CNN’s Jake Tapper has details on the Obama administration scandal of the day, this one based off of yet another Inspector General report.
The U.S. Marshal Service had been “unable to locate” two former participants in the federal Witness Security Program “identified as known or suspected terrorists,” states the public summary of an interim Justice Department Inspector General’s report obtained by CNN.
The Marshals have concluded that “one individual was and the other individual was believed to be residing outside of the United States.”
The news comes from an audit of the Witness Security Program by the IG’s office, which states that “the Department did not definitively know how many known or suspected terrorists were admitted into the WITSEC program,” among other “significant issues concerning national security.”
From the report (PDF) we learn that there are around 18,300 people who have entered the WitSec program since it was authorized in 1970.
The number of those who are “known or suspected terrorists” is “a fraction of 1%.” Of that “a fraction of 1%,” 40% were admitted to the program after September 11, 2001. In the last six years only two “known or suspected terrorists” were admitted to the program.
I will make an assumption that the two missing “known or suspected terrorists” are from the group admitted to the program after 9/11 because those admitted before 9/11 could easily have left a long time ago. Assuming that the “a fraction of 1%” is one-quarter of one percent we come up with 18 people admitted to the WitSec program after 9/11 [(18,300 X .0025) x .4 = 18.3], of which two were “lost.” That works out to over 10% [(2/18.3) * 100 = 10.9%] of the “known or suspected terrorists” admitted to the WitSec program after 9/11 who have fled the country because their new identity allowed them to easily bypass the post-9/11 No Fly Lists and Terror Watch Lists.
