Please find below an example of UPI's continuing coverage of intelligence reform and related matters. A shorter version appeared on page A5 of Wednesday's Washington Times. I hope you find it interesting. You may link to the web version - which will be updated with material from Crawford, Texas during the day - at this URL:
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20050322-090642-2160r If you have any comments or questions about this piece, need any more information about UPI products and services, or want to stop receiving these alerts, please get in touch. Thank you, Shaun Waterman UPI Homeland and National Security Editor E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 202 898 8081 Bush summit shadowed by border concerns By Shaun Waterman UPI Homeland and National Security Editor WASHINGTON, March 23 (UPI) -- Less than three percent of foreigners legally entering the United States by land are checked against watch lists of terror suspects, according to a report from the Homeland Security inspector general. Coming on the eve of President Bush's summit with the leaders of Canada and Mexico, the revelation will sharpen concerns about the national security risks posed by the country's porous borders. Summit participants are to unveil a framework for deepening cooperation on border and trade issues, senior administration officials said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. But preparations for the summit have been somewhat overshadowed by the politically contentious issue of border security. Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Adm. James Loy told a recent congressional hearing that senior al-Qaida leaders have discussed using the United States' southern border as a back door through which to get terrorist operatives into the country. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently told reporters while visiting Mexico City that both northern and southern borders were a security concern. As part of its efforts to create a seamless biometric border to guard against such infiltration, the Department of Homeland Security, with great fanfare, began last year to implement its US-VISIT program at land ports of entry. Already in place at airports and seaports, the program biometrically verifies the identity of foreign visitors by taking fingerprints and enables their identities to be checked against watch lists of known and suspected terrorists and their associates. But the inspector general's report, quietly posted on the department's Web site last week, reveals that, despite the much-touted rollout, only a fraction of foreigners making the more than 200 million land-border crossings every year have their identity biometrically verified and are checked against the watch lists. "We are concerned about the large numbers of travelers who are exempt from the enrollment in US-VISIT," says the report, citing Mexicans holding Border Crossing Cards and Canadians who are "visa exempt." Together these two categories make up almost two thirds of all foreign entrants at land ports of entry, according to the report. And the report points out that there are no easy solutions, since the volume of traffic on the border means that any additional delay would effectively clog the nation's arteries. It cites an earlier survey by the inspector general's office that found an additional 20-second delay for the 3.5 million cars crossing the northern border every year would increase total processing time by more than two years. The issue of border security has become a hot potato in the run-up to Wednesday's summit because expressions of concern by U.S. officials have aroused an angry reaction in some quarters. Mexican Minister of the Interior Santiago Creel told the newspaper El Universal this week that such expressions of concern were "offensive" and undermine the two nation's close relationship. In Canada the reaction was more muted, but public opinion there seems concerned that a closer security relationship with the United States might jeopardize Canada's traditionally welcoming attitude toward asylum seekers or require an unnerving degree of information sharing. "The real time sharing of information with U.S. security agencies about a foreigner visiting Vancouver with no intention of entering the United States seems certain to cause a stir," opined the Toronto Globe and Mail this month, adding that just such transparency would be necessary to the most ambitious visions of a common U.S.-Canadian security frontier. Ahead of the summit, White House officials were tightlipped about the details of the initiative to be unveiled Wednesday, but one senior official told reporters that the security cooperation measures planned between the three countries would be "about as aggressive and ambitious as ... our systems can pull together." In the meantime, the Homeland Security inspector general's report points out that the goal of an "automated, integrated entry exit program" for the United States alone is "at least five to 10 years" away. No one from the Department of Homeland Security responded to requests for comment Tuesday, but officials have in the past pointed out that to obtain Border Crossing Cards Mexican citizens have to undergo background checks that include running their names against terrorist watch lists. Nearly 7 million Mexicans hold the cards, which allow them to enter for up to 30 days if they stay within 25 miles of the border, and used them to make 104 million border crossings last year. But the report says that in the vast majority of cases, the cards, which bear their holders photographs, are only "visually inspected" by border officials because the scanners that can electronically read them are not located in the so-called primary inspection lanes, where routine crossings are handled. "As a result, the entry of (the card) holders is not electronically recorded and their identity is not verified," states the report. Moreover, counter-terrorist specialists point out that names are added to the watch list all the time, and that -- absent electronic scanning -- it would be possible for someone who had been added to the watch list since being issued the card to enter the country with relative ease. One U.S. intelligence official who specializes in border issues recently told United Press International that the northern border was -- or should be -- of as great a concern as the southern one because of Canada's historically welcoming asylum policies and the historic presence of at least one terrorist group closely associated with al-Qaida, the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. "We know they had at least one cell there," said the intelligence official, "and that's one more than the number of confirmed Islamic terror cells in Mexico." In a briefing for reporters ahead of Wednesday's summit in Texas, a senior administration official said that cooperation on issues of border security would be high on the agenda in the talks. "A large part of the effort to improve our security ... is going to focus on our ability to improve our cooperation along the borders, both in Canada and in Mexico, and to determine how we can address larger transnational threats, whether they be drug-trafficking, whether they be movement of illegal immigrants, or potential movement of terrorists across frontiers," said the official. They said the details of the accords would be worked out later after consultation with industry, Congress, state and local governments and Mexican and Canadian officials, and they would include ambitious efforts to eliminate regulatory barriers to cross-border commerce. At times struggling to balance their desire to emphasize the event's significance with their absolute unwillingness to pre-empt Wednesday's announcement, the officials said the summit would essentially empower the ministers responsible for security and commerce in each country to develop "a very specific list of deliverables and timetables" on cross-border issues. The leaders would "put in motion a process and a framework" for addressing issues that hitherto had been dealt with piecemeal. Significantly, they added that the process would have what is referred to in Europe as variable geometry: "We'll do it with the idea that where we can work among the three of us to achieve high standards ... we'll do that; but where there are areas where the cooperation is best achieved between the two of us, we'll do that, as well ... so that we don't get caught in a least common denominator mode." -- Copyright (c) 2001-2005 United Press International [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Give underprivileged students the materials they need to learn. Bring education to life by funding a specific classroom project. http://us.click.yahoo.com/FHLuJD/_WnJAA/cUmLAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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