The murders who hijacked four airliners on September 11, 2001 were Islamic fundamentalists who were in this country illegally. Shielded by political correctness and using false documents and misinformation, they attended flight schools in various parts of this county and learned enough about operating a jet aircraft to allow them to crash into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. It was only because of the bravery of civilian passengers aboard the fourth plane, who forced the aircraft off course and to crash into a field in Pennsylvania, that the White House was saved from destruction. You would think the bureaucrats in Washington would have learned from the mistakes that preceded the horrors of 9/11.
So how is it that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) approved flight training for 25 illegal aliens at a Boston-area flight school that was owned by yet another illegal alien, asks the Government Accountability Office? The illegal-alien flight-school attendees included eight who had entered the country illegally and 17 who had overstayed their allowed period of admission into the United States, according to an audit by the GAO.
Six of the illegal aliens were actually able to get pilot’s licenses.
And it was only because of a routine traffic stop by a Massachusetts police officer that another 9/11 may have been averted. The local police officer–not federal authorities–pulled over the owner of the school on a traffic violation and were able to determine that he was an illegal alien.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R.-Ala.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security, said he found the GAO’s findings “amazing.”
Stephen Lord, who is the GAO’s director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues, testified about the matter on July 18 in Rogers’ subcommittee. Rogers asked him: “Isn’t it true that, based on your report, the Transportation Security Administration cannot assure the American people that foreign terrorists are not in this country learning how to fly airplanes, yes or no?”
Lord responded: “At this time, no.”
Although the illegal alien who owned the Massachusetts flight school had not undergone a required TSA security threat assessment and had not been approved for flight training by the agency, he nonetheless held two Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) pilot licenses, also known as FAA certificates.
A GAO report, entitled “General Aviation Security: TSA’s Process for Ensuring Foreign Flight Students Do Not Pose a Security Risk” has weaknesses.
In response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. homeland perpetrated by terrorists who learned how to pilot aircraft at flight schools in Florida, Arizona, and Minnesota, the TSA, a component of the Department of Homeland Security* (DHS), developed the “Alien Flight Student Program (AFSP) to help determine whether foreign students enrolling at flight schools pose a security threat,” said the GAO’s Stephen Lord in written testimony prepared for lst Wednesday’s hearing in the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security.
* Head of the DHS is Janet Napolitano current United States Secretary of Homeland Security.
According to the 911 Commission Report, four of the Sept. 11 hijackers who entered the United States with legal visas had overstayed their authorized period of admission.
Under the Alien Flight Student Program, foreign nationals are supposed to be subjected to a TSA security threat assessment prior to receiving flight training to determine whether they pose a security threat to the United States.
The “weakness” in TSA’s Alien Flight Student Program, noted by GAO, is that it does not check for immigration status.
“According to TSA regulations, an individual poses a security threat when the individual is suspected of posing, or is known to pose, a threat to transportation or national security, a threat of air piracy or terrorism, a threat to airline or passenger security, or a threat to civil aviation security,” Lord said in his written testimony.
A GAO official said, based on their names, none of the 25 illegal aliens who attended the flight school appeared to be from Muslim countries. Instead, they had Latin American names.
Editor’s note; al Qaeda’s influence in Mexico and Latin America has grown rapidly in the last decade. Neither the Bush, and especially not the Obama administration, have allotted sufficient resources to fight the invasion of Islamic fundamentalism in these countries.
“According to TSA officials, when a foreign national applies to AFSP to obtain flight training, TSA uses information submitted by the foreign national–such as name, date of birth, and passport information–to conduct a criminal history records check, a review of the Terrorist Screening Database, and a review of the Department of Homeland Security’s TECS [anti-terrorism] system,” Lord testified.
“AFSP is not designed to determine whether a foreign flight student entered the country legally; thus, a foreign national can be approved for training through AFSP after entering the country illegally,” stated the GAO in its report. “In March 2010, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigated a Boston-area flight school after local police stopped the flight school owner for a traffic violation and discovered that he was in the country illegally. In response to this incident, ICE launched a broader investigation of the students enrolled at the flight school.”
“ICE found that 25 of the foreign nationals at this flight school had applied to AFSP and had been approved by TSA to begin flight training after their security threat assessment had been completed; however,” reads the GAO report, “the ICE investigation and our subsequent inquiries revealed the following issues, among other things:
–“Eight of the 25 foreign nationals who received approval by TSA to begin flight training were in ‘entry without inspection’ status, meaning they had entered the country illegally. Three of these had obtained FAA airman certificates [pilot’s license]: 2 held FAA private pilot certificates and 1 held an FAA commercial pilot certificate.
–“Seventeen of the 25 foreign nationals who received approval by the TSA to begin flight training were in ‘overstay’ status, meaning they had overstayed their authorized period of admission into the United States.
–“In addition, the flight school owner held two FAA airman certificates. Specifically, he was a certified Airline Transport Pilot (cargo pilot) and a Certified Flight Instructor. However, he had never received a TSA security threat assessment or been approved by TSA to obtain flight training. He had registered with TSA as a flight training provider under AFSP.”
The GAO found that not everyone in the FAA registry had been vetted properly and did not provide the full number of individuals who were not properly vetted.
The GAO’s Stephen Lord, in his prepared remarks, told lawmakers that the TSA does not screen new and existing FAA pilot license holders against the Terrorist Screening Database until after the foreign national has completed flight training.
“Thus, foreign nationals obtaining flight training with the intent to do harm, such as three of the pilots and leaders of the September 11 terrorist attacks, could have already obtained the training needed to operate an aircraft before they received any type of vetting,” warned the GAO.
The TSA and ICE are working on a pilot program for vetting the names of foreign nationals against immigration databases.
However, the GAO noted that the two agencies “have not specified desired outcomes and time frames, or assigned individuals with responsibility for fully instituting the program.”
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