Background checks

November 19, 2015

West Chester, Iowa

To the Editor:

I have a number of former co-workers/friends who are currently employed by the State Department and other entities in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan. The purpose of their employment is to train nationals in their respective countries to fight terrorism. Of course this training is based on the prospective individual?s undergoing a background check, so as to avoid training terrorists.

Under the Leahy Amendment, which was designed to prevent U.S. funds from going to train terrorists, names are run through the State Department watch/terrorist database. Also, by contacting local law enforcement to see if any applicants were known to them. Imagine, if you would, how accurate State Department information is on individuals from remote villages that nobody ever heard of. If the individual is on a watch list or known by local law enforcement because of prior activity or intelligence information, no problem. However, what about the hundreds, or perhaps thousands, who have never been arrested and those that the State Department would have no way of knowing about? U.S. intelligence in these countries is limited to local knowledge and cooperation. For example, if Abdul al Habib, who has been living in a remote area for the first 18 years of his life ? relatively unknown to law enforcement ? decides to join a jihadist group, until he is captured or killed he remains relatively unknown to law enforcement officials. How can the State Department effectively conduct a thorough background check of an individual from a foreign country whose records are basically nonexistent?

Record keeping in Syria is about as pinpoint accurate as word of mouth from village to village. No records, no police reports, nothing. In other words, we have no information on most of them. We have no way of knowing who or what these refugees are. Perhaps this is why the other Islamic countries are refusing to take them ? they don?t know, either.

John Brinning