The Foreign Service Journal, June 2010

J U N E 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 41 reau of Intelligence and Research, John Arriza, who then became a passionate advocate for the system. It required difficult negotiations with the intelligence agencies to persuade them to declassify basic data such as the names, nationali- ties, birth dates and passport num- bers of suspected terrorists so these could be added to the list. Thanks to Ryan’s initiative, by September 1995 every visa applicant was checked against that list through a secure broadband connection back to Washington. At a time when the FBI had no internal e- mail and was still using paper case management files, it was, as the 9/11 Commission would later conclude, an “im- pressive” accomplishment. And the system worked. Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a senior al-Qaida leader and room- mate of the 9/11 plot’s ringleader, Mohammed Atta, tried four times in 2000 to get a visa to come to the United States. Each time he was rejected because his name was in TIPOFF. To Ryan and her colleagues in consular affairs, the story of what had gone wrong before 9/11 was a simple one: the intelligence agencies were either unaware or had failed to share what they knew about the hijackers, so there was no information about any of them in TIPOFF. Former col- leagues of Ryan say she was enraged when she learned after the attacks that the CIA knew that two of the hi- jackers had met with known al-Qaida operatives in Malaysia in January 2000. That information was never given to the State Department, which granted visas to both men. In a testy exchange before the Senate Judiciary sub- committee in October 2001, Ryan made headlines by charging that either there had been “a colossal intelligence failure ... or there was information that was not shared with us who are the outer ring of border security.” A Failure of Imagination? For all the progress Ryan had made, however, and her justified anger at the CIA for hoarding intelligence, the 9/11 attacks had, in fact, exposed serious weaknesses in the visa system. They were not technological, but came in- stead, in a phrase that would be used many times during the investigation of the attacks, from a “failure of imagina- tion.” Organizations, governmental or otherwise, have a hard time doing more than one or two big things well. For the consular service in the 1990s, the big thing was man- aging the enormous growth of travel to the United States. The Iron Cur- tain had been torn down in Europe, and strong economic growth in Asia had created a huge newmiddle class with global aspirations. The result was a boom in travel to the United States. Except for concerns over illegal immigration fromMex- ico, there was no question at the time that the United States should encourage the trend. Democrats wanted an open door for refugees and a generous policy of family re- unification, while Republicans wanted a steady supply of foreign workers to keep the U.S. Chamber of Commerce happy. Both parties favored admitting more foreign stu- dents for universities, more skilled workers for Silicon Val- ley, more tourists to fill American hotels, and more wealthy Arabs paying for treatment at U.S. hospitals. The State Department, quite reasonably, reflected those priorities. Nowhere was that more evident than in Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 hijackers received their visas. For half a century, Saudi Arabia had been the most important U.S. ally in the most volatile region of the world. And as one consular official interviewed by the 9/11 Com- mission put it, “our mission in Saudi Arabia [was] to be as accommodating as we possibly could.” Under the traditional criteria used to evaluate visa ap- plicants, that was not a particularly tough sell. The biggest hurdle for visitors to the United States has long been, and remains today, the legal presumption that anyone coming here intends to stay and immigrate. To overcome that pre- sumption, individuals must demonstrate strong ties to their home countries — family, work, a history of travelling abroad and returning, and the finances to make the trip. For most Saudis, this was not a problem. As George Lannon, Ryan’s former deputy, later put it: “Saudis didn’t come and dig ditches; they didn’t go to work in McDon- ald’s. They partied and they left.” Indeed, State Depart- ment policy in the 1990s was to treat all Saudi applicants as having overcome the “intending immigrant” presump- tion. That meant they were often not required to fill out visa application forms completely, did not need to show proof of a home address or financial means and, in many cases, were not asked to appear for a personal interview. F O C U S For all the progress Ryan had made, the 9/11 attacks did expose serious weaknesses in the visa system.