Is the Biden-Harris administration risking another 9/11?

The immediate cause of the September 11 disaster was the failure of US border security. In particular, the terrorist attackers succeeded in their suicide mission because U.S. government agencies failed to maintain a national watch list that would have easily identified the operational leader of 9/11, Mohamed Atta.

This story is the reason for the recently released report House Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement deserves serious attention. The report makes clear that since the Biden-Harris administration began opening the border, U.S. authorities have encountered at least 382 undocumented immigrants on the national terrorist watchlist. This alarming data apparently did not catch the attention of the White House or convince senior officials to reassess how the border is managed.

Comparing this moment to the period before 9/11 is sobering. As then, Washington’s leadership today appears misguided and shortsighted in its management of the terrorist threat to the homeland. As before 9/11, the White House’s assumption today seems to be that our counterterrorism defenses are working well enough.

The number 382 in the report is just the tip of the iceberg; this figure represents illegal individuals that U.S. authorities actually encountered and identified in the terrorist database. It is estimated that there are also “runaways”. 1.9 million illegal immigrants who came to the country without any official contact. Unlike legal immigrants, whom U.S. consular officials typically pre-screen in their home countries, these uninvited border crossers arrive in our country as complete unknowns.

By refusing to close the border, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas condones this influx because ensuring “social justice” for foreigners seeking to enter our country is a higher priority for him than national security. This cavalier approach casts a spotlight on the once bipartisan (and now clearly dead) consensus on America’s counterterrorism strategy. Mayorka’s approach seems remarkably resistant to the painful lessons of the fanaticism and deadly creativity of the 9/11 attackers.

Examining the parallels requires a look back at the cunning Atta, the irreplaceable leader of 9/11, who repeatedly managed to enter the United States by planning kidnappings. The fact that the CIA knew exactly who Atta was before the attack but did not share that information with U.S. immigration authorities and the State Department is a major reason why the federal government today, despite all its imperfections, undertakes its massive terrorist surveillance program.

My own part of Mohamed Atta’s story began in the first chaotic days after the September 11 attacks, when I was an American diplomat in Germany. Shortly after commercial passenger jets struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, crazy American investigators concluded that Atta was crucial to the success of the hijackings. In those early days of panic, a worldwide request was sent out for all possible information about Atta, with particular emphasis on Germany, where the mass murderer had lived for years.

At the U.S. Consulate in Leipzig, I received a call from a contact in the local American missionary community who explained that he knew Atta. The young Latter-day Saint indicated that he clearly recognized the photo of Atta that had recently been published around the world. The missionary explained that he met Atta on the German university scene, where their paths often crossed; during chance meetings they debated among themselves and proselytized among German and foreign students.

An Egyptian citizen, Atta cleverly used his status as a foreign student in Hamburg to recruit bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network throughout Germany. Like the rest of the planet, I saw that Atta was a fanatical killer, but during the phone conversation I also learned that he was extremely intelligent, even handsome and persuasive, spoke perfect German, and had an impressive knowledge of world religions.

Atta was dangerous, a kamikaze type of adversary who literally gave his life to attack the United States homeland. His story should remind us of the dangers that a few dedicated terrorists can pose to our country because of unmanaged borders. Today, one wonders whether Mayorkas ever considered whether zealots of Atta’s caliber could be thrown into today’s waves of unknown immigrants.

In the first days after September 11, the German press followed Atty’s story. German police media sources left no doubt that the CIA also knew exactly who Atta was, closely surveilling him while he lived in Hamburg and as he moved around Germany. This disturbing fact was largely downplayed during Congress’s autopsy into the terrorist disaster as the agency moved quickly at home to protect its professional reputation.

Following the reconstruction of the terrible events, most observers would rightly expect that the CIA should have, of course common he gave them key information about Atta to the Department of State (which issued Atta a student visa for flight school) and U.S. immigration officials (who regularly checked Atta at airports). Sharing such identity information is the essence of a good watchlist, and before 9/11, the US had a terrorist watchlist process in place, although few in Langley took it seriously.

Institutionally, the CIA had other priorities at the time, although Langley officials were certainly aware that Atta had flown in and out of the United States. The agency’s security oversight rested not only with Atta but also with other key 9/11 conspirators. The short explanation for why the CIA did not share the information is probably a combination of bureaucratic incompetence, lack of imagination, and covert mission arrogance.

No one at Langley thought of the risk of allowing a fanatic like Atta free into our country; The agency’s officers in the field, being something of devoted patriots, undoubtedly calculated that by not disclosing Atta’s arrival in the United States, they were protecting the future possibility of infiltrating his network and perhaps recruiting an insider. In hindsight, they simply did not have enough imagination to see the grave danger that Atta actually posed.

In our current national times, Mayorka’s version of that same official myopia is his wokeness, i.e., declaring that pursuing social justice on behalf of the millions of foreigners who want to enter the country is worth the risk of letting in another Mohamed Atta. The details surrounding 9/11 continue to blur with each passing year, and Mayorkas and his team simply cannot imagine such a scenario.

The clear conclusion is that a competent U.S. government watchlist could have easily deterred Atta and kept him out of our country. Without Atta to unite the hijackers’ suicide teams, the 9/11 attacks almost certainly would not have been as devastating as they were and most likely could have been prevented entirely.

Congress and the White House have done almost nothing to punish the incompetence and failure of the federal bureaucracy. Secretary of State Colin Powell fired deputy secretaryprobably the only senior official in the entire federal government to be fired for the 9/11 disaster. The CIA’s George Tenet survived and thrived by orchestrating the US intelligence community’s “discovery” that a dictator in Iraq had developed weapons of mass destruction.

Congress and the White House turned the disaster into an opportunity to vastly increase spending, expand government espionage, and go to war in Iraq – all to make up for what was actually a simple government failure: the failed watch list. The irony is that in the wake of the 9/11 panic, even the watchlist bug was not effectively and efficiently fixed, but was instead radically reworked with a massive FDR-LBJ big government tsunami.

Washington spent billions and hired thousands of new federal officials. In terms of creating watch lists, Congress created new security agencies such as the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and the Terrorist Control Center (TSC). Both were created to collect and manage the most advanced terrorist database in the world. The idea that the government’s failures could be improved by pushing for efficiency and better use of existing resources and staff was likely to be ridiculed.

Today there are more than that 2.5 million identity on the national terrorist watchlist. Foreign names around the world linked to terrorist activities are being dusted off by U.S. officials, and these efforts are being strengthened by significant electronic capabilities. Critics say too many names have been included in the vast database. This criticism is valid. The system is due to the fact that the database includes “known or suspected” terrorists and the “suspected” category is extensive.

Today, this huge number of identities on the watchlist probably contributes much to Mayorkas’ cavalier attitude that just because an illegal immigrant he encounters is on the database does not make that person a “real” terrorist. How else could our DHS Secretary reasonably argue that he should not seal the border right away?

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It is impossible to determine what actual self-delusion lies behind the reckless thinking of Mayorkas and his senior team to justify their continued, unprecedented policy of bringing in literally thousands of illegal immigrants every day. They continue to implement policies that encourage more to come.

Today, as we approach the U.S. presidential election, new waves of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants hiding in Tapachula, Mexico are beginning to make their way to the southern border, all with the tacit approval of Mexican authorities. Whether Vice President Kamala Harris wins or loses the White House, hundreds of thousands of new people will emerge this winter, all trying to enter the country.

Whatever motivates Mayorkas, there is good reason to fear that he is engaging in the same kind of hubris and stupidity that underpinned the CIA’s decision not to take action on Atta’s presence in our country in the summer of 2001. This is an irresponsible risk. -taking.