Congressional Testimony


Testimony of Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs
 Maura Harty

Before the House International Relations Committee
 “9/11 Commission Report Recommendations”
 Washington, DC

August 19, 2004

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, members of the Committee:

Thank you for inviting me to testify on behalf of the Bureau of Consular Affairs. We worked closely with the 9/11 Commission, meeting with its staff frequently and forwarding more than 15,000 pages of documents for review. We welcome the Commission's report and appreciate the opportunity to comment on its recommendations on targeting terrorist travel and exchanging terrorist information with trusted allies. We have made significant progress in improving our border security through changes to the visa process, the use of biometrics in visas and passports, and enhanced information sharing within the U.S. government and with our allies in the War on Terror. Our goal is to push the very borders beyond the physical limits of our nation to identify terrorists before they begin their travels and deny them entry to the U.S.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 highlighted as never before the crucial role the Bureau of Consular Affairs plays in U.S. border security through the visa process. As the Commission's report so succinctly notes, “For terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons.” S ince my confirmation as Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs in November 2002, we have examined our consular processes from top to bottom to make them as strong a shield against terrorists as we possibly can. The Consular Officers of the Foreign Service who adjudicate visas at 211 embassies and consulates abroad are truly our first line of defense. They must have the best information available within the U.S. government on terrorist threats and the best tools and the best training to help them disrupt terrorist travel.

Since 9/11, the Department of State, working with other agencies, has made significant improvements to our ability to share information. Thanks to this new level of collaboration, the data holdings in our consular lookout system now total almost 18 million records on people potentially ineligible to receive visas, nearly triple what we had prior to September 11. We now have more than eight million records from the FBI alone in our system. In fact, the majority of the data in the consular lookout system now derives from other agencies, especially those in the law enforcement and intelligence communities. Information sharing, of course, must be reciprocal. We now p rovide access to the 75 million visa records in our consular database to DHS officers at ports of entry so that they can view the electronic files we have of every passenger with a visa who will be entering the United States. This database permits examination of detailed information in near-real time on all visas issued, including the photographs of nonimmigrant visa applicants. We are also sharing our consular database with the National Targeting Center, a 24/7 operation of Customs and Border Protection in DHS.

We also j oined in the establishment of the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) that integrates terrorist watchlists and serves as the centralized point of contact for everyone from the police officer on the beat here in the U.S. to the consular officer in the farthest reaches of the globe. Together with the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), which maintains the principal database on known and suspected international terrorists in a highly classified form, we rely on the TSC to ensure consular officers have access to the information they need to deny visas to those who would do us harm. We are proud that these institutions rest on a foundation that the Department of State laid in the form of TIPOFF, a pioneering system in the use of classified information for screening purposes. I am particularly proud that much of the cost of developing and operating TIPOFF was funded through the fees collected through the Border Security Program which the Bureau of Consular Affairs manages for the Department. The TIPOFF database with its approximately 120,000 records, more than double the amount since September 11, is now housed at TTIC. TTIC and TSC together eliminate the stove-piping of terrorist data and provide a more systematic approach to posting lookouts on potential and known terrorists.

As the Commission report clearly stresses, the inclusion of biometrics in international travel documents, such as passports and visas, is an important step in continuing to improve our ability to verify the identity of prospective travelers to the United States and to identify individuals who might be terrorists or other aliens who might represent a security risk to the United States. We are moving forward aggressively in implementing programs that use biometric identifiers in both visas and passports.

Together with DHS, we are creating a biometric system to track the entry and exit of foreign visitors by using electronically scanned fingerprints and photographs. This new system begins with consular officers collecting electronically scanned fingerprints at consular sections abroad and continues with DHS's US-VISIT program at ports of entry and departure. These fingerprints will be matched in a classic “one-to-many” application of biometrics against the DHS fingerprint database known as IDENT. Then when visa travelers enter the United States, their identity will be verified through DHS's new US-VISIT program. This one-to-one fingerprint comparison ensures that the person presenting the visa at the port of entry is the same person to whom the visa was issued. In September 2003, we began deployment of our biometric visa program at posts abroad to collect electronically scanned fingerprints of all visa applicants. More than 180 posts are now collecting fingerprints, and all 211 will be on-line by October 26, 2004. We also began issuing biometric immigrant visas and will have this program operational at all immigrant visa-adjudicating posts by the same date.

In addition to enhanced information sharing and the biometric visa program, we have made numerous improvements to visa processing. To name just a few, we:

  • established a new worldwide policy for interviews so that nearly all applicants must now be interviewed;
  • amended regulations to close a loophole and limit the ability of persons with expired visas to reenter the U.S. from contiguous territory (i.e. Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean);
  • added new or adapted existing security clearance checks for counter-terrorism purposes for certain groups of applicants;
  • strengthened procedures following revocation of a visa by ensuring timely notice of the revocation to DHS and the FBI;
  • started automated cross-checking of new derogatory information concerning terrorists or suspected terrorists (including TIPOFF entries) against records of previously issued visas in order to revoke existing valid visas in the hands of those about whom we have received post-issuance derogatory information and who may be a threat;
  • created more than 350 additional consular positions;
  • enhanced internal controls and introduced a new tamper-resistant nonimmigrant visa foil;
  • implemented a system of consular management assistance teams to visit posts and review management controls and procedures;
  • established in cooperation with DS, a Vulnerability Assessment Unit to detect possible malfeasance; and,
  • issued more than 75 Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to posts to standardize consular procedures worldwide.

Our goal is to provide consular officers with the best tools and training available as they begin their critical roles abroad in protecting U.S. border security. To this end, we have made major changes in the consular training course by adding four security/counter-terrorism sessions since 2001. Two of those classes deal specifically with counter-terrorism information, one of which is run by CIA/CT staff. The other session is a presentation on the consular officer's role in counter-terrorism, presented by the Secretary's Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism. Consular training now includes a third new session run by Diplomatic Security on visa fraud and malfeasance, which includes a piece on how to protect against visa fraud. The fourth “add-on” session is a lecture on how consular officers should effectively use the terrorism provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act. In order to bring expertise on interviewing and deception-detection to our students, we created and implemented a two-day module on analytic interviewing techniques. By adding important modules and increasing the length of the basic consular course to 31 days, we believe that we are presenting important, useable information on interviewing and counter-terrorism to our students.  

The U.S. visa is not our only biometric initiative. Embedding biometrics into U.S. passports to establish a clear link between the person issued the passport and the user is an important step forward in the international effort to strengthen border security. To this end, we are introducing “contactless chips” into U.S. passports, electronic chips on which we will write the bearer's biographic information and photograph. The inclusion of a “smart” chip in the passport will significantly increase the security of the document. This “one-to-one” biometric application takes full advantage of the accuracy of Facial Recognition technology as well as the global acceptability of the photograph as a non-intrusive biometric. This initiative is also consistent with U.S. legislation that requires our Visa Waiver Program (VWP) participants to take such a step, but is not required of us. We are nonetheless pursuing the initiative because it supports U.S. national security. We also recognize that convincing other nations to change and improve their passport requires U.S. leadership both at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and practically by introducing these changes into the U.S. passport. The Department of State expects to introduce biometric passports later this year and to be in full production by the end of 2005.

The addition of biometrics is just one of our many efforts to enhance the integrity of the U.S. passport. In 2002 we returned the production of passports issued abroad to our U.S. domestic production facilities so that we can benefit from the significant security improvements embodied in the photodigitization process. This is an entirely new technique that takes advantage of the many improvements in digital technology during the last decade. All domestically produced passports have been photodigitized since the late 1990's. We have now produced over 35 million passports using this technique. We are also undertaking a total redesign of our passport book to introduce the latest generation of security features as well as a total update of the physical appearance of the inside of the book; have implemented and expanded our data base which immediately alerts ports of entry to any passports reported lost or stolen; and are negotiating new datasharing agreements with other agencies to further strengthen the passport adjudication process.

Having a more secure passport, a strengthened adjudication system and embedded biometrics will help prevent the misuse of passports. Another important step in this process is sharing data on lost and stolen passports with the Department of Homeland Security and Interpol. This has been a long-term goal of the Department of State and is a key element in our efforts to frustrate international travel by terrorists, criminals and alien smugglers. We developed and deployed our Consular Lost and Stolen Passports (CLASP) database in 2002. This initiative provides lost and stolen U.S. passport data to all Ports of Entry (POE) within seconds of receiving the information. With the assistance of our colleagues at the U.S. National Central Bureau, in May 2004, we expanded this critical program to the international level with the transfer of more than 300,000 lost or stolen passports to INTERPOL.

Just as we have greatly increased information and data sharing within the U.S. government and with INTERPOL, we seek to exchange terrorist screening information with our allies in the War on terror. The USA PATRIOT Act authorizes the Secretary of State to provide information to foreign governments from the State Department's computerized visa screening databases. The first part of this new authority allows the Secretary of State, on a reciprocal basis, to establish agreements to systematically share visa information, including information for the purpose of preventing terrorism, on a case-by-case basis. With this specific authority, we are seeking to establish agreements with foreign governments on exchange of visa screening information, beginning with those countries benefiting from the Visa Waiver Program (VWP).

In particular, we plan to enhance terrorist screening information exchange with the two countries (Canada and Australia) with whom we already have terrorist screening information exchange agreements. We plan to use these agreements as a model for agreements with other VWP countries. For the remaining Visa Waiver Program countries and for those countries later identified by the working group as priorities, the State Department is coordinating an approach relevant to each country. A bilateral approach will allow us to fashion our discussions with each nation according to the level of cooperation we foresee as desirable and possible in view of the broad range of domestic laws of our potential partners and differences in the use of technology.

The State Department is already engaged in efforts with a number of countries and the G-8 to share general visa screening information. We will take advantage of, and expand upon these efforts to include terrorist screening information. Although the State Department will continue to lead the diplomatic effort for reciprocal exchange of terrorist screening information with foreign partners, the TSC and TTIC, as the implementing entities of any such agreements, the FBI and others will join with us in these efforts to leverage information currently collected and relationships with foreign governments that have already been established.

With our partner agencies in the U.S government, we continue to seek every day better ways to improve on what we have accomplished to make our nation's borders more secure. As the 9/11 Commission report notes, “Defenses cannot achieve perfect safety. They make targets harder to attack successfully, and they deter attacks by making capture more likely.” The Bureau of Consular Affairs, like the rest of the Department of State, is determined to spare no effort to secure our borders against terrorist and criminal threats and to create consular processes in which the American people can place their confidence and trust. Thank you.