US remains highly vulnerable to terrorist entry from abroad

Ten years after 9/11, after billions of dollars spent on security, how safe is the US from terrorists? Give it a “C” perhaps, according to a new report that points to four key gaps in foreign partners’ capacity to prevent terrorists from traveling into the US.

“These gaps include limited sharing of information about known and suspected terrorists within foreign governments; failure to address the use of fraudulent travel documents abroad; limited passport issuance security; and corruption in passport issuance and immigration agencies," said the GAO report.

The GAO’s latest report “Combating Terrorism: Additional Steps Needed to Enhance Foreign Partners’ Capacity to Prevent Terrorist Travel,” was released earlier this month.

Billions of dollars have been spent to increase security “but we have to rely to a certain extent on the systems used by other countries,” pointed out Susan Collins, a Republican member of the US Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

“The system is truly as strong as its weakest link,” she said. She pointed out that it is “stunning” that our supposed ally, Pakistan, does not even share fingerprint data within its own government or with other Pakistan officials.

“This is a real problem,” she told Fox News.

In one of the four gaps mentioned by the GAO, the government evaluating agency found that the “potential for overlap and duplication was pronounced” in the area of fraudulent travel documents because there are seven different US agencies involved in training government officials on finding false documents. There’s no central agency to coordinate such training.

The agency also found that some countries “failure to consistently report lost or stolen passports to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) or to access INTERPOL’s database that stores information on lost and stolen passports, can facilitate the use of legitimate passports by imposters.” The GAO investigation found this to be prevalent in Kenya, for example.

An anti-terrorist organization, the Chertoff Group, was also critical of the US’s terrorist policies. Co-Chad Sweet only gave the government a “C” grade.

The GAO report came at a time when airline security officials had to defend a dubious billion dollar program.

The Department of Homeland Security is defending a potential billion dollar program that trains security officers to look for “micro-expressions” of travelers that may betray terrorist planning.

But that’s not all. Homeland has already spent $750 on the program and want to take it to $1 billion.

The Transportation Safety Administration has challenged that report, saying that in at least one instance, the SPOT program prevented explosives from ending up on a plane.

The GAO says the program is “unproven.”

ABC News says it previously reported critics' concerns with the unproven science behind the SPOT program.

In the six years of data collected by the GAO, the SPOT program has led to arrests for various offenses, including false documents. But ABC says the program did not stop one arrest identified as terrorist-related.

“In fiscal year 2010, 50,000 people were singled out by the SPOT program, but only 300 eventually were arrested — none on terror charges,” the GAO said. 

A previous GAO report found that at least 17 known terrorists traveled through at least 23 U.S. airports in the SPOT program without being detected, said ABC

The TSA admitted that the SPOT program was implemented "before first determining whether there was a scientifically valid basis" for it, the GAO report said.

By David Wilkening