Tracking terrorism

Last week I wrote about how vulnerable virtually every American citizen is to terrorism due to vast corruption in the U.S. Customs Service, whose job is to protect
us from abuse of the expansive network of railways snaking across our great land.

In recent years, this life-giving national arterial system has gradually been poisoned by drug cartels and terrorist networks who use the myriad railroad veins and spurs to transport their addictive and destructive goods. This threat first came to my attention by former Customs Agent-turned-whistleblower Darlene Catalan‘s chilling first-hand account of government efforts to silence her when she began to expose corruption within the department.

Since last week I have been deluged with new information from train engineers, railway workers and brave government “whistleblowers” who have long known about this internal threat to national security.

It seems many “in the know” have been concerned for quite some time about how vulnerable the system is to terrorist attacks.

First, please understand what they report:

• Five-to-10,000 unsearched railroad tanker cars enter our country every single day from Mexico, Central and South America;
  
• the Guadalajara rail yard is controlled by the Arellano-Felix cartel;

• Osama bin Laden has long depended on his massive crops of opium in Afghanistan to fund his terrorist operations;
• his and other terrorists’ “crops” are routinely shipped to South and Central America where they are loaded onto trains headed for the U.S.;
• terrorist networks have intimate knowledge of the system and how to use it;
• our Customs Service is fraught with corruption and for years has allowed these massive shipments of drugs to enter the U.S.;
• illegal aliens are entering our country every day from countries long known to sponsor terrorism.

So here are the logical questions: Just when are bin Laden et al. going to use the railway system to transport biological, chemical or other warfare into the heartland of America? Are tanker cars already stationed throughout
the U.S. just waiting to be exploded? Are “sleeper” terrorists lurking around our nation’s train yards awaiting the word to attack?

As Catalan explained to me last week, the routing of the tanker cars is directed via remote control. The leaser of the tankers need only to place their orders via the Internet or telephone. There is no system in place to verify the identity of those directing the shipments. And, as I have learned through additional information and research, there is every likelihood that whatever “on the ground” terrorist support is needed to achieve massive destruction through tanker cars could easily already be in place.

This “clear and present danger” to American security must be addressed now.

Gary Aldrich, a former 26-year veteran of the FBI, agrees: “As former agent Catalan has exposed, there is tremendous corruption along our borders which has allowed our country to be infiltrated by those who wish us harm. Honest agents on the ground are routinely thwarted in their attempts to protect our nation, leaving us and our railways extremely vulnerable to terrorist attacks.”

Aldrich should know, he’s made it his mission to expose corruption in high places through supporting brave, credible “whistleblowers” from within government agencies. Aldrich is founder of the Patrick Henry Center, which seeks, in part, to “assist in the uncovering of serious wrongdoing in the federal government, will promote and protect every citizen’s right to know, to speak out, and to correct corruptions no matter where they occur.”

It is crucial to understand just how porous our borders are to illegal aliens gaining access to our country by the thousands each week.

We traditionally think of these illegal aliens as poor Mexicans attempting to gain access to a better life in America. But increasingly, the illegal aliens crossing into our country from both Canada and Mexico are identified by agents as “OTMs” – border lingo for “other than Mexicans.” An estimated one in 10 illegal aliens “caught” are from countries like Egypt, Iran or Yemen.

How many get by undetected? Several of the scum involved in the brutal attacks of Sept. 11 entered the nation through Canada. Experts believe that there are many more currently among us who gained entry the same way,
and many more attempting to enter even as you read this column.

Former Secret Service agent, law enforcement official and U.S. Customs agent John Carman worked the Southwest Border for 15 years and still monitors the activity through official contacts and civilian sources. He recently told me, “At the present time, corruption along the borders is so bad and morale among the agents so low that it doesn’t shock me in the least that Middle Eastern terrorists are making their way into our country undetected. I have gathered information that indicates certain INS officials have, just in the last year, been allowing the illegal entry of Middle Eastern nationals through the world’s largest land border port at San Ysidro. Some of this information was stated to me by Iraqi nationals living in San Diego, who are relatives of other Iraqis waiting to be allowed entry into our country through political asylum or visas.”

The methods America uses to issue visas has long allowed individuals from countries that sponsor terrorism easy access to our communities. Some 3,700 U.S. consular offices around the world issue millions of visas every year. Eighty percent of the 8 million visa applications are approved by our State Department annually.

As Phyllis Schlafly, a long-time advocate of halting the flow of illegal aliens into the country recently exposed, “The State Department manual used by consular officials states that ‘mere membership’ in a recognized terrorist group, or even ‘advocacy of terrorism,’ does not automatically disqualify a person from entering the United States.”

Indeed, On Oct. 16 WorldNetDaily’s Washington Bureau Chief Paul Sperry broke the disturbing news that 14 Syrian pilots gained access to the U.S. on Oct. 14 and 15 through visas allowing them to attend flight school in Fort Worth, Texas. Syria, as anyone who has been following world events of late knows, is one of the key nations known to harbor and support terrorists.

This single act is a disgrace to American security. The fact that it happened within a few weeks of thousands of innocent civilians losing their lives to terrorist thugs on our own soil, some even in the Pentagon, is unconscionable.

It’s time to demand answers and immediate responses by our government. The terrorists know of our vulnerability, and now you do too. Please do your part in alerting your elected officials.