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US State Department - Still OUT of Control!
Sunday, July 14, 2002
State Department Detains National Review Reporter
A reporter for National Review magazine whose story on a controversial State Department program described by a Department official as "an open-door policy for terrorists," was detained by security personnel yesterday after a contentious briefing in which he challenged a department spokesman.
According to National Review Online (NRO), when contributor Joel Mowbray challenged top State Department press spokesman Richard Boucher on his account of events at State this week, Mowbray was detained. As he was about to leave the briefing, a State Department official, accompanied by four guards, asked him to stay "to answer a few questions." When Mowbray said he's come back later, the official said, no, they wanted him to answer a few questions immediately.
When Mowbray realized he was being barred from leaving he asked "Am I being detained?" When a diplomatic security official who suddenly appeared told him he wasn't being detained, he said he was leaving. At that point, NRO said, a guard stepped in front of him and said, "Now, you're being detained."
He was in custody until he reached a lawyer on his cell phone and held until National Review called the State Department's press office to ask what was happening to him. An NRO staffer who reached a Department press officer was told Mowbray wasn't detained. When asked to explain just why Mowbray was not allowed to leave, the woman said "I wasn't there! I don't know what happened!"
Would that the State Department were as tough on the Saudis, NRO commented.
The trouble started when Mowbray challenged Boucher on his account of events at State this week, which resulted in the firing of Mary Ryan, head of the Department's Consular Affairs (CA) office and the Department's longest-serving career diplomat who became a target of a congressional uproar created by Mowbray's reporting on the "Visa Express" program which gives Saudis easy access to U.S. visas.
Mowbray read a classified cable that had been leaked to him that contradicted Boucher's account. NRO noted that both Mowbray and the Washington Post quoted from the cable earlier this week and that "State Department officials were not amused. Very not amused."
The controversy that resulted in Ryan's firing, involved the so-called "Visa Express" program which allowed Saudi visitors to get their visas through travel agents rather than from the State Department directly. Ryan was appointed to the job in 1993 under the Clinton administration and the program was very much her baby.
In his explosive expose of the programs Mowbray wrote that "Three Saudis who were among the last of the Sept. 11 homicide hijackers to enter this country didn't visit a U.S. embassy or consulate to get their visas; they went to a travel agent, where they only submitted a short, two-page form and a photo. The program that made this possible, Visa Express, is still using travel agents in Saudi Arabia to fill this vital role in United States border security."
Visa Express, Mowbray explained, "allows residents of Saudi Arabia, including non-Saudi citizens, to apply for non-immigrant visas at private travel agencies. After submitting the short form and photo to a travel agent, applicants simply wait to receive a visa in the mail. Sure, the consulates review the applications once received from the travel agencies, but aside from the question of fraud, our field officers in consulates lose an opportunity to weed out shady characters who appear fine on paper. Most Saudi applicants never come into direct contact with a U.S. citizen until stepping off the airplane onto American soil."
Mowbray quoted a senior Consular Affairs official as describing the program as "an open-door policy for terrorists." "Take a sample month," Mowbray wrote. "The U.S. consulate in Jeddah interviewed only two of 104 applicants, rejecting none. The month in question? The first 30 days after 9/11."
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that enjoys such privileges when it comes to visas, Mowbray said.
"[Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs] Mary Ryan has chosen diplomacy over law enforcement," complains Nikolai Wenzel, a former consular officer in Mexico City.
"During her nearly decade-long tenure as head of CA, Ryan's most notable - and dubious - achievement is the dramatic decline in the number of visa applicants interviewed.
"It used to be most people were interviewed; now it's about one-fifth," Jessica Vaughan, a former consular officer in Belgium and Trinidad and Tobago told Mowbray.
Mowbray charged that Ryan's Consular Affairs office "Lied again this week, although in fairness, the person in question could have just been clueless. In sworn congressional testimony, Dianne Andruch, Ryan's deputy, said that Visa Express "has been shut down." Visa Express, however, is still alive and well. Quick calls to both Saudi Arabia and Consular Affairs in D.C. this week confirmed that Visa Express is still in operation.
"Most current and former consular officers - those with a clear head, at least - agree that Washington's rush to 'do something' won't cure what ails CA." Former consular officer Wenzel points the finger straight to the top: "We can pass all the laws we want, but nothing's going to change as long as Mary Ryan is in charge of Consular Affairs."
Thanks to Mowbray, Ryan is no longer there. And thanks to that fact, Mowbray had the unique experience of being detained by Department goons.
And, as NRO noted "for at least a few minutes, Mowbray had a harder time leaving the State Department than many Saudis have had entering the country."
Said a source long familiar with the Department: "Ryan's office used to be the Office of Security and Consular Affairs. Under Secretary of State John Foster Dulles it was headed first by Scott MacLeod, and then by Johnny Haines, and later by his former CIA chum, Rod O'Connor, three gentlemen of the old school. Under them the officials and security guards who had the gall to detain a reporter for doing his job would have been fired before the clock struck five."
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