Interview With Michael Springmann, Mark Krikorian

Interview With Michael Springmann, Mark Krikorian

by John Gibson
Fox News: The Big Story with John Gibson
July 18, 2002
[transcript]

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

GIBSON: A lot of talk lately about visas -- who gets them, who disperses them, who administers them. Well, there have been some problems overseas, particularly in Saudi Arabia, with visas.

Joining me now from Washington, Michael Springmann, a former consular official stationed in Saudi Arabia during the late 1980s. Mr. Springmann, you were pretty tough on people. You didn't just sort of rubber stamp them and send them on to the United States, but...

MICHAEL SPRINGMANN, FORMER CONSULAR OFFICIAL: That's correct.

GIBSON: ... but you got overruled. What happened?

SPRINGMANN: Well, I would get people who essentially had no ties either to their place of application, Saudi Arabia, or to their home country, and, "I would say I'm sorry the Immigration and Nationality Act says you have to demonstrate ties that will compel you to return," and they didn't have them. They didn't have a job. They didn't have a family. They didn't have property. They didn't have a business.

However, I would get a call from high State Department officials insisting that I give visas to these people, and, when I would ask why, justify it as the State Department's regulations required, I was told, "Issue the visa or be unemployed."

GIBSON: You're not with the consular service anymore?

SPRINGMANN: No, I'm not.

GIBSON: Was this the so-called Visa Express program that we've heard so much about in Saudi Arabia?

SPRINGMANN: This was before the visa express program. This was between 1987 and 1989. At the time, the Afghanistan war was going and beginning to wind down.

GIBSON: Well, did you have a suspicion that you were being required to issue visas to Mujahadeen, people who had been off to Afghanistan fighting the Soviets and now wanted to go to the U.S. for some strange reason?

SPRINGMANN: At the time, no. At the time, I thought it was plain visa fraud. Money was changing hands to get visas for people to go to the States.

It was only after I was out of the State Department and researching a couple of magazine articles that I learned from a local journalist and two good sources, one attached to a local university in Washington and one with the federal government, that what I was doing was challenging a CIA program to bring people to the United States for terrorist training, people recruited by the CIA and its asset, Usama bin Laden, and the idea was to get them trained and send them back to Afghanistan to fight the then Soviets.

GIBSON: So we -- then this would be classic blow back, I believe is the CIA expression. We train terrorists to fight somebody else, and they end up fighting us.

SPRINGMANN: Exactly. Nobody gave a thought, I think, to what happened once these guys were turned loose. Certainly, the countries in the region didn't want them back. They wouldn't let them back into their own countries because they had been trained to overthrow governments.

GIBSON: Well, is there -- so let's roll ahead to 2000 -- 2000, 2001, 2002 where we're facing a different kind of Usama bin Laden-trained person, and, you know, there's different things on their mind. Do you have the sense that they were still getting sort of this wave-through treatment with their visas?

SPRINGMANN: I'm beginning to think so. At the time, I thought that my complaints, my lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act, and my going directly to the Justice Department, the FBI, State Department's diplomatic security, the Government Accounting Office had kind of dried this thing up. But, obviously, it hasn't.

According to "The Los Angeles Times," 15 of the 19 people who flew airplanes into buildings had got their visas at the CIA's consulate at Jetta (ph) where 15 to 20 of the people who worked there were Washington- based. Nearly everybody except myself and two other people worked for the CIA or the NSA or some other intelligence service.

GIBSON: So what do you think was going on? Was this just -- the CIA didn't quite know what their own people were up to? Had they morphed into something else?

SPRINGMANN: Well, I think they did know what they were doing. I think that...

GIBSON: You're not suggesting they knew what -- that they were going to go fly airplanes into buildings in the United States, do you?

SPRINGMANN: I don't think so, but, with the secrecy the CIA has got going for it and the protection it gets, anything is possible.

GIBSON: Well, I mean, you really think it's possible. Even the CIA could have had its fingers in a terrorism directed against the United States?

SPRINGMANN: Well, who knows? I've seen it suggested that it was one way of getting the Americans involved at bases not only in the Middle East but at bases surrounding Russia.

GIBSON: Wow.

SPRINGMANN: Now I -- you know, that's -- that's a stretch. I don't have any proof of this, but it's something that's been suggested.

GIBSON: Yeah. Well, it would be a stretch.

Michael Springmann, former consular officer in Saudi Arabia during the '80s.

Thanks very much.

SPRINGMANN: All right. Thank you.

GIBSON: In our post-9/11 world, the U.S. is trying to crack down on illegal immigrations. We've talked about it a lot. But, at the same time, banks are trying to cash in on the $60 billion earned each year in this country by undocumented workers.

An ID card issued by the Mexican consulates in the U.S. lets illegal Mexican workers set up banking accounts, checking accounts. In some cities, the cards can even be used to borrow library books and enter municipal buildings. But these people are not here legally.

What is going on?

Joining me from Washington, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Now there was a lot made of these cards that the Mexican consulates were issuing to illegal aliens, undocumented workers. A year or so ago, when they started this program -- and, at the time, American authorities say, "Well, the Mexican government can issue any old card it wants to. It doesn't mean anybody's going to pay any attention to it."

So what happened? How come we're now paying attention to it?

MARK KRIKORIAN, CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES: Well, what happened is the banks wanted to get these deposits, and, once the number of illegal immigrants grew -- I mean, we have eight-million to nine-million illegal aliens because of our lax immigration policies, three million or four million of whom are from Mexico.

And the banks very much wanted to get these deposits, because, even though illegal immigrants individually don't make very much money, when you add it all up over millions of people, that's -- it's a substantial chunk of change.

GIBSON: Now the banks have gotten trashed in the last few days when it was discovered that Mohammad Atta and all his guys used -- just made-up Social Security numbers to open accounts, and nobody ever checked to see if they were true Social Security numbers.

So, after they got beat up over that, are you suggesting they would still be using a Mexican government sort of quasi-ID card to identify an illegal alien in this country?

KRIKORIAN: Absolutely. And, in fact, the IRS is helping them do it because the IRS issues something called a taxpayer identification number to illegal aliens who don't have Social Security numbers. In other words, the IRS makes up its own numbers for illegal aliens. They even have seminars teaching illegal aliens how to file their tax returns.

So an illegal immigrant goes to Wells Fargo or Bank of America and says, "Here's my Mexican consulate illegal alien ID card, and here's my taxpayer ID number from the IRS. I'd like to open a checking account," and they can do it.

The problem here is that the United States government hasn't proactively cut this kind of thing off by requiring banks, just like employers, to check the legal status of the people they open accounts for.

GIBSON: All right, Mark. Let me turn a corner here. There's a little stink going on in the State Department right now about the whole issue of transferring visa issuance from the State Department, the Bureau of Consular Affairs, to this new Homeland Security Department.

In fact, State Department people are accusing politicians, people like you, of McCarthy-like tactics in being critical of the Consular Affairs Department in issuing these visas. Do you think these visas ought to go to somebody else? Do you think the State Department has failed? Or is there some expertise there that we should take advantage of and leave it there?

KRIKORIAN: No, the whole visa-issuing function in its entirety ought to move to Homeland Security, and the reason is not that the consular employees that are doing this visa work are somehow nefarious or incompetent. They're regular people who are often -- you know, they're well-educated folks trying to do a difficult job.

The problem is the incentives are such that their superiors who -- are not going to be giving them promotions and raises if they turn down too many visas. We heard that in the previous interview, and I've heard that personally from many former consular officers because the -- there's sort of a culture of customer service that has developed in the State Department where the foreign applicant is the customer that has to be satisfied rather than the American people.

GIBSON: Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Mark, thanks very much.

KRIKORIAN: Thanks for having me.

GIBSON: Coming up on THE BIG STORY, the latest in the hunt for the killer of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion. Can police make an arrest before he strikes again?

And then, Ohio Congressman James Traficant. He's known for that mouth, but now the sound could be silenced on Capitol Hill.

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