There’s timely news, and then there’s timely news, and … well this is both really… or either, take your pick.   I posted recently that it looked like the State Department was following procedure in giving the Taliban’s former PR man, Mr. Sayed Rhmatullah Hashemi, a number of visas to get into the U.S. and attend Yale.  We should presume that still to be the case, but the Washington Times came out with a story today that renews questions about the possibility that it may have not been all so innocent.

Indeed this report on the results of an internal investigation of immigration processing directly states that foreign governments may have gained some degree of direct control over our immigration system, and at a minimum are gaming it with impunity to place agents inside the U.S. for their own purposes.  It should be no surprise that hostile foreign governments are engaging in covert espionage and subversion against us, but this raises troubling questions about how successful they have been.

How compromised are all of our  National Security agencies?  Reports over time point to a troubling pattern of bureaucratic multiculturalism within our Federal Agencies that repeatedly keeps coming up as a barrier to effective questions being raised about suspicious individuals.  Here’s a quote from today’s Washington Times report:

An Iraqi-born U.S. citizen suspected of being a foreign intelligence agent was employed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to rule on asylum applications, including those from unfriendly Middle Eastern nations, according to documents obtained from Congress by The Washington Times.

Michael J. Maxwell, the former head of the Office of Security and Investigations at USCIS, is expected to testify about the Iraqi case and other breakdowns at the agency to a House subcommittee today.

Mr. Maxwell will tell legislators that the immigration system is being used by enemy governments to place agents in the United States.

…

Mr. Maxwell will also tell the panel about criminal accusations pending against USCIS workers and that top USCIS officials have deceived Congress and obstructed the duties of his office, the agency’s internal affairs division.

"The immigration system as a whole is so broken that our adversaries can game it," Mr. Maxwell told The Times when asked about the documents this week. "I can assure you they’re using it against us; they can with impunity."

…

"We know the asylum process is in shambles. We know fraud is rampant," he said, adding that documents show top officials know this and refuse to do anything about it.

This report should not be overblown as these are the worries of just one man who does not have definitive proof of espionage.  The story goes on to report that the USCIS is investigating the charges, an appropriate response given the gravity of the charges.  Whether the specific incident cited is proven to involve espionage or not, it seems clear that the post-Cold-War-End-of-History culture of having no fear of any serious threat to our nation’s security settled into our National Security agencies and is still present.