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Before terrorists strike, they must first gain entry to their target countries, and reside there until zero hour; and this nearly always involves some form of doc fraud to succeed. To prevent future attacks, it is thus essential to shut terrorists’ revolving door.

Document fraud has long been part and parcel of terrorist efforts to enter and reside in their target countries and has been described by many, from the authors of the 9/11 Commission Report to the infamous warrior and defense columnist Oliver North, as America’s “backdoor to terror.” But a backdoor suggests a hidden portal where a stealthful entry can transpire, like an illicit lover enroute to a forbidden union. But terrorists have become so adept at coming to and staying in America for protracted pre-attack periods, misusing common travel and entry documents with such frequency and confidence, that a better description would be “revolving door” to terror.

To gain insight on the pervasiveness of this threat, I spoke with Susan Ginsburg, Director of the Mobility and Security Program at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute (MPI), and member of the DHS Quadrennial Review (QDR) Advisory Committee, whose task it is to draft America’s doctrine for protecting the homeland. Ginsburg has been exploring these issues for many years, serving on the Secure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee established by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and as senior counsel and team leader on the 9/11 Commission where she was responsible for research on the entry of the 9/11 hijackers, terrorist travel, and border controls. Her research shows that “terrorist groups make decisions about who will participate in operations based on the ability to gain access to the country where the attack is to occur.”

Ginsburg notes the work of Jean-Louise Bruguiere, a top French terrorism investigator, who has observed “for these groups passports are as important as weapons.” As Ginsburg put it, doc fraud is a “pervasive reality in global travel channels. The United Nations has recognized the importance of border controls and the Security Council has mandated that countries maintain secure travel documents and borders (UNSC 1373).” In the United States, she adds, “document fraud of some kind  has been a factor in all the plots” of terror, and that “the four main ways in which Al Qaeda altered passports during the 9/11 period were substituting photos, adding false cachets and visa, removing visas and bleaching stamps, and counterfeiting passports and substituting pages.”

Indeed, as the 9/11 attackers implemented their nefarious plans, she explained that “every hijacker submitted a visa application falsely stating that he was not seeking to enter the United States to engage in terrorism. They were inadmissible at ports of entry for the same reason.” She added that “at least two hijackers and possibly as many as seven of the hijackers presented passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner to consular officers,” and further, “at least two hijackers and as many as 11 presented passports similarly manipulated at ports of entry. Two of the Saudi hijackers may have obtained passports with the help of a family member who worked at the passport office. One hijacker attended flight school without properly adjusting his immigration status, another did not attend school after entering on a student visa, two hijackers overstayed the terms of their admission. One hijacker failed to present a proper vocational school visa upon entry.”

All said, she calculates that “the 19 hijackers used 384 aliases, including different spellings of their names and noms de guerre in traveling through various countries.”

The interconnection of doc fraud to terror dates further back, as “Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Ahmad Ajaj a confederate, were able to direct aspects of attack despite being in prison for using an altered passport, traveled under aliases using fraudulent documents,” Ginsburg observes. “The two of them were found to possess five passports as well as numerous documents supporting their aliases; a Saudi passport showing signs of alteration, an Iraqi passport bought from a Pakistani official, a photo-substituted Swedish passport, a photo-substituted British passport, a Jordanian passport, identification cards, bank records, education records and medical records.”  Six years later, “following a familiar terrorist pattern, in 1999 Ahmed Ressam and his associates used fraudulent passports and immigration fraud to travel.”

Doc fraud has been a perennial tool of terrorists for gaining entry to, and extending their stays, in their target countries. Janice L. Kephart, Director of National Security Policy at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), told me that “lost and stolen passports, either assuming another identity, or photo-substituting an identity into a passport” are a prime means for gaining entry to a target country. “However, this is increasingly harder to do now that passports are being checked for every person making entry through much more robust data-checking.”

MPI’s Ginsburg notes that “passports, visas, and supporting documents, including breeder documents, are the three types of documents subject to misuse.” She  added “the patterns of misuse vary around the world, from country to country, based on the vulnerabilities.” She points out that “all terrorists acquire visas and/or enter the United States based on fraud,” and that they “provide false information about their intentions on their visa applications, rendering those applications fraudulent. This is visa fraud by deceit. Thus, there is no such thing as a ‘clean’ or ‘legal’ entry for a terrorist. A terrorist who obtains a student or religious worker visa from a consulate is presenting a visa based on fraud if the individual is in fact a terrorist.”

Ginsburg adds that a terrorist “might present a genuine passport obtained under an alias name; present an imposter passport, that is, present a genuine passport belonging to someone else who resembles the traveler enough to pass through the U.S. land border which does not have biometric readers; or present a counterfeit pre-RFID chip passport under an alias name from a visa free travel country,” Ginsburg noted. Additionally, she notes visa foils “may be stolen and inserted into counterfeit passports,” and that “there are quite well developed counterintelligence operations by illicit market document providers surrounding consulates, assisting applicants in lying their way through interviews and building convincing files of supporting documents. Consulates in some parts of the world believe that the fraud rate is extremely high, up to 90 percent.” As well, “visa applicants may put false stamps – very easy to counterfeit – in their passport to indicate a trustworthy travel pattern,” and compounding the problem is “corruption or complicity in passport offices and at border points.”

Once inside the country, the doc fraud continues. According to Dr. Ronald Mortensen, author of “Illegal, But Not Undocumented: Identity Theft, Document Fraud, and Illegal Employment,” and a retired career U.S. Foreign Service Officer who now works with the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), “Once an individual is in the United States, he can easily obtain fraudulent social security cards, green cards, birth certificates, drivers licenses, etc., in almost any major city through a widespread network of fraudulent document dealers who cater primarily to the millions of illegal aliens who need these documents in order to obtain jobs.” He told me that the “cost is minimal in most cases. Given the tolerance of state and local elected officials, law enforcement officials, etc., for illegal alien identity theft, it would be easy for terrorists to obtain documents through these same networks.”

Moreover, as MPI’s Ginsburg notes, “to stay in the country, the individual might overstay any visa and not be caught, because there is no system for tracking and apprehending visa overstays. To acquire a driver’s license – which permits opening a bank account and other administrative necessities – the terrorist need only present various forms of seemingly valid ID and have an address in most states.  Birth certificates are very insecure documents in the United States, entirely unregulated by federal security standards. Blanks may fairly easily be stolen and copies easily obtained.”

While this nexus between doc fraud and terror has been both persistent and pervasive, numerous solutions to reduce the threat now exist. Ginsburg notes “many new countermeasures are in place and they have made terrorist travel significantly more difficult.” She adds the “most basic is a much expanded terrorist identities list accessible to visa and port authorities,” while “perhaps the most advanced program is real-time information sharing about lost and stolen passports among Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the UK through a distributed network using a broker. INTERPOL maintains a lost and stolen passport database increasingly accessible to border authorities.”

Other vulnerabilities from the pre-9/11 world have been redressed through policy changes in the more security-conscious, post-9/11 world. For instance, Ginsburg notes “using ten fingerprints in visas that are verified at ports of entry (US VISIT) has detected and deterred fraud. The United States now has a student tracking system that alerts authorities when a student is not complying. Countries through the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) have raised standards for passport design and western countries are assisting developing countries in incorporating these and other mobility security standards bilaterally and through international organizations such as the United Nations’ Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate and the International Organization for Migration, and regional organizations like the OSCE and ASEAN. The United States provides many countries with computers and software to mount watchlists at border ports of entry.”

CIS’ Mortensen believes greater use of the U.S. E-Verify program could also help close this revolving door, noting it’s “a free, federal government program that determines employment eligibility,” designed to prevent social security number fraud by undocumented workers, which could also make it harder for terrorists to remain hidden beneath the radar in America: “Once an employer has registered and completed the tutorial, s/he enters the identifying data of all new hires and in most cases a response is received within seconds,” Mortensen added. He notes “Congress could mandate its use by all employers in all 50 states but the U.S. chamber of commerce and advocates for illegal aliens strongly oppose this.” Mortensen adds that “massive identity theft by illegal aliens provides perfect cover for foreign nations using false identities because they do not stand out. The failure of U.S. political and law enforcement leaders to address this serious problem which impacts literally millions of American citizens makes the use of false documents and fake identities a relatively easy and safe practice for illegal aliens, terrorists, pedophiles, sexual predators, etc.”

Greater awareness of and attention to the problem can go a long way toward reducing the risk. To help close the revolving door of terrorists, Ginsburg believes that “we first have to recognize the problem – that securing human mobility is one of the arenas of counterterrorism. Second, it has to be recognized that all levers of national power are important to addressing the establishment of the rule of law in global mobility channels – intelligence, law enforcement, immigration enforcement, regulatory reforms, new international institutions and agreements. Secure travel documents and identity management are one important pillar of that effort.” She adds that “some of the important tasks associated with dealing with this are to gain international agreement on and implementation of travel document design and issuance standards, settling on information sharing methods and standards, building border and mobility management capacity in developing countries, and cooperating internationally on apprehending document producers.”

One silver lining, she points out, is that “at the same time that terrorist travel represents a challenge to security officials in countries terrorists may be targeting, it also represents a vulnerability for them, because they must surface and encounter government officials. How to take advantage of this fact needs to be carefully considered, in the same way officials have focused on financial and communications flows.”