WASHINGTON, March 13 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush on Wednesday said he was "plenty hot" when he received word the Immigration and Naturalization Service had issued student visas to two of the suicide hijackers six months after the attacks on New York and Washington that killed some 3,000 people.
"I was stunned. And not happy. Let me put it another way: I was plenty hot. And I made that clear to people in my administration. I don't know if the attorney general has acted yet today or not...He got the message. And so should the INS," Bush told reporters during an afternoon press conference.
Bush said he would hold INS commissioner James Ziglar accountable for what he called the "embarassing disclosure," but said he would give him time to complete his task of reforming the agency.
"The first wakeup call was from me: this agency needs to be reformed. And secondly, he got another one with this embarrassing disclosure today that, as I mentioned, got the president's attention this morning. I could barely get my coffee down when I opened up my local newspaper," Bush said.
Bush had expressed his displeasure after it was discovered that student visas for suicide hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi were mailed to the Huffman Aviation flight school in Venice, Fla. The news prompted the president to direct Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge and Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate how the visas were released.
Aides said Bush wanted to know how and why it happened and stressed that it wanted the system fixed.
Atta and al-Shehhi are believed to have died, along with 17 other alleged hijackers, when they forced airliners into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Atta also is believed to have been the leader of the conspiracy that led to the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington, though U.S. officials have said it was ordered by Saudi renegade Osama bin Laden.
Huffman Aviation applied for the visas for its two students on Aug. 29, 2000. The INS approved the visa for Atta on July 17, 2001, and the one for al Shehhi Aug. 9, 2001. The visas were mailed March 5, 2002, and arrived Monday. The INS called the incident an embarrassment, but pointed to a backlog of applications that has existed for years.
"The INS needs to be reformed. And it's one of the reasons why I called for the separation of the paperwork side of the INS from the enforcement side. And obviously, the paperwork side needs a lot of work. It's inexcusable. And so we've got to reform the INS, and we've got to push hard to do so. This is an interesting wakeup call for those who run the INS," Bush said.
Bush called the information system the agency uses "antiquated", but said he was certain officials there "got the message", particularly since it got his attention "in a negative way."
The INS, which falls under the purview of the U.S. Department of Justice, has borne the brunt of sharp criticism since Sept. 11 mostly aimed at its record-keeping practices, procedures and failure to communicate with other critical law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, also an arm of the DOJ. Ashcroft lauched an inspector general's investigation on Wednesday.
"I have asked the inspector general to investigate the disturbing failures in the INS's record-keeping, document-processing and mailing systems," Ashcroft in a statement. "It is inexcusable when document mismanagement leads to a breakdown of this magnitude. Ashcroft vowed that individuals would be held responsible for any professional incompetence and that INS quality control mechanisms would be reformed.
The incident also drew fire from Capitol Hill. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., called it a "major embarrassment" and a recognition that the federal government still had a lot of work to do. But he said what trouble him most was that Ridge in December turned down a $15 billion proposal to fund homeland security. In that proposal, he said, was $25 million to bolster the data base for monitoring foreign student visas.
"Now we were told last December that wasn't required; that wasn't necessary. We were told by Mr. Ridge directly that it just wasn't needed. Well, here we are, several months later, with one of the most embarrassing revelations that I've seen since 9/11. I think Mr. Ridge needs to come to the Congress to testify; to explain why this money wasn't required last December, why things like this are going on,
Daschle said.
(With reporting by Michael Kirland at the U.S. Department of Justice.)
