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Home Front: WoT
U.S. Official Who Issued Visas to 9/11 Hijackers Still Works for State Department
2016-04-21
[PJ] The State Department official who issued visas to many of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists is still employed by the federal government, according to J. Michael Springmann, the author of Visas for al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World.

Springmann, former head of the visa section at the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, told PJM that Shayna Steinger approved 11 of the visas granted to the 19 9/11 hijackers. Fifteen received their visas at the Jeddah consulate.

Page 7 of the 9/11 Commission report states that "one consular officer issued visas to 11 of the 19 hijackers." Those visas were reportedly approved between the years 1999 and 2001.

Springmann, an attorney who no longer works for the federal government, learned the State Department commissioned Steinger as a class four foreign service officer in 1999, which he said is "a high rank for someone hired just out of Columbia University with no prior experience."

"Despite her issuing visas to terrorists and giving equivocal answers to the 9/11 Commission, Steinger is still an FSO," Springmann wrote in his book.
One must wonder given the obvious threat, if Ms. Steinger was acting at the behest of others.
She was appointed and confirmed by the Senate under the Clinton administration in 1999 as Shayna Steinger Singh in the Congressional Record, Volume 145.
Have the infamous 9/11 '28 pages' been leaked ?
Posted by:Besoeker

#5  The political class covers for each other.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2016-04-21 14:46  

#4  ...and a promotion!

I suspect sexism is involved in denying her the standard Beltway bureaucratic consequences.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2016-04-21 14:21  

#3  There should be a statue of her outside the State Dept. rubber stamping terrorists into the USA.
Posted by: regular joe   2016-04-21 12:58  

#2  The US Consul in the Sudan who in 1989 screwed-up and issued Mullah Omar's visa to the USA never received a reprimand.
Posted by: Herb Thutch1185   2016-04-21 11:01  

#1  The Shayna Steinger piece gets worse, much, much worse.

Early Fall 2000: Jeddah-Based Consular Officers Argue over Visa Policy for Saudi ApplicantsEdit event.

Two consular officers at the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Shayna Steinger and David El Hinn, argue over the eligibility of Saudi citizens for US visas. The consulate had instituted a policy of aggressively interviewing young Saudi males in the wake of the 1998 East African embassy bombings due to terrorism concerns (see (Late August-September 1998)). When El Hinn arrives in Jeddah in August 2000, the consulate is still interviewing a significant percentage of Saudi visa applicants and all first-time students. El Hinn will say that officers are suspicious of Saudi citizens who are from locations where they know extremists live and who have only a vague notion of where they are headed in the United States. In addition, officers at the consulate think that, because of trouble in the Saudi economy, Saudis perhaps should not be getting visas almost automatically. Therefore, El Hinn denies a significant percentage of Saudi visa applicants as well as third-country applicants. Steinger, who works full-time on visas and deals with most of the Saudi applicants, takes a different approach and issues visas to almost all the Saudis who apply for one. Despite the obvious terrorism concerns that had previously been known to US officials in Jeddah, Steinger will say that she is “never really afraid of Saudis” and never makes the connection between the known presence of al-Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia and the possibility that the Saudis applying for visas are terrorists. Steinger believes that El Hinn is denying Saudis visas for what she will call “the wrong reasons,” and the two clash over this. El Hinn is even rebuked by the consul general in Riyadh for his high refusal rate.

Link
Posted by: Besoeker   2016-04-21 03:27  

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