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CNN Live Today

Attorney General Orders Investigation of INS

Aired March 13, 2002 - 14:01   ET

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

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Attorney General John Ashcroft will call for an investigation into the INS, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Sources saying Ashcroft is furious that the INS sent out student visa approvals for two hijackers dating back to September 11. Those letters arrived at a flight school earlier this week, six months to the day of the attack.

Susan Candiotti, more now from Washington on this front -- Susan.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Bill. The sound of fury coming today from several fronts aimed at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. The anger following a story first revealed by CNN yesterday. Student visas issued to two of the September 11 hijackers well before the attacks were nevertheless mailed out to the flight school they attended earlier this week.

To be exact, the school received them six months to the day Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi flew planes into the World Trade Center. Atta and al-Shehhi were not on any terrorist watchlist, so issuing the student visas is not what's being criticized. What is being criticized is why the letter to the school still went out well after the attacks.

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SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D-SD), MAJORITY LEADER: I, for the life of me, I can't understand how something like that can happen. It's a major embarrassment and it's a recognition that we still have a lot of work to do.

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CANDIOTTI: Aides to Attorney General John Ashcroft say he's furious. Anytime now, he's expected to release a statement calling for the Justice Department inspector general to look into the matter. When CNN informed INS of the visas being sent to the school this week, a spokesman told us: "I think it's certainly embarrassing that the letters show up at this late date. But it does serve to illustrate what we have been saying since 1995, that the current system for collecting information and tracking foreign is antiquated, untimely, outdated and inaccurate."

The INS then issued another draft statement expressing regret, and then issued a final statement eliminating any reference to embarrassment or regret and stressing that the INS is in the process of fixing its backlog system to eliminate these kinds of delays. President Bush is said to be "very displeased" and is also expected to have more to say during a news conference today at 4:00. And you'll see him live on CNN -- Bill.

HEMMER: Susan, back up just for a moment here. Is it possible this is a just a computer cranking out massive amounts of applications, or how are we to understand the inner workings of a giant agency like the INS?

CANDIOTTI: It is, and according to the INS, and they told us this from the very start, they have talked about this for a long period of time. They are backlogged with hundreds of thousands of visa applications that they have to deal with. And they have a very outdated system of doing this. Of course, computers are programmed by people and so now they're going to try to get to the bottom of it. But the question is after September 11, apparently no one went back into the system to look to see whether any of these names were currently in the system and that's what's pretty astonishing.

HEMMER: Yes, you have John Ashcroft, who was "furious." The president possibly will have comments in about two hours about it. Susan, thanks. Susan Candiotti live in Washington this.

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