The bill is the Send Equipment for National Defense (SEND) Act, H.R. 3422.

Rep. Poe: Use Iraq military equipment to police Mexican border, The Hill, November [...]]]> Texas Representative Poe has introduced legislation that a portion of the military equipment coming home from Iraq be transferred to the Mexican border to help with national security closer to home.

The bill is the Send Equipment for National Defense (SEND) Act, H.R. 3422.

Rep. Poe: Use Iraq military equipment to police Mexican border, The Hill, November 15, 2011

Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) on Tuesday introduced a bill that would ship 10 percent of the returning military equipment from Iraq to the border of Mexico for border security.

“The American people have invested billions of dollars in equipment used to secure Iraq; now it’s time to use that equipment to secure the United States,” said Poe. “State and local officials are doing the job of the federal government—defending the international border with Mexico.”

In comments earlier today, Poe said the equipment is needed because U.S. border sheriffs say they are “outmanned, outgunned and out-financed by the drug cartels.”

Poe said equipment that could be shipped to the southern border includes humvees, night vision equipment and surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). He said 1.5 million pieces of equipment have already left Iraq, and 900,000 remain in that country.

Poe added that the Send Equipment for National Defense (SEND) Act, H.R. 3422, would give the Defense Department the discretion to keep its equipment if DOD certifies that there is an urgent need to do so.

Another example has been the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani suburb. Way too much has already been revealed to the public concerning tactics, weapons and military units. Joe Biden [...]]]> The Obama administration has a way of playing fast and loose with national security — like maintaining open borders in a dangerous world.

Another example has been the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani suburb. Way too much has already been revealed to the public concerning tactics, weapons and military units. Joe Biden blabbed that Navy SEALs performed the mission after even his boss said merely that “a small team of Americans” did the deed.

Now we hear that Hollywood will get special access to secret military details about the Osama operation so the filmmaker can produce a feature to be released just before the election. Just to give Obama a little boost, which he will need around that time.

Rep. Peter King was not impressed, and said he might have a hearing to investigate.

In another possibility for next year’s eventful pre-election season, it was announced this week that the Statue of Liberty would be closed starting Oct. 29 for a one-year renovation. The re-opening will certainly make a nice photo-op.

As I noted in Iraqi Refugees Pose a Terror Threat, in 2008 Sixty Minutes created [...]]]> This just in: authorities have noticed that Washington’s permissive refugee policy regarding Iraqis has created a national security threat. The rush to rescue meant that do-gooder behavior trumped normal prudence in background checks, and dangerous persons were admitted as a result.

As I noted in Iraqi Refugees Pose a Terror Threat, in 2008 Sixty Minutes created a major sob story (The List: A Mission to Save Iraqi Lives) that 100,000 noble Iraqi freedom-fighters who helped Americans needed to be quickly resettled to the US to rescue them from death. The story appears to have the desired effect.

So now, 58,000 Iraqi refugees reside in this country and should be rescreened. There is a new list, one with 300 names who are thought to have a higher possibility of being enemies of America.

Below, refugees Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi are accused of terrorism. Alwan is now thought to have participated in roadside bomb attacks in Iraq, but was still welcomed to the United States because of sloppy vetting procedures.

Iraqi refugees in U.S. rechecked for terrorism links, Los Angeles Times, July 18, 2011

Officials fear lapses in immigration security may have let insurgents and potential terrorists enter the country. More than 58,000 Iraqis are being screened again.

Reporting from Washington— In a far-reaching inquiry, authorities are rescreening more than 58,000 Iraqi refugees living in the United States amid concerns that lapses in immigration security may have allowed former insurgents and potential terrorists to enter the country, U.S. officials said.

The investigation was given added urgency after U.S. intelligence agencies warned that Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq and Yemen had tried to target the U.S. refugee stream, or exploit other immigration loopholes, in an attempt to infiltrate the country with operatives.

The rescreening began late last year after the FBI learned that an Iraqi man in Kentucky had participated in roadside bomb attacks in Iraq before he was granted U.S. political asylum in 2009. He and another Iraqi refugee were arrested in an FBI sting in May on charges of trying to send explosives and missiles to Iraq for use against Americans.

So far, immigration authorities have given the FBI about 300 names of Iraqi refugees for further investigation. The FBI won’t say whether any have been arrested or pose a potential threat.

The individuals may have only tenuous links to known or suspected terrorists. The names were identified when authorities rechecked phone numbers, email addresses, fingerprints, iris scans and other data in immigration files of Iraqis given asylum since the war began in 2003.

They checked the data against military, law enforcement and intelligence databases that were not available or were not utilized during the initial screening process, or were not searched using sufficient Arabic spelling and name variations.

It addition to the Iraqis, authorities have rescreened a smaller number of refugees from Yemen, Somalia and other countries where terrorist groups are active.

U.S. officials say they have tried to plug the gaps as quickly as possible.

Unlike earlier screenings, for example, immigration officials now must check an Army-run biometric database of known and suspected bomb makers and other insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan before a refugee is admitted from either country. They also have added other background and security checks.

The enhanced screening procedures have caused a logjam in regular visa admissions from Iraq, even for those who risked their lives to aid American troops and who now fear reprisals as the Obama administration winds down the U.S. military presence.

In the Kentucky case, the FBI learned in November from a confidential informant that Waad Ramadan Alwan had constructed improvised roadside bombs in Iraq before he was granted U.S. asylum in April 2009.

Alwan allegedly told the informant that he had planted bombs near the oil refinery town of Baiji in northern Iraq in summer 2005. In December, the FBI’s field office in Louisville asked for help from the FBI-run Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center in Quantico, Va.

The little-known center warehouses more than 70,000 defused bombs, all recovered in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003, for possible use as evidence. The stockpile is so large that 300 forensics experts and other technicians are assigned to respond to requests from investigators or intelligence analysts.

In January, after checking several thousand items in the inventory, the FBI said it had found Alwan’s fingerprints on a cordless phone that had been wired to detonate an improvised bomb near Baiji in 2005.

A bomb squad had found the phone and sent it to Quantico. But it was labeled “low priority” and was not dusted for fingerprints until this year, said a U.S. law enforcement official who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

The case has exposed several immigration and intelligence security gaps.

At a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing last Wednesday, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) criticized the FBI for failing to check for fingerprints on all the recovered bombs.

“I don’t understand why they would be behind by five or six years,” he said. He said there was “no excuse” for the delay.

An FBI spokesman would not say how extensive the backlog is or when it might be resolved. But experts said bomb parts rarely carried usable fingerprints.

So far, the FBI has identified 430 prints at the center and added them to a biometric database that the Army has compiled from captured and detained insurgents.

But the Army’s database — which also contains photos, palm prints, iris scans and sometimes DNA samples — was kept off the Internet to prevent hacking. It thus does not connect to the immigration database, and names must be cross-checked one at a time, officials said.

The Army agreed in March to begin reconfiguring its system so it could share biometric data with the Homeland Security Department and immigration authorities. For now, immigration officials can access the Army database “through manual processes,” said Bill Phillips, policy branch chief for the Army’s Biometrics Identity Management Agency.

Stewart Baker, former head of policy at the Homeland Security Department, called the situation “shocking.” In an interview, he said the database should have been shared with immigration and other government agencies “at the earliest possible time.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) asked Homeland Security Department and State Department officials at last week’s hearing whether they were approving too many asylum applications.

“I don’t fault you for missing the needle in the haystack,” he said. “You’ve got to make the haystack smaller.”

About 18,000 Iraqi refugees were admitted last year, but the number has fallen sharply since new screening procedures were imposed.

About 30,000 Iraqis have applied for asylum. Many worked as interpreters or held other positions with the U.S. military, aid groups or companies in Iraq and say they face reprisals because of those ties.

Kirk Johnson, founder of the List Project, a nonprofit group that tries to help Iraqis facing such threats, said immigration security lapses should not become “a pretense” to stop admitting Iraqi refugees.

Americans can’t “ignore the obligation we have” to protect Iraqis who are persecuted because they served alongside U.S. forces, he said.

Most of the visa [...]]]> Silicon Valley remains a big magnet for foreigners dreaming of tech jobs. One popular ticket is admittance to a squirrelly unaccredited university. Washington curiously allows student visas for unaccredited schools, despite the obvious scam appeal, and the result is rubber-stamping visas for dollars. Lots of dollars, as more foreign students are admitted.

Most of the visa grifters come to rip off American jobs, but the permissiveness also attracts terrorists. One example is Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, a Saudi student arrested in February on charges that he planned to build bombs for terror attacks inside the United States. More than 26,000 Saudis got F-1 and F-2 visas in 2010, up from 6836 in 2001, based on the kumbaya idea (from George Bush and the State Department) that increased numbers of Saudis educated in the US would mean better relations and less jihad.

The San Jose Mercury News did an investigative report on visa mills and featured it on its Sunday front page (image here).

Universities or Visa Mills?, San Jose Mercury News, July 16, 2011

With his new student visa, Prasanth Goinaka was on a path toward his dream: an MBA from an American university in the heart of Silicon Valley.

That’s why his parents back in India were stunned when their 28-year-old son was killed while manning a cash register at a convenience store in Oklahoma City — 1,500 miles from campus.

A Bay Area News Group investigation has found that Goinaka — as well as thousands of other foreign students enrolled in schools here — probably should not have been in the country at all. They’re being lured by unaccredited universities that promise help getting a prized student visa. But it turns out that these universities’ legal right to assist with visas is in question.

Once here, students like Goinaka often have to go to extraordinary lengths to pay the bill.

But how he ended up losing his life halfway across the country from San Jose’s International Technological University is part of a much larger story of the U.S. government’s failure to catch up to a growing problem in America’s higher education system.

Little-known and less-watched, a group of schools — including San Jose’s ITU, Sunnyvale’s Herguan University and until recently Pleasanton’s now-shuttered Tri-Valley University — are building lucrative businesses by assembling student bodies comprised almost entirely of student-visa holders. Yet, the newspaper’s investigation found none of the schools meet the criteria necessary to assist foreign students to come here: They are neither accredited nor do their credits transfer to recognized universities.

“Universities like Tri-Valley are causing an enormous surge of international students,” said Mohan Nannapaneni, secretary of the Milpitas-based Telugu Association of North America. The Indian nonprofit group raised $5,465 to ship Goinaka’s body to his distraught parents and donated legal help to 155 traumatized Tri-Valley students, some tagged with electronic tracking devices when the federal government shut down the school on visa fraud charges.

“Why are we putting immigration authority into (these) “… universities’ hands?” Nannapaneni said.

University officials deny any wrongdoing.

But records reviewed by the newspaper tell a different story about the schools’ actions, and suggest the government and even the students themselves are to blame for the problem.

Government approved
A decade after terrorists in the country on student visas carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security — the very agency established to oversee a tougher visa system — endorses universities that should be ineligible to issue the necessary certificate for students to gain F1 student visas, records show. It even places these schools on the list that international students consult before pursuing a degree in the U.S.

Tri-Valley University was on that list even as federal agents were raiding the school in January on widespread allegations of visa fraud and alien harboring that left 1,500 foreign students in legal limbo and sparked violent protests in India.

“It is having approval I thought it is good university,” former Tri-Valley computer science student Harsha Sri, 25, said in an email. He paid $2,700 to attend less than a month’s worth of classes and is now back in India.

Tri-Valley demonstrates the riches that can be made from turning a school into a visa mill. When federal agents finally caught on, they discovered that the unaccredited school had been paid millions of dollars by foreigners to obtain student visas that authorize them to remain in the U.S. — a scheme whose growth was fueled by a profit-sharing system that gave students who referred newcomers from abroad a 20 percent cut of the tuition, according to court records.

Something else authorities found suspicious: More than 550 students enrolled in the Alameda County university were registered as living at the same address: a two-bedroom apartment on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale.

Call for crackdown
So how do schools that exist to provide student visas get away with it? U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other lawmakers are exploring just that, and they’re beginning to demand answers. “These sham universities “… operate solely for the purpose of manipulating immigration law to admit foreign nationals into the country,” Feinstein and three other senators wrote in a March letter to Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that cited the Tri-Valley University allegations.

Questions have been raised about ITU and Herguan, but those schools haven’t been charged criminally and haven’t been accused of the same conduct.

In the case of the two Silicon Valley universities, their applications to enroll foreigners with student visas appear to misrepresent the facts. Both claimed that their credits were accepted by accredited schools. But when pressed by the newspaper, neither school could support that assertion. Still, the applications were accepted by the government, and both schools have been given clearance to issue the certificates needed for students to get visas.

While the Department of Homeland Security refused to answer questions about specific schools, it provided the newspaper both ITU’s and Herguan’s visa program applications in response to a public records request. The documents showed:

Herguan’s application states that it is accredited by the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education — an agency that has no accrediting authority. The Sunnyvale-based school also states that its coursework is accepted by other recognized schools but provided no proof on its application, nor any proof when pressed by the newspaper.

In an email response, Richard Friberg, the school’s vice president, said “this is a competitive market, releasing the names of the schools will cause the receiving schools to withdraw their letters since they do not want it known that they are supporting schools that are yet to be accredited. … you are not going to get HGU to expose the other schools.”

ITU’s application acknowledges that it is unaccredited. ITU contends that it meets federal criteria because its credits are accepted by recognized universities — but no proof was submitted. School officials asserted to the newspaper that their courses are accepted by San Jose State, Santa Clara, Stanford and the University of California system — a claim all the universities say is not true.

“We would not award any credit from either institution,” said Terri Eden, who oversees SJSU’s transfer credit policies.

Big prize: Legal jobs
Still, trusting students arrive at these schools in droves, lured by fancy websites and advertising slogans such as ITU’s “Global Development Through Silicon Valley Education.” About 900 students are attending ITU’s summer school — and it plans to enroll up to 5,000 students when renovations are complete. The school does not require standardized test scores for admission and employs a “quality control officer” in Hyderabad, India, for prospective students.

In an interview with the newspaper, ITU said its graduates get jobs at tech companies like Brocade and Intel. Brocade has no records of any ITU graduates; Intel has one.

At Herguan, about 450 students are enrolled. Until recently, the lobby was decorated with photos of its president with former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and commendations from U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, and others.

The students are attracted for another big reason: legal jobs. Government approval means that the schools are authorized to offer “Curricular Practical Training,” a program that is supposed to give on-the-job experiences that are “an integral part of an established curriculum” directly related to the students’ major area of study, according to federal regulation.

The federal government leaves it to colleges to determine what kind of job is legitimate, saying it doesn’t want to meddle in curriculum issues. At Tri-Valley, immigration officials found “career training” for many students translated to low-level retail jobs, such as at a dollar store, a 7-Eleven and a tobacco shop, in New Jersey, Virginia, Texas and other states.

In need of jobs
Goinaka came to San Jose’s ITU in January 2010 with a bachelor’s degree and a stint in the Indian navy.

Video surveillance at S-K Food Store where he worked in Oklahoma City shows a heartbreaking scene. He was dragged from the cash register, shoved to the ground, and then shot in the head by armed robbers.

“I can’t believe this. He left only two months ago for studies and now we heard that he is no more,” Goinaka’s father told Indian journalists in March 2010. “Oh god, why this happened to him.”

Goinaka had friends in Oklahoma, where police reports show he arrived on a Friday, the same day ITU officials said he attended class in San Jose. Two days later he was dead. It’s unclear how he proved to the U.S. consulate in India that he had enough money to live in the U.S., a requirement for a student visa.

On news of his death, one friend wrote to an Indian newspaper: —… due 2 financial prbs he desperately needed a job. But I NEVER expected this would happen 2 him. But he did wat he had to. R.I.P love u alwys.”

Federal law requires that foreign students attend class full time and not take more than one online class per academic term. ITU says that it has students who live outside California, but who travel to San Jose for weekend classes.

“It can be done on a weekend format. “… They can do assignments from a distance. The model of the school is very tied to industry,” said Gregory O’Brien, ITU’s dean of Advanced Graduate Studies and Research. “Distance learning is a proven concept.”

Mikel Duffy of ITU said: “What happened to Prasanth Goinaka was very tragic,” adding, “Prasanth, as all of the other graduate students at ITU, was a legal adult and took it upon himself to make the trip to Oklahoma City.”

But members of the group that helped ship his body home say Goinaka’s story is an example of the broken promises many Indians are finding at colleges in the U.S.

“He was a hardworking and disciplined kid and we lost him in this country,” said Prasad Thotakura, president of the Telugu Association of North America.

“He came to this country to further his education and to go back and help his parents by getting a good job. He was their only son. All their dreams have been shattered.”

Accreditation promises
Housed in nondescript office buildings, both ITU and Herguan say they are legitimate universities and offer valuable coursework, as well as a legal route for foreign students to work off campus.

They both said that no school can be accredited until it is up and running — and that they are now seeking accreditation and expect approval.

“We will be accredited,” said ITU Vice President Yau-Gene Chan, who took over the school from his father in 2005 — a year after it lost accreditation — when it had only 18 students and was $87,000 in debt. By 2009, it had enrolled 1,500 students and earned $4 million. Because of student demand, it moved to its current site on West San Fernando Street, with 12 classrooms; when renovation is complete, it will have 18 classrooms.

“Our research can very easily compete with MIT or Princeton or Berkeley or Stanford,” he said, adding that its students have gone on to earn Ph.D.s at those schools, although he offered no evidence. Even without accreditation, “because we provide documentation of what a student is learning, we can get our credits recognized. We do such a careful job of documenting what a student learns, and they see the quality of our students.”

ITU graduate Bhagat Patlolla landed a job at a Stanford cardiovascular research lab, but had already earned a medical degree in Russia before attending ITU. “Studying at ITU involved hard work and commitment,” he said in an email, praising the faculty. “Two years at ITU taught me a lot.”

Although ITU is a nonprofit university, its leadership is well paid. ITU’s academic vice president, Gerald Cory, earned $445,832 in 2009, the most recent year that data is available — more than the $436,800 salary of UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau.

Herguan University did not consent to an interview, but in a written response, officials said, “HGU believes it meets the standards for accreditation and plans to be accredited within the next 12 months.”

Herguan did not permit on-campus interviews of its students. But one, who asked that his name not be used, said, “This university surely did some mistakes and this is the reason behind all this chaos. But they have changed all the rules. “… I think we have to give them a chance.”

Meanwhile, despite facing a 33-count indictment, Tri-Valley President Susan Xiao-Ping Su is asking her former students to keep faith on the former school’s website. Su — who has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley and lectured at Herguan in 2007, ITU in 2004 to 2007, and San Jose State from 2004 to 2007 — urges students “to move on” but adds: “TVU has many good things and is a very genuine university. We are working very hard to have our name cleared.”

Jump in student visas
Feinstein and four other senators have called for better procedures to detect fraud by schools and an immediate crackdown on illegal use of student visas by foreign nationals to attend universities that “exist solely to allow any foreign national “… to unlawfully enter the United States.”

It wasn’t always like this, said Nannapaneni of the Telugu Association of North America.

Decades ago when Nannapaneni left India to study at Boston University, far fewer universities were approved to accept international students, he said; now, federal data show that 10,000 schools do. In the five-year period that ended in 2009, foreigners in the country on student visas jumped 55 percent to more than 950,000. In the past, these universities were academically rigorous, he said, carefully checking applicants to make sure they were qualified.

“Then universities started going abroad and recruiting people off the streets,” Nannapaneni said. “They don’t check their backgrounds, to see if they are qualified. What has happened is that there was a big trend change.”

Michael Wildes, a prominent New York City-based immigration lawyer, said, “There is a shift of immigration responsibility to the schools. But the schools are profit-making centers. This creates a point of vulnerability in the system.”

The students at these unaccredited schools tend to be from India’s young and growing middle class, and whose parents are not college educated, say Indian educators.

“They can’t visualize that the schools might not have a good reputation,” Nannapaneni said. “Or they might think, ‘What the hell, I’ll see what is there.’ They hear their friends are going, and they all want to come.”

“Once they get here, they realize it’s not right. But they still need to pay their fees,” to hang onto their student visas, “and they start working outside, because they’re desperate for money.”

Back in India, Tri-Valley student Sri is poorer and still jobless.

“Students are joining without knowing,” Sri said, “so unfortunately they are losing their careers, money and time.”

When an illegal alien somehow is allowed to work in a nuclear power plant, protecting the safety of the public cannot be seen as a priority. Any wanna-be Osama could easily blackmail such [...]]]> Under the Obama administration we citizens have seen national security shrink in importance (not that Bush was much better, given his border permissiveness).

When an illegal alien somehow is allowed to work in a nuclear power plant, protecting the safety of the public cannot be seen as a priority. Any wanna-be Osama could easily blackmail such a person with exposure if he didn’t cooperate in a jihadist attack.

At the nation’s biggest nuke plant, all that’s necessary for a worker with no identification to be admitted is that a known worker vouch for him. Weak.

Sheriff Arpaio: Illegal arrested at Palo Verde nuke plant , KTAR, July 15, 2011

PHOENIX — An illegal immigrant used a fake ID to get past security and entered the Palo Verde Nuclear plant west of Phoenix, according to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

“We have arrested an illegal alien who has penetrated and gone into the Palo Verde nuclear plant,” Arpaio said Thursday, adding that he is outraged at another example of the lack of security along the Arizona-Mexico border.

Cruz Loya Alvares was taken into custody by Sheriff Deputies Wednesday and interrogated by the Sheriff’s Human Smuggling detectives.

Cruz admitted to deputies he has been in the U.S. for most of the past 15 years. He was detained and deported in 2000 but paid a coyote re-entry into the U.S.

Also, he was cited by Mesa Police last month for driving with a suspended license.

According to Sheriff Arpaio, Cruz tried to gain access to the Nuclear power plant on Monday but was denied entrance because his Mexican Driver’s license was expired.

“To some extent security at this nuclear power plant worked,” Arpaio said in a released statement. “But still, an illegal immigrant was permitted to gain access to this facility. This raises the question: how safe is Palo Verde really if an illegal alien can gain access to this nation’s largest nuclear power facility?

“This suggests to me that sadly, like our nation’s borders, our most critical public utilities/installations are perhaps not nearly as safely guarded as they need to be.”

Two different people working in security at the power plant also told Sheriff’s officials that drivers of contractor’s vehicles can “vouch” for the passengers if no identification documents are on hand at the time of entry.

“In post 9/11 times, “vouching” for employees who contractor’s know little about is not good practice for a facility as critical as a nuclear power plant,” Arpaio added.

Jim McDonald with APS said the highly secured areas were properly protected.

“No question about the safety of the plant or of the public as a result of this,” he said. “Reactors, control rooms, any kind of vital system,” employees have to have extensive background checks to gain access.

Palo Verde is the nation’s largest nuclear plant. It is 50 miles west of downtown Phoenix.

Now it turns out that Melson was not willing [...]]]> A couple weeks ago, the mainstream press reported that the acting head of ATF, Kenneth Melson (pictured), was about to resign, given the worsening Gunrunner scandal in which his agency purposely allowd thousands of guns to be sent to Mexican organized crime in order to track them.

Now it turns out that Melson was not willing to take the fall, and has been speaking with Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley, the two leaders pursuing the case. Rep. Issa had previous called for Melson’s resignation, but he has reversed that position since Melson has become more cooperative to the investigation.

Sen. Grassley sent a letter dated July 5 to Attorney General Eric Holder which detailed the meeting in understandable, non-lawyer language (Read here.)

Another news item in the case is that the FBI was involved in the so-called “sting” operation, unbeknownst to the ATF. Acting Director Melman alleged (according to the Grassley letter) that the Justice Department had kept the ATF in the dark regarding the activities of other agencies, which was both inefficient and confusing.

As Grassley wrote, “Specifically, we have very real indications from several sources that some of the gun trafficking “higher-ups” that the ATF sought to identify were already known to other agencies and may even have been paid as informants.”

That’s no way to run a law enforcement department, and it speaks poorly of the improved inter-agency communication the nation was promised after the 9/11 terror attacks.

See also Powerline’s analysis of the recent revelations: Fast and Furious Blows Sky High.

Additionally concerning is how high the Justice Department cover-up goes — although it is hard to imagine that permission for a cross-border operation wouldn’t go at least to the top of the agency.

Justice Department Obstructing ‘Fast and Furious’ Gun Probe, ATF Director Says, Fox News, July 6, 2011

The Justice Department is obstructing the congressional investigation of a U.S. law enforcement operation intended to crack down on major weapons traffickers on the Southwest border, according to the embattled leader of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Ken Melson, the acting director of the ATF, lobbed the accusation when he sneaked in for an interview with congressional investigators on July 4, two days ahead of his scheduled interview with the inspector general about the operation known as “Fast and Furious,” Fox News has learned.

“If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand,” Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder. “That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation.”

The Justice Department is reportedly looking to oust Melson, who has been acting ATF director since April 2009, as the agency deals with its biggest scandal in nearly two decades. Andrew Traver, who was tapped in November by President Obama to become the permanent ATF director, could be named as acting director until the Senate acts on his nomination, sources have said.

In a separate development, congressional sources have learned that not only was U.S. taxpayer money being used to buy guns that were later sent to Mexico, but the main target of the investigation was actually a FBI informant and former drug dealer who had been deported years ago.

“Fast and Furious” has been at the center of an investigation by Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. The operation began in the fall of 2009 as an effort to trace and stop the trafficking of illegal guns on the Southwest border, but instead allowed thousands of guns to get into the hands of Mexican cartel members.

The two say they learned about the program after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010. At the crime scene were two guns linked to the “Fast and Furious” operation.

At an Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing last month, three federal firearms investigators testified that they wanted to “intervene and interdict” loads of guns, but were repeatedly ordered to step aside to allow suspected smugglers to carry the weapons over the border.

Issa and Grassley have urged Holder to cooperate and turn over subpoenaed records that would reveal the scope of the government coverup.

The alleged coverup involves three law enforcement agencies: the ATF, FBI and the DEA, or Drug Enforcement Administration.

According to sources, unbeknown to the ATF, the target of their operation was a FBI confidential informant, a fact that only became known to them in April of this year after an 18-month investigation that cost millions of dollars of tax dollars.

“They were going after someone they could never have,” a source in Washington told Fox News. “The Mr. Big they wanted was using government money to buy guns that went to the cartels. The FBI knew it and didn’t tell them.”

The confidential informant is a former high-level drug dealer who had been deported by the DEA. The FBI, however, recruited him as a counter-terrorism informant, providing information on potential dirty bombs or Al Qaeda suspects moving through the border region.

The FBI informant was picked up on a DEA wiretap, and forwarded to the ATF.

The video below from Hannity is an update on the connection between Mexican organized crime and hostile Islam.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

The question is why isn’t Washington taking this threat and all the others [...]]]> As noted here earlier, Mexican organized crime is not the only problem we have facing us from the southern border area. Islamic hostiles like Hezbollah have observed the existing criminal infrastructure in Mexico and have seen an opportunity for their own jihadist schemes.

The question is why isn’t Washington taking this threat and all the others seriously. One indicator of unseriousness is the feds’ removal of the National Guard from the border. The troops were scheduled to stay for one year only, but the lawlessness remains critical and there is need for them to stay.

Isn’t border security national security?

Terrorist Group Setting Up Operations Near Border: Hezbollah Considered To Be More Advanced Than Al-Qaida, San Diego KGTV, May 4, 2011

SAN DIEGO — A terrorist organization whose home base is in the Middle East has established another home base across the border in Mexico.

“They are recognized by many experts as the ‘A’ team of Muslim terrorist organizations,” a former U.S. intelligence agent told 10News.

The former agent, referring to Shi’a Muslim terrorist group Hezbollah, added, “They certainly have had successes in big-ticket bombings.”

Some of the group’s bombings include the U.S. embassy in Beirut and Israeli embassy in Argentina.

However, the group is now active much closer to San Diego.

“We are looking at 15 or 20 years that Hezbollah has been setting up shop in Mexico,” the agent told 10News.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. policy has focused on al-Qaida and its offshoots.

“They are more shooters than thinkers … it’s a lot of muscles, courage, desire but not a lot of training,” the agent said, referring to al-Qaida.

Hezbollah, he said, is far more advanced.

“Their operators are far more skilled … they are the equals of Russians, Chinese or Cubans,” he said. “I consider Hezbollah much more dangerous in that sense because of strategic thinking; they think more long-term.”

Hezbolah has operated in South America for decades and then Central America, along with their sometime rival, sometime ally Hamas.

Now, the group is blending into Shi’a Muslim communities in Mexico, including Tijuana. Other pockets along the U.S.-Mexico border region remain largely unidentified as U.S. intelligence agencies are focused on the drug trade.

“They have had clandestine training in how to live in foreign hostile territories,” the agent said.

The agent, who has spent years deep undercover in Mexico, said Hezbollah is partnering with drug organizations, but which ones is not clear at this time.

He told 10News the group receives cartel cash and protection in exchange for Hezbollah expertise.

“From money laundering to firearms training and explosives training,” the agent said.

For example, he tracked, along with Mexican intelligence, two Hezbollah operatives in safe houses in Tijuana and Durango

“I confirmed the participation of cartel members as well as other Hezbollah individuals living and operating out of there,” he said.

Tunnels the cartels have built that cross from Mexico into the U.S. have grown increasingly sophisticated. It is a learned skill, the agent said points to Hezbollah’s involvement.

“Where are the knowledgeable tunnel builders? Certainly in the Middle East,” he said.

Why have Americans not heard more about Hezbollah’s activities happening so close to the border?

“If they really wanted to start blowing stuff up, they could do it,” the agent said.

According to the agent, the organization sees the U.S. as their “cash cow,” with illegal drug and immigration operations. Many senior Hezbollah leaders are wealthy businessmen, the agent said.

“The money they are sending back to Lebanon is too important right now to jeopardize those operations,” he said.

The agent said the real concern is the group’s long-term goal of radicalizing Muslim communities.

“They’re focusing on developing … infiltrating communities within North America,” the agent told 10News.

Chair Lamar Smith noted the administration’s hypocrisy about immigration being a federal issue, when it attacked Arizona for enforcement but let Utah slide for its amnesty-lite approach. Rep. [...]]]> The May 3 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Justice Department Oversight with Attorney General Eric Holder was quite a lively one. (Watch the hearing on C-SPAN.)

Chair Lamar Smith noted the administration’s hypocrisy about immigration being a federal issue, when it attacked Arizona for enforcement but let Utah slide for its amnesty-lite approach. Rep. Louis Gohmert had an intense exchange with the AG over the DOJ’s refusal to prosecute unindicted co-conspirators identified in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation case — watch.

But the most news was made by Rep. Darrell Issa’s questioning about Project Gunrunner, a scandal that has been increasingly burbling up for months, after the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) encouraged thousands of guns to be bought in this country and sent to Mexican cartels in a poorly considered “sting” operation. — watch Issa.

(In addition, Senator Grassley took up the topic of Gunrunner when he questioned Holder in a Senate hearing the following day, May 4 — watch.)

Fox News reported that the ATF has a history of reckless activity:

Friction Grows Between Lawmakers and DOJ Over ‘Project Gunrunner’ Probe, Fox News, May 4, 2011

It started with one whistleblower, but now involves dozens of investigators, has created a standoff between the Department of Justice and lawmakers and threatens Mexico’s diplomatic relationship with the United States.

Friction is growing over the probe into the failed “Project Gunrunner” program — run by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms that intended to stop the flow of guns to criminals in Mexico. Whistleblowers claim the bureau actually encouraged the illegal sale of firearms to known criminals, then allowed those guns to be smuggled to Mexico and tracked.

On Tuesday, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) went after Attorney General Eric Holder for refusing to answer questions and subpoenas for documents that implicate who approved the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives project that allowed guns purchased illegally in U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico on behalf of the drug cartels with the knowledge and consent of the ATF.

“We’re not looking at straw buyers, Mr. Attorney General, we’re looking at you,” Issa said. “We’re looking at you, we’re looking at your key people who knew or should’ve known about this.”

Holder shot back.

“The notion that somehow or another that this Justice Department is responsible for those deaths, that assertion is offensive,” Holder said, referring to the death of American Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

“What if it’s accurate, Mr. Attorney General?” Issa responded. “What am I going to tell Agent Terry’s mother about how he died at the hands of a gun that was videotaped as it was being sold to a straw purchaser fully expecting it to end up in the hands of drug cartels?”

Holder responded. “We’ll have to see exactly what happened with regard to the guns that are an issue there.”

Also on Tuesday, in a letter to the attorney general signed by both Issa and Sen.Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the Congressmen say they are “disappointed that you do not appear to be taking this issue seriously enough”. Grassley, in a handwritten postscript, tells Holder he is being ‘ill-served’ by staff who are not telling him the whole story.

The theatre on the Hill is an outgrowth of an ongoing investigation that dates back to allegations two months ago from ATF agent John Dodson, a lone voice and career agent who told Fox News in March that the tactic of letting guns “walk” was approved by his supervisors in the Phoenix ATF office over the objections of several agents.

“How many people have to die?” he said. “We don’t know where those guns are gonna end up. I’ve been here since the beginning. Tell me I didn’t do the things that I did. Tell me you didn’t order me to do the things I did. Tell me it didn’t happen.”

Dodson was motivated in part by the death of Terry. At the scene of his shooting, police found two AK-47s that were purchased in the U.S. and distributed to drug cartels. These guns were traced to a gun shop that was working with the ATF Project Gunrunner and the Operation Fast and Furious program.

The gun shops say they were encouraged by ATF to sell the guns to suspected straw buyers, an act that is illegal. ATF agents assured the owners the sales were fine and part of an investigation. Unknown to the owners however, the guns were allegedly allowed to flow to Mexico into cartel hands.

The ATF hoped to trace the guns and ultimately make arrests of “bigger fish” in the trafficking network. That apparently never happened. Investigators believe more than 1,800 weapons, including assault rifles, made their way into Mexico, where they were used to commit violent crimes. This disclosure enraged many Mexican lawmakers, who want to sue the gun stores and prosecute U.S. officials who approved the plan.

While Holder and President Obama are content with an internal investigation conducted by the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General, others are not.

“When I made complaints against the ATF, they were completely ignored and whitewashed and they left the same people in place to operate Project Gunrunner,” says ATF Tucson Agent Jay Dobyns.

Dobyns spent two years undercover with the Hells Angels. While he became a star witness in the prosecution of 15 members of the motorcyle gang on charges ranging from extortion to murder, he also became a target of their revenge.

“You are gonna spend the rest of your life running from the Hells Angels,” he says they told him. “We know who you are, we know where you live.”

The ATF office in Phoenix, specifically Agent-in-Charge Bill Newell and his deputy, George Gillette, promised to protect Dobyns, but Dobyns says they didn’t. He says the Hells Angels threatened to rape his wife and behead his children. Weeks later, Dobyns says the gang burned down his house with his family inside. Miraculously, they escaped.

“They abandoned us, they ignored us,” said Dobyns.

He filed a complaint against the ATF. Seeking to contain the damage, the DOJ Office of Inspector General investigated and concluded the agency acted “recklessly, needlessly and inappropriately.”

That was in August 2009 against Newell, Gillette and the ATF officials in charge. However, no one was held accountable. Operation Fast and Furious, under the direct authority of the ATF Phoenix Office, was launched less than six months later. Dobyns says allowing the ATF to conduct another OIG investigation would be a mistake

“They do not care what the OIG says. They don’t care what the OIG conclusions are.”