![]() |
|||
![]() |
|||
Team 7 Investigation Finds Terrorist
Threats Across Canadian Border
Chris Halsne KIRO
7 Eyewitness News Investiga-tive Reporter
SEATTLE
— Terrorists are using Canada
as a launching pad to illegally enter America, an exclusive
KIRO Team 7 Investigation uncovers. Not only are terrorist
recruitments going on in British Columbia, but holes in border
security between there and western Washington are an open gate,
letting terrorists walk right in.
KIRO Team 7 Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne exposes the threat from Vancouver. This city wants to be known as our friendly neighbor to the north and host for the 2010 Winter Games.
However, a KIRO Team 7 Investigation
discovered it’s also home to 55 known terrorist
organizations, some of which would do anything to kill
Americans. Hezbollah, Hamas, the Armed Islamic Group, al-Qaida,
and the Army of Mohammed aren’t confined to terrorist
training camps in the Middle East. National security insiders
tell KIRO Team 7 Investigators hundreds of seasoned terrorists
are hanging out in British Columbia.
“Those people have a hate for
this country,” said Carey James, retired Border Patrol
Chief and current undersheriff of Whatcom County. “Some
of the intelligence I had access to said there were terror
groups; organizations from all over the world. Every group you
can think of has a cell in the Vancouver area.”
The sleeper cells aren’t just sitting idle.
The Royal Mounted Police tell KIRO
Team 7 Investigators al-Qaida is dealing drugs in Vancouver to
raise money for its cause. Justice Department sources also tell
us this year known terrorists have been probing our porous
border just north of Seattle.
“It’s a genuine threat
to this country,” said former U.S. Border Patrol Deputy
Chief Gene Davis. Davis continues to advise Congress about
northern border security.
“I’m telling you the threat up there has not diminished one bit. It’s probably greater now than ever before and greater right here in this area,” Davis said.
KIRO Team 7 Investigators uncovered
some pretty scary lapses already. A smuggler successfully
walked a group of Pakistani men down a pipeline underneath a
broken border camera this summer. Authorities caught two at
Sea-Tac Airport, but as many as five others remain at
large.
“I think it’s well known what can potentially cross the border. They’ve already crossed,” said Daryl Schermerhorn. Schermerhorn is a current Border Patrol agent along the Blaine sector, a 40-mile stretch of Canadian-U.S. border.
He says the biggest problem agents
have right now of stopping potential terrorists is a new Border
Patrol mandate: Don’t arrest anyone, just chase them back
into Canada.
“If you’re making arrests, bringing them to the office, identifying them, interrogating them — then you can gather intelligence. You can’t gather intelligence from people you don’t arrest.” No arrests mean the terrorist watch list is useless. “If you’re not going to catch ‘em, don’t know who they are, how you gonna check the list?”
Adding to security problems, the new
super-computer remote cameras established to catch trespassers
along the northern border still don’t work as
promised.
KIRO Team 7 Investigation first broke the story last year and very little has changed: $8 million over budget and cameras break down every
day.
“It’s been shown time
and time again that they don’t work well in certain
weather conditions and those issues haven’t been
addressed,” said Schermerhorn.
Due to national security reasons,
KIRO Team 7 Investigators aren’t going to reveal the
exact location of this camera pole, but we do want to reveal
one of the great deficiencies here. There are supposed to be
two cameras, one for day and one for night. But agents tell us,
the night vision broke months ago and there are no spare parts
to replace it.
The Justice Department has ordered
at least 400 new agents be assigned to the northern border in
the coming months. We’re told top officials in
Washington, D.C., are nervous that the next big terrorist
attack will have Canadian roots.
Canadian House of Commons member Val
Meredith hopes that’s not true, but admits her government
has been lax.
“We’re very critical that the government hasn’t moved strong enough, fast enough, in identifying the terrorist organizations like Hamas,” said Meredith.
This Member of Parliament also warns
us to look within. She says there is proof already that
terrorist recruiting is occurring at local Mosques.
We’re not just talking about
foreigners; we’re talking about our own young people
being pulled into this circle of violence and
terrorism.
International security experts say that since 9/11, Canadian immigration policies have toughened up. However, some members of parliament say prior to that, Canada did allow some well-known terrorists to slip into Vancouver. Then they disappeared. Copyright 2003 by KIROTV.com. |
![]() |
||
![]() |
|||
![]() |
|||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |