau of Homeland Security Investigations. Once here on student visas, immigrants are barely monitored and tens of thousands don’t show up for classes and fall off the government radar.

“Our legal immigration system has many vulnerabilities and the student visa program is no different,” Arnold said. “It is only a matter of time before there is either some horrible criminal act, or some act of terrorism, and there is absolutely no information available that would have caused [authorities] to go out and pick that person up.”

“It is only a matter of time before there is either some horrible criminal act, or some act of terrorism, and there is absolutely no information available that would have caused [authorities] to go out and pick that person up.”

– Claude Arnold, retired ICE special agent in charge

Most of student visa recipients do exactly what they said they would do when they applied – take advantage of America’s vaunted system of higher education and leave when the terms expire. But every year, approximately 58,000 overstay their visas and drop out of contact with authorities. While the vast majority of those are not terrorists or spies, some are, said Arnold.

ICE’s 7,000 agents simply don’t have the ability to monitor all of them, Arnold said. By the time a red flag goes up, it may be too late.

“You have to conduct a threat assessment and go after those who are a threat to national security,” Arnold said. “But within that universe of people who are visa overstays, there could be people who are radicalized, and we just don’t know it because there is no intelligence on them,” he added.

Foreign enemies know how to exploit the student visa program, Arnold said. Iran, in particular, has sent scientists to the U.S., ostensibly to study other subjects, but really to gain knowledge to benefit Iran’s weapons program.

“My concern was we had Iranian students who studied at Iran’s big physics school and were essentially nuclear physicists working on their bomb project,” Arnold said. “We had cases where they would register for a mechanical engineering class in the U.S., but really all they were trying to do is get access to an aeronautical engineering program, so they could work on the delivery system for Iran’s nuclear program.”

The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security share responsibility for screening applicants and monitoring them once they arrive.

ICE officials told FoxNews.com each school that takes in visa recipients has a designated official who serves as a point of contact between students, the school and the government’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program to ensure the federal computer tracking system is updated. In addition, 58 field representatives visit approved schools twice a year to ensure compliance.

The State Department, which oversees part of the student visa program, told FoxNews.com in an emailed statement it is committed to a “transparent and efficient visa application process,” and maintains extensive programs to vigorously combat and investigate visa fraud.

Fraud prevention managers engage in public outreach, training, detailed review of cases, statistical analysis and other activities, including communicating with host government officials and U.S. law enforcement authorities, the statement said.

Applicants are screened by a host of federal agency databases and personnel against databases of fingerprints of known and suspected terrorists, wanted persons, immigration law violators, and more than 75.5 million criminal history records.

ICE statistics show countries sending their students include several considered by the U.S. as State Sponsors of Terrorism, including Syria and Iran, as well as Saudi Arabia, China and Pakistan. More than 700 Syrians came to the U.S. via the student visa program in 2014, and another 3,700 came from Iran the same year.

“We don’t really know if State’s efforts are effective or if they are helping reduce fraud and abuse of visa programs, because Department of Homeland Security refuses to release a report detailing the number of overstays in each visa category and from each country, even though Congress has mandated this report since at least 2004,” said Jessica Vaughan, a former State Department consular officer who now is the director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, DC-based research institute.

“What I am worried about is students who are allowed to get a student visa to attend some nondescript school and then they disappear,” said Vaughan, who noted that Hani Hanjour, the 9/11 hijacker who flew Flight 77 into the Pentagon, had obtained a student visa but never showed up for class.

Too often, schools play along. ICE has cracked down in recent years on “visa mills,” or facilities that help foreigners get a student visa for a fee, but never hold classes or ensure students attend class. Three California residents pleaded guilty last March in a “pay-to-stay” scheme involving three sham schools in Los Angeles.

The schools had legitimate-sounding names, like Walter Jay M.D. Institute and the American College of Forensic Studies, and took in millions of dollars in tuition fees. But investigators found classes that were supposed to hold 30 students had just few, if any students. According to Arnold, who oversaw the investigation, the schools existed only to facilitate foreign students’ purchase of visas under the guise of studying.

“This is an example where the system worked,” said Arnold.

In addition to better screening and monitoring, Arnold believes overstaying a visa should be a misdemeanor. That might make visa holders less likely to violate the terms, and would also trigger alarms if they were stopped for a traffic violation or arrested for another reason.

Arnold and Vaughan also want tighter controls on the kinds of schools that can accept foreign students. Some trade school programs that teach subjects like massage, baking and horseshoeing could invite fraud. And courses that teach material with military applications invite something even more sinister, Arnold said.

“Why do we want people who are our enemies, whether it is potentially ISIS or Iran, here learning technical skills they are going to use against us?” he said. “It is insane.”