9/11 Working-level Employee

|\E BUT UNCLASSIFIED

11 DEPARTMENT OF STATE
\\ BOARD OF GOVERNORS

\\e of Inspector General

; \m of Conversation
\e 6f NTVs to 9/11 US Consulate General. Dubai. January 20. 2003
i \s UAE
\ Office Date
\ | Bert Kriee and Doug Ellice
\. SA
\ Inspector

I [traveled from Beirut to Dubai to meet the inspectors there. She was interviewed on
Monday morning in the conference room of the Consulate General, She related that she testified
oij August 6,2002, in Washington, DC, before staff members of the Burton committee [get full
name of committee]. She has not been party to any other interviews; however, not the Bureau of
Consular Affairs, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, or the FBI have interviewed her about her
issuance of nonimmigrant visas to 10 of the hijackers. Asked about the February, 2002 visit to
affected posts by CA delegate Gretchen Welch, she responded that Welch had conducted
infoitnal discussions about new visa clearance procedures and did not question|____jabout
what had happened.

| \d in Jeddah on July 1,2000 to begin herfirstForeign Service assignment.

She had a one-day overlap with her predecessor! | At post she learned that Jeddah
had a policy of interview by exception for Saudi nationals. She was told that the only reason
Saudi Arabia did not qualify for the Visa Waiver Pilot Program (VWPP) was because of its strict
treatment of American visa applicants. Were the Kingdom to be more forthcoming with visa
reciprocity for American visitors, it would have qualified the visa waiver program by virtue of
the tiny percentage of Saudi visa holders who overstayed or were turned back home by INS.
There was,| jsaid, a "virtual visa waiver program" for Saudi citizens. On those rare
occasions that a Saudi application raised specific concerns and was not clearly approvable,
would the applicant be asked to appear for an interview. This often resulted in the Foreign
Ministry phoning the Consul General or the Consular Section Chief to ask why a personal
appearance was necessary. She showed us a copy of 2000 Riyadh 02002, which made mention
of the general inapplicability of Section 214(b) to Saudi nationals.

Her biggest visa challenge, she said, was non-Saudi applicants - Third-Country Nationals, or
TCNs. Under the Visas Express program, TCN applicants were also interviewed by exception,
but they were required to submit supporting documents with their applications that Saudis were
not, and TCNs were interviewed much more often. Saudis were asked to submit only their
passports and applications — no evidence was required to support claimed socioeconomic ties,
since all Saudis were presumed to have such self-evidently strong ties as to need no proof.
Saudis apparently were unable to cope with working hard in the U.S., and invariably returned
home to their easy life in the Kingdom. Saudis were dismissed without an interview, and told
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when to pick, up their visas; Only a handful were called back for a personal interview. All TCN
applicants, on the other hand, were interviewed, even, she added, those who were probably
eligible based on their possession of previous visas.

Jeddah consular staff believed that they were a little "tougher" on adjudicating NTVs than
Embassy Riyadh. During the summer of 2001^ the section chiefJ [was on home leave,
so) Jthnj | was working alone. All told, she had issued about 20,000 visas
during her tenure at Jeddah. She routinely worked until 10 p.m. to catch up on the large number
of yisa applications. Nevertheless, she wanted to continue Jeddah's practice of interviewing first-
time Saudi applicants for student visas. During that busy summefj ~|worked very
hard, doing 400 - 500 cases every day. She said that she had no time to look beyond the name
and the date of birth on the visa application forms. She knew that some of them were
incomplete, but believed that this did not matter because the Saudi applicants were eligible for
visas in any ease. Furthermore, the INSlJidiiThave access to those applications anyway. Iftlid
not matter exactly which hotel they would use in the U.S., for example.! jsaid that
Consul General Baltimore was a good boss and supportive, but knew little about consular work.
He did not interfere in consular section policies.

There were no travel agency programs used in Jeddah before Visas Express. Only Saudia, the
national airline headquartered in Jeddah and the Saudi Government used a drop-off system for
submitting applications. There were no other personal appearance waiver programs. Most
individuals walked hi to the consulate and dropped off their applications. Saudis were dismissed,
andTCNs were interviewed.

I \s opposed to some of the details of the Visas Express program, which was
initiated on June 1,2001, but not for reasons related to terrorism. She felt that Riyadh imposed
the Visas Express program on them. She believes that Riyadh made the program mandatory
because^ the Consul General in Riyadh, Tom Furey, had excellent experience with a similar
program in Mexico. The program also eliminated the need for interviews of first time student
visa applicants. She also felt that it was "a bone tossed to the Riyadh RSO" who was becoming
concerned about the security threat posed to the post by the large crowd of visa applicants.

Before Vis^s Express was instituted, most TCN applicants hi Jeddah applied in person at the
consulate. Visas Express mandated that all visa applications be submitted through travel
agencies, whjch therefore made it necessary for all TCNs to make two trips, one to the travel
agency and a second to the consulate. It was therefore inefficient, she thought, and it obliged her
to review some 300 applications daily.] ]had no objection to Visas Express for
Saudis since it kept those people, who would not be interviewed in any event, away from the
consulate. She "repeated that her objections to Visas Express had nothing lu do with Saudi
applicants, their eligibility, or security concerns, only the program's effect on the handling of
TCN applicants. | [drafted a cable to convey her reservations about Visas Express,
but did not send it once a "kudos cable" came back from CA praising the new program.

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Referring to the hijackers to whom she issued visas without an interviewj [said that,
upon reflection, she had decided that even if she had interviewed them she would more than
likely have issued the visas. Mentioning the incomplete applications, she stated that those
applications could Jiave been sent back for completion, but that would have changed nothing.
They would have been returned completed and the same visa would have been issued. A
statement was made in October 2001 that henceforth there would be a "zero-tolerance policy" for
incomplete applications at Saudi posts. | [felt this proved that there was no such
policy beforehand. Passing applications back and forth until they were completed satisfactorily
did not seem to be, in her opinion, an efficient use of scarce human resources. She mentioned
that one time a couple planning a tourist visit to the USA misspelled the purpose of their trip on
their application forms as "terrorism". She called the husband in for an interview, and the error
was corrected.

I [said that she reviewedthe visa apph'eaTaonsofthe terrorist hijackere^mdrecatted—

that there wejre no direct "hits" in the Class lookout system pertaining to any of them. Speaking
of the one terrorist that she did interview; JIani Hani our J baid mat he struck her as a
typical "middle-class" student applicant who was not "well connected." She said that the cases
of Saudis she saw tended to fall into one of three socioeconomic classes, and many of the male
students were in the middle. No matter which of the three classes they fell into, however, Saudis
were exempt from the requirement placed on TCNs to provide supporting documents - such as
certified letters from employers, arid bank statements.! [believed that the fact that
Saudis were told to apply without supporting documents confinnecTher earlier statement that
Saudi Arabia was a virtual visa waiver country. "All a Saudi needs to prove is that he is a
Saudi." Hani Hanjour was interviewed because he requested a three-year stay in the U.S. on his
visa application while a normal request at that time would have been for a maximum of only two
years.

Questioned about resources] paid that she wished she had more staff, one more
FSN, but only to avoid overtime and to provide even more careful attention to TCN cases,
especially maids. She did not consider mat the hijackers received visas because the section was
too busy.

The junior officer who sometimes helped her had a higher refusal rate than she did. She
expressed the opinion that h? was denying applicants "for the wrong reasons" and in clear
contravention of some established adjudication guidelines. For example, he denied student visas
to applicants seeking to attend schools nf nnpr repute, telling them to "apply again next year with
an 1-20 from a REAL school."] ^said that there was a clear statement from CA that
this kind of refusal was inappropriate, but the other officer persisted. He was counseled to adjust
his adjudication practices to comply with the policies set out in the Foreign Aflaiis Manual. —

Asked what resources she considered were in too short supply, she said that she wished she had
more overlap and time with her predecessor. There are many layers of Saudi society, and it
would have helped to have an experienced mentor to show her the way at first It took her a

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while to pick up the nuances of this society. She had studied Arabic at the Foreign Service
Institute for nine months and acquired a 2/1+ grade for spoken and reading comprehension.

When asked directly if she was ever encouraged to lower her refusal rate, she said she was not.
The other junior officer was spoken to, she said, but he merited the talking-UK There were no
validation studies done of Saudi NTV holders and there were no known cases of Saudis
overstaying their visits to the U.S. The virtual Saudi visa waiver, she concluded, was apparently
appropriate, given the lack of Saudi illegakin the U.S.

I |then discussed events after September 11. She expressed surprise that her name has
not been publicized, and that only now was she being asked to explain what she did.

In the months after the events, it bothered her that there was so much confusion and
inconsistency in Mission and Department statements about whether or not anything had changed
regarding visa adjudication policies. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, the post was told
not to change its procedures. But when the U.S. press picked up a story that nothing had
changed, which was based on a telegram she had drafted, the post was chided by CA for "making
\e Department look bad." When the post explained its cable to CA, pointing out that no policies
\d in fact been changed, the Bureau suggested that future cables should be cleared with CA
before being actually sent to the Department.

I \ said that after September 11th she felt worse about the visas she was still issuing than
she did about the ones she had previously issued to the hijackers. The hijackers clearly
APPEARED to be eligible, given the policies and procedures in place before September 11th.
But after September 11*, she said she found herself continuing to issue superficially similar
cases. The Department stated publicly that procedures had been tightened, but they really had
not, "and I was still pushing the issue button every day - issue, issue, issue. Have I," she worried
out loud, "already issued visas since September 11th to the NEXT bunch of terrorists?"

In late October 2001, Embassy Riyadh informed CA that there was now a "zero-tolerance" for
incomplete applications. CA apparently misunderstood this as well as the earlier message that
more Saudi males were being interviewed, and asked for a front-channel message citing the
mission's "new, higher refusal rate." CA stated that "we cannot appear to be doing business as
usual", j ^was chagrinned because Jeddah's refusal rate had not gone up appreciably.
Consulate Jeddah was now indeed processing fully completed applications, and was interviewing
more males, but they were still "pushing the issue button."

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