Mfr Nara- T5- Dos- Polt Michael Christian- 10-9-03- 00942

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MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD

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Event: Interview with Michael Christian Polt, Senior Foreign Services Officer,

former Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy, Bonn and Berlin Type of event: Interview Date: October 9, 2003 Special Access Issues: None Prepared by: Thomas R. Eldridge and Joanne M. Accolla Team Number: 5 Location: Department of State Participants - Non-Commission: Michael Polt, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, DOS; Paula Barton, Legal Advisor's Office Participants - Commission: Thomas R. Eldridge, Joanne M. Accolla Background Senior Foreign Service Officer; since 1977; recent assignments U.S.Embassy in Bonn and Berlin; in current position since 2000. Bachelors Degree in English, M.A. in Public Administration from the University of Tennessee. Stationed in Bonn from summer of 1997 until summer of 1999. Entire embassy moved to Berlin in summer of 1999 until 2000, Deputy Chief of Mission. Policy Priorities Mr. Eldridge asked during Mr. Polt's time in Bonn and Berlin, what were the policy priorities. Mr. Polt responded that he was in charge under the Ambassador for the entire range of the bilateral relationship with Germany, from the security relationship to security, trade, economic to the entire bilateral and multilateral relationships we had with Germany. Policy priorities - since it was pre 9/11, was very much a business and trade focus relationship before the security one; this was post-cold war, post wall coming down it was very much a relationship that was focused on how do we situate U.S. interest best in the newly reunited Germany and how do we best pursue our overall broad trade and economic relationships with Germany and the number one headline. Mr. Eldridge asked how you would fit counterterrorism into .... Mr. Polt said counterterrorism and the issue of security and terrorism was certainly the overlay of everything we were doing there - from the location of our embassy and the

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presence of OUI people in Germany not just in Berlin but throughout Germany; and how safe and secure they were, the safety of private Americans traveling or living in Germany, and then of course the kind of shann that we could do with the German authorities on inteUi enc 9/11 Classified Information

Mr. Eldridge asked on a daily basis how wou1d security concerns you had in Germany come to your attention and how would you work with the Germany authorities on those issues.

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Mr. Polt said that as far as our own physical security in the country was concerned, there was basically daily or weekly contacts with the various elements of not just the embassy itself but with our consulates throughout Germany who, through the office of the RSO, the Regional Security Officer, worked in tum for the head Administrative Officer of the embassy who would then either directly or through the AO come to me to let me know if there were any particular security concerns. We also had once a week country team meetings which I chaired on behalf of the Ambassador for the entire interagency group, all the heads of the agencies and all the heads of the state department sections meeting together to discuss all issues including security. There were also occasional security action committee meetings which were done on a regular basis, don't recall how often, but on regular intervals and whenever the situation warranted for us to have a special meeting to discuss a particular situation . Mr. Eldridge asked did you ever occasion to bring security concerns to the attention of the Germans. Mr. Polt said yes they would, for the security of the embassy and the U.S. official presence in Germany, they would routinely approach German authorities about our security concerns. For example, the embassy building in Berlin did not have the same level of security as Bonn where there was sufficient set-back from the road,. fencing and all of that stuff that provided our security requirements. In Berlin, we had to engage actively with Berlin authorities to provide us more physical setbacks from the presence of the outside world such as closing off streets, posting permanent police stations around the embassy building and things like that. We also would approach them whenever we thought there was any kind of general threat to American interests - not 'ust the official . uld possibly be affected. 9/11 Classified Information

Mr. Eldridge asked in terms ofconcems about the activities of known or suspected terrorists in Germany, did you have a relationship with German authorities discussing those kinds of things.

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Mr. Polt said we did although those would not on a routine basis be handled by me at my level. That would be done at the appropriate liaison level on the various entities that dealt with those issues at the embassy .

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Mr. Eldridge asked with regard to those types of activities, did the level of concern or attention that the embassy had to pay to them increase at all during the time your were three? Mr. Polt said he would say that the overall level of concern about security and terrorism issues was pretty high the entire time he was there. Iwould consider it that coming to Germany given the level of our relationship with Germany, and its location, and our overall interests and the breadth and presence of people of all kinds of nationalities, about concern about security issues and bad people passing through Germany, using Germany, casing our interest whiJe they were in Germany was always at a very high level during the time Iwas there. Mr. Eldridge asked ifhe observed any change after the embassy bombings in 1998.

Mr. Polt said - yes there were always spikes after incidents, or anniversary dates. These were raised in meetings and we would go to German authorities with our concerns. Mr. Eldridge asked as to concerns about activity of known or suspected terrorists in Germany, would that be the kind of information you would be apprised of as the deputy Chief of Mission.

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Mr. Po It said yes as would the Ambassador particularly in relation to if we felt there was any specific activity going on in Germany that would require a potential policy intervention by the German government. He said he was characterizing this very carefully because he would say that there was probably a great deal of law enforcement and intelligence coordination activities and all kinds of things going on in Germany that would not have risen to his level unless there was some policy reason that we had to approach and say hey, lets do this or do that. It is a huge country and Iwould not have been involved in all of those things.

Mr. Eldridge asked ifhe recalled what if any of those issues did rise to the policy level that you had to involve your ?

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Mr. Eldridge asked on a broader policy level, were there any issues in counterterrorism area that arose to your level?

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Mr. PoIt said he didn't recall any - my impression the entire time that our level of .interaction with counterterrorism and cooperation with the Germans was extremely high . and very well coordinated.'

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Mr. Eldridge asked what was his impression while he was there from all the sources that he was privy to of the terrorist activity in Germany. Mr. Polt said he was not always tuned in to what the terrorism picture was, but he knew from the political, social, economic reality of Germany in the broader Europe that they lived in, that German was an attractive place for all kinds of activity, both good and bad to be going ont that the entire Shannon(?) agreement of open borders was anything but tight. The ability of bad folks to get into Germany was not particularly complicated, and once they were in I believe that Gennany security and intel authorities were prett good and pretty sophisticated] 9/11 Classified Information I

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Mr. Eldridge asked did he consider Germany to be a terrorist sanctuary.

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Mr. Polt said no more than the U.S. would be. My point is it's a free and open country, free and open society, less diverse than we are, but more diverse than many other places in Europe, so having people from many different background around and have them move around to move freely I would say would make it easy for terrorist to get around, but not a terrorist sanctuary. Because I think the average evil doer would have a fairly clear understanding that the Germany authorities were relatively good at their work.

Mr. Eldridge asked if the Germans ever conveyed to you knowledge that they thought they might have a problem with terrorist activity. Mr. Polt said can't speak of any specific approach to him but from his conversations, and from being there and speaking with his colleagues, he is certain that Germans approached us on talking about terrorist activity. And the reason the Germans would want to share those concerns with us because they were expecting from us some information that they could use to go ahead and go after those people. That was a very active relationship without security and intel people. Tom Active and cooperative so you never felt that you needed to pressure them on counterterrorism issues except isolated instances that you discussed earlier.

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Mr. Eldridge inquired about privacy issues. Mr. Polt said it was an issue on a regular basis. Thy have very strict privacy laws where they are very concerned what they pass to us in an official manner particularly information we would then use in possible future persecutions and would have to become a matter of a public record. I will give you my supposition that a fair amount of information was passed that could not be use hereafter because of privacy laws and concerns, where intel sharing could take place but could not be used in court proceedings.

Mr. Eldridge asked which German agency handled counterterrorism issues. Mr. Polt said it was the "Organization for the Protection of the Constitution" the internal intelligence organ and it is in Germany due to OUI own post-war design not a federal authority but rests with each individual Germany state and is under the control of the state governors because it was OUI intent after the war was not to allow a domestic intelligence agency to be countrywide. "Verfassungsschutz" - there is a state Verfassungsschutz and a federal one as well.- split up by state the federal is an umbrella. There are the various police forces and the external intelligence force ("BND") which is the equivalent to our CIA.

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Mr. Eldridge asked ifhe had a regular point of contact on these kinds of matters. 9/11 Classified 9/11 Classified

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My interaction would have been mostly at ~th-e~l-n-te-n~o-r-m~l~ru·s-te-r~l~e-ve~:]~.------------~ Mr. Eldridge asked when you first head of AQ or Radical Islamic Groups taking refuge or operating in German.

Mr. PoIt said I cannot remember that I was ever told Al Qaeda was seeking refuge in Gennanyat all. Iknow that Iwas made aware in briefings that there were potentially terrorist individuals seeking and having refuge in Germany. That would have happened sometime fairly early on in my briefings when I arrived shortly after my arrival in the summer of 1997. Not just radical Islamic terrorists. Mr. Eldridge asked if you recall being informed about Al Qaeda being present there. Mr. Polt said he did not recall being confronted with the name Al Qaeda at all - it doesn't means I wasn't but I don't remember.

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Mr. Eldridge said when the embassy bombings happened .... Mr. Polt said yes of course - that's when Al Qaeda would have been raised to my attention .

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Mr. Eldridge stated that n 1998, the head of the CIA, George Tenet declared war on Al Qaeda - did that ever come to your attention? Mr. Polt said I don't recall but now you jogged my memory when the bombing happened. Let me explain my reaction why I don't remember these things so precisely. I cannot remember a time in my Foreign Service career that since my very first entry that I was ever not conscious of the fact that terrorism was an active problem that we had to pursue. When 9111 happened I and I suspect a lot of my colleagues in this building were kind of surprised by the reaction of our country - the surprise that something like this could occur. I think all of us in the Foreign Service have always taken that to be a threat and an evil that we were anticipating to be out there at home and abroad all the times. So if you ask me to pinpoint a time when I would be become aware of a war on terrorism being started by George Tenet or Al Q becoming an issue, it has been an issue for me as long as I can r3member working in this line of work. Mr. Eldridge do you remember when the embassy happened and Al Q became a household name, any discussion about is there Al Q in Germany. Mr. Polt - yes - no specific instances but I know we raised in country team meetings, I know that Al Q as an Islamic terrorist would have been part of our emergency action committee meetings. An in the context, in the ACM, talk about exchanging information with the consular section about what kind of information was out of there. We didn't actually do the exchange of information in those meetings, allow we did was alert each other to the fact that we had to do that as a process that had to be taken care of through the Visa Viper program and all the various mechanisms .... Mr. Eldridge asked about the quality of intel on AI Qaeda. Mr. Polt said he never got into raw intelligence unless it rose to the policy level to take up with the Germans or Washington. Mr. Eldridge said he heard there was not a great deal of intelligence coming out of Western Europe during this time on the presence of radical Islamic terrorists - there is a chicken egg thing - until you know there's a problem you don't necessarily develop a lot of sources - I don't know if you ever got that sense from the intelligence side - do you wish we had more information on what is going on .. Mr. Polt said certainly Emergency Action Committee would have gotten sense there was not a great deal of information being passed and all information passed was being passed. Now I will add one thing to that that might be of interest and that is in spite of what I have said about the German capability and their sincerity and willingness to cooperate which is all rue in my view. There is also a sense and that is something that would have happened on my level, that we Americans were somehow at hysterical on this issue and that other people did not see the threat in the same dimension that we always did and there was a certain amount of convincing that we had to do at the policy level not on specific cases, not on even specific intelligence but simply on the matter of '.'folks it's a dangerous world out there and its not just us who are going to be hurt by this, it's going to be you as well. The specific instances that I can recall is the entire negotiation and placement and security of our

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new embassy. And in that context it was local, state and federal authorities we had a great deal of discussion on the broader theme of terrorism and threat of __ . Mr. Eldridge asked if it were fair to say that their priorities in terms of the reunification and all the various economic issues they were themselves confronting were more front and center for them than terrorism. Mr. Polt said yes.

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• Mr. Eldridge asked ifhe had oversight over the Visa viper process as well. Mr. Polt said oversight in the sense that I had oversight over everybody in the embassy but not specifically over the visa viper program. Mr. Eldridge asked what were concerns he was aware of about the visa waiver program.

Mr. Polt said I will back up before another tour before the tour of Germany. For as long

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as pre 9/11 that I can recall, the preponderance of emphasis on visa issuance was risk management. How do you go ahead to scrutinizing those cases that had to be scrutinized very carefully while spending little or no time on the ones that you could automatically exclude from concern or you had every reason to believe they were solid cases. The law . told our CO the thing you need to watch is are these people going to be illegal immigrants in the US - are these really people who will go there temporarily, business or pleasure and return their countries. On the immigrant visa side there was a little more scrutiny about their background checks and things like that, a much longer process involved. There was always a concern about people of criminal background; people who were excluded for various other reasons or of course terrorist concerns. I remember from my very tour in the foreign service 26 years ago in Mexico City, the name bomb

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throwers. Bomb throwers was one of the things we had to watch out for - was the man or woman standing in front of you a potential or past bomb thrower. An automatic put him aside or say not right away. Mr. Eldridge asked about the law on denial of a visa - and whether the standard the consular officer applies for a likely or intending immigrant versus whether they are a potential terrorist is different. Mr. Polt said right. Mr. Eldridge asked about the two standards - the l2a3b denying the visa because you think they're terrorists, or not having them overcome the presumption that their intending immigrants 22l4b, and how a manager of consular people who is in that environment of doing constant risk assessment, tells his people to make visa decisions. In other words, if you have someone before you that doesn't look right, do you deny them the visa under the intending immigrant even though there is something in the back of your mind that tells you he may be a terrorist. Mr. Polt replied with a caveat statement that it has been a long time since he was directly involved in the visa process, but he does have a view on this and a sense of what they used to do when he did this and what he talked to his colleagues about. The consular officer under the law is given a great deal of discretion in denying a visa. And one of the ones that they used back in the days when he was a vice consul in Mexico City was a 221 G, which is nothing more than insufficient documentation. In other words, they can use that one for anything where they are not quite certain that they have gotten enough to allow them to make a reasonable decision about that person's bona fides. So there was plenty of room there to say no - come back and bring me more - try to convince me with more or I won't issue this because I don't feel comfortable about this. But it was not the job of a consular officer to keep as many people as possible out of the U.S. They were not instructed to do that. They were instructed to go ahead with legitimate people and issue visas and allow them to travel; and do not allow the ones who are not legitimate. Knowing whether you are a terrorist when you come to my interview window is a very difficult thing for me to know. It's very easy if I put your name in my computer and it spits out that you're a terrorist - that's easy. I can get rid of you; I can inform authorities to nab you when you leave the embassy; I can do all kinds of stuff. But to get that information - what I know as a consular officer - is only as good as the intelligence that I have at my disposal to make that call. Mr. Eldridge raised the 221G - because he has heard it's not necessarily a denial. Mr. Polt said - it's only a deferral of the decision. Mr. Eldridge said but it's not in the computer as a denial. Mr. Polt said - I don't think so - its been a long time since I did this.

Mr. Eldridge said part of the reason he asked is because many of the people associated with the 9/11 plot were denied visas in Berlin including under 221 G; and one wonders what was the thought process, the practice at Berlin - was it routinely - was it known that

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you could use 221 G - not making a precise finding under 214 but yet send the person away.

Mr. Polt said he couldn't tell him about the practice in the visa section in the embassy in Berlin because literally he had nothing to do with the day-to-day interaction. But he clarified from his standpoint, 221 G becomes a defacto denial if that person does not come back to the embassy and convince you to issue the visa; because he is not getting the visa ifhe doesn't come back. The entry into the lookout system, however they do it now, becomes a flag for any future adjudicating officer to have to make a decision. If you are Vice Consul A and I am Vice Consul B, and you put 221G in the system and the next time that person comes back to me for the application, I pull it out - ifhe wasn't able to give you enough data I will demand the same amount of data or more than you did. That flag is going to be there; even the most benign flag is still a flag and will cause me to spend more time and be more careful with that particular applicant. 214b is so specific intending immigrant - that you can be the most vicious terrorist in the world and theoretically qualify under 214 b because you only plan to come over here and kill somebody and leave right away - you are not an intending immigrant. Mr. Polt said he was not trying to be facetious because it is a very serious subject but theoretically that's not denial grounds for a terrorist - it's only whether you are going to come and go. And that was the prime criteria for well-intentioned visitors to the States so at least had no imminent intentions that were violent. Mr. Eldridge said getting back to visa waiver -were there any security concerns that came to his attention. Mr. Polt said visa waiver as he understands how it works for all countries as well as Germany - was only for German citizens - you had to be nationality bound - you had to be a German citizen who could travel to the US under certain types of visas - it wasn't a visa across the board - you couldn't come here to study for a year under the visa wavier program - it was a pure, I think Bl or B2 tourist category and temporary business category. Mr. Eldridge asked if you could be a naturalized citizen. Mr. Polt said they would not make a differentiation in that regard. The only way a visa waiver issue would come to the attention of a Consular Officer is if a person tried to obtain a visa for a purpose that the waiver program did not apply. Because otherwise the visa waiver program bypassed the Consular Section completely and went straight into the then INS, now Homeland Security area. Mr. Eldridge asked did anyone ever bring to your attention security concerns associated with known or suspected terrorists in Germany trying to gain entry into the US under the visa waiver program. Mr. Polt said not that he can recall. Mr. Eldridge asked if he was familiar with the requirements of the ICAO standards on passports and the attempt to get our European partners to adopt and issue passports with biometrics. Mr. Polt said he is broadly familiar with it.

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Mr. Eldridgeasked if the Germans are not compliant with the leAO standards and if that has come up in his bilateral relations with the Germans. Mr. Polt said it has come up; he does not know where the Germans stand now. During his time there he knew there were issues about having them comply with machine readable standard in order for them to continue to qualify for the visa waiver program and there were certain deadlines (some times movable) and continued threats that if they did not comply, they would have to come off the program which means all there people would have to come back for their visas. There was also discussion in the context of what that would mean in terms of the embassy to accommodate that. lfwe suddenly had all the Germans coming back again for visas, you would have to beef us up and give us more facilities to do that cause they would all be at our doorstep the next day to ask for their visas. Mr. Eldridge asked if those kinds of discussions fall under the same sort of discussions in as mush as some of these standards are about security, and whether he ever get push-back from the Germans on why we are so worried about this stuff. Mr. Polt said not on the basis of you guys are hysterical seeing terrorists around every comer. Their concerns were probably focused on privacy concerns - of their citizens being held in some American database, and sovereignty concerns - we telling them what kind of passports they have to have - and those are issues I have run across in virtually every country I have been to - because we often make demands that are somewhat intrusive on what they consider to be their prerogatives. At the same time our argument always was that security is a common concern that we share. The waiver program is something we both want; we want it for you and you want it for yourself; and we are not demanding it of you, all we are saying is to work together and cooperate in this area, we need you to work with us to make this happen. Those 2 concerns I mentioned were certainly out there. Mr. Eldridge stated that the leAO organization is not precisely all about these security concerns. What was Mr. Polt's sense of the value of having a greater focus through these multilateral fora on these kinds of programs. Mr. Polt said he believes that diplomacy has to be pursued on every single front that you can - the multilateral, the bilateral, the personal- in any way shape or form. I don't' think you can say OK it would be better if we did more here or less there, or if we had only done more through the UN or leAO or another international organization we would have been able to achieve more. I think you have to pursue, you have to identify your interest and pursue it along every single route, including down to the individual, person to person relationships that you establish in the countries. Mr. Eldridge inquired whether if the Germans participated in negotiating an international agreement, they would not feel they were loosing their privacy. Mr. Polt said that would be correct because it gives the Germans more cover. It is always something we should keep in mind that we often can get countries to do more when they can tell their citizens we are tied into an international agreement, it's not just the Americans pushing us along. Mr. Eldridge asked if Mr. Polt was familiar at all with the visa policies during the time that he was in Bonn or Berlin. Mr. Polt said not in detail. The mission in Germany is

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huge and we had very senior people in charge of individual sections of the embassy; and a very senior foreign service officer who was the consul general. Mr. Eldridge asked what did he take away from that time in terms of the policy guidance he was being provided regarding visa policy from Main State. M r. Polt said he knew the vigilance level was already high all along. In particular in visa waiver countries where we knew a whole wide range were passing our system by, we were conscious of the fact that we had to be particularly vigilant and careful in how we dealt with applications for visas, whatever they were. I can'trecall a specific set of Washington messages that said be careful out there folks. Mr. Eldridge said he understood that visa policy pre-September 11 was do more with less, resources are very tight, if you have a 98% approval rate, don't be interviewing 98% of the people. Congress was not exactly giving large sums of money to the consular affairs bureau and people out in the field are having to adjudicate many thousands of visas per year, 25,000 - in some cases, consular officials are doing hundreds a day and not able to give each one a tremendous amount of attention. Iam wondering if those kinds of messages were coming across to people in the field. Mr. Polt said let me put it this way. First of all, do more with less was not a consular guidance - it was for all of us. You're going to have to do your job and your not going to get the full resources - standard message we had all the time. The; Consular section was under the same kind of restrictions, but Iwould say it was under the context of risk management. In a country where your refusal rate is very low, where your indications are that you are issuing "good" visas, you would want to be sure that the resources that you do have are concentrated on those areas that are most problematical and subj ect those applicants to the most scrutiny and in that sense Iwould say that in spite of do more with less, which Idon't think is a particularly good management practice or instruction, that it is a very good use of resources to only focus an intense amount of effort on a much smaller slice of the individuals. And that means a large section is getting very little attention. Mr. Eldridge asked how do you know if you are issuing good visas. Mr. Polt said back in the pre-September 11 days, INS would tell us what good visas were, because when they caught people and turned them around they would issue us slips of paper. An adhoc way. Mr. Eldridge asked if there was a systemical way; Mr. Polt said not back when he was issuing visas; not a very strict system that would remind me of any of my decisions, if I had gone wrong or right. Simply because once they left my decision process, the process in the states, was if they were let in there was no tracking of what they did so how could I possibly know what they did. Mr. Polt said there was no exit control. Mr. Eldridge asked if it was different for people operating the embassy in Berlin. Mr. Polt said I have no reason to assume that. I want to be careful because I just don't know.

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For the best of my understanding of what our immigration policy and how INS functioned before DRS came into existence, I don't think we had exit controls because I don't' think we right now have exit controls. Mr. Eldridge said one of things people have suggested is that with DRS working with the State Dept. on visa policy and a number of places, what's your sense of this relationship? Mr. Polt said I have every confidence that the relationship can work and as far as I'm concerned the relationship for as long as I was associated during various stages of my career, did work - working with the INS. There was always a fairly standard bureaucratic protection of your function versus the other function, but never in my experience was there one of I have this stuff and I'm keeping it to my stuff and between us a scuffle of nothingness. We would routinely go to the INS for information andlor doing certain things that only they could do; and they would routinely come to us. My overall sense, and I feel very strongly for my entire foreign service career, is that interagency cooperation overseas is vastly superior to anything we have inside the beltway. And the entire structure or whatever flaws it may have, of the ambassador overseeing the entire interagency community in the country, if you have a good country team, it works very well and all the agencies do collaborate very well together. Mr. Eldridge asked if there were INS people in the embassy in Bonn and Berlin. Mr. Polt said I know we had them in the country but don't remember if they were in Frankfurt or Bonn or Berlin. Maybe one or 2 liaison officers for INS in Bonn or Berlin, but there main office was in Frankfurt and not with the embassy - that's what I recall. Mr. Eldridge asked what was his sense of whether pre-clearance of people by overseas services - whether it be DRS or some new overseeing service - would be a good idea to bring security in visa waiver countries. Mr. Polt said you are asking my opinion, because I have served in a country where we had pre-clearance, I'll say one thing - the entire process of ascertaining whether someone should have a visa or not or enter the US or not, is really only as good as the individual who is doing the asking, and the information the individual has at its disposal. I have nothing but the highest respect for my colleagues who do this kind of work. You get an incredibly high caliber "clerk" to handle this kind of question that you would never get in any other kind of service sector that I can think of. And at the same time I have a similar respect for our INS cousins and colleagues who do a very hard job of checking visas of plane loads of folks coming off the aircraft and suddenly faced with them and asked to make split second decisions. I think each and everyone of these people who have been criticized a great deal do a very sincere job of trying to do the best they can under these circumstances. It is going to be very difficult for us to design a system that meets our very legitimate and absolutely security requirements in this country, and the fact that we cannot simply close our borders and say don't come, we want to be secure without you. And that nexus and the willingness of our country to pay for the cost of doing that and doing that in some efficient way, is going to be every hard to arrive at..

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Mr. Eldridge asked if Mr. Polt thought that getting advance passenger information and getting some advance screening with the help of people in Germany, was a kind of thing that he thought could work. Mr. Polt said you are short changing yourself. What you ought to have is both. Because now you get 2 check points the way the system works. With pre-clearance, you would have one checkpoint. Right now you have the visa interview with the consular officer then someone checking visas once they arrive. If you are talking about visa waiver countries, - I don't know if I would subscribe to your premise that if you did in-country then you would have access to more information necessarily if our information database is good. And besides, you would be taking away the visa waiver facility because if you are going to say you are going to have to screen them and check before they leave a visa waiver country, your basically subjecting them to a screening process which is very similar to the visa interview. Mr. Eldridge said not necessarily - i.e. in Australia, screening is done when person makes a reservation, and the information is checked by security authorities. The airline is told yes you can let them come or no you can't. Ifpeople had more information enough in advance, they could do more screening. It doesn't strike me that you are slowing down people getting on the plane. But it would take an agreement by airlines and the host country. Given what you know about the concerns of the Germans and privacy, is that kind of thing feasible? Mr. Polt said yes feasible but you will have trouble because what you are doing is saying in your country your citizens are going to give to the American authorities whatever data we ask for, wOeare going to research this data and go ahead and do with it whatever we need to do with it, and then we will let your citizens know if they can come. The tale end they will have no trouble with because it is always our right to decide who can come but we are suddenly going to become data screeners, any more than we already are, of basically all of their US bound traffic - its going to cause .them some. - it doesn't mean it can't be done., maybe it can be done. Mr. Eldridge said he thought there would be very few instances where you would tell them that they can't get on the airplane - but I would imagine it already happens to some extent if we get advanced information on somebody that we could prevent them from commg, Mr. Polt said that's true - if we the bomb thrower is going to get on Delta, we can get the German authorities to stop that person. That can be done. Mr. Eldridge - I think what we are talking about is more a variety on what already occurs than some massive new equipment that people turn over information. Mr. Polt said if you were to build a collaborative effort with the Germans where we would together gather several kinds of information to make their airlines and their

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airways secure, and at the same time meet some of our concerns, there might possibly something there for us with them and for us.

Mr. Eldridge - what is your view about the visa interview and its value in ferreting out or discovering a terrorist? Mr. Polt said the visa interview is a very, very excellent tool- even 5 minutes are better than no minutes - and I think it is an excellent way for us to try and get at somebody's bona fides in a variety of areas including terrorism - and as I said to you earlier, it is very hard for me to tell, and we just spent a lot more than 5 minutes together, for me to know if you are a terrorist or not. Because if you are a terrorist, one of the things that you are going to fairly good at is deceiving me - making believe that your are not. At the same time I will have had a fair amount of experience in finding out what deceptive answers are and things like that. It is very hard in 5, 10 or 15 minutes that if you are trying to convince me that you are a bona fide physics student at Humboldt University, that you are actually making little stuff in your backyard after hours. It's very hard. If I have nothing else except you there a few pieces of paper that you brought along with you ..

Mr. Eldridge asked how is it different from deciding if someone intends to actually stay? Mr. Polt said because the intending to stay part is very simple information. If you say you want to go to Disney World and you are a campo Sino from Mexico, and you have never left your country before, you told me that you have 14 children and you don't own a car, and you are suddenly going to fly to Orlando - that's too simple for me to know that you are not really a visitor to the States. The story is much easier to discover than your very elaborately put together and very solid cover story if you are a terrorist. Mr. Eldridge - but is what you are saying then is based on information that you receive about how the typical terrorist applying for a visa seeks to deceive the consular officer?

Mr. Polt - that is and we have certain profiles; we know sort of stories people weave together; and we do rely on having a database and that gets back to the entire thing that I am sure is going to be in your report - if I am a consular officer I want to have the biggest freaking database that I could possibly have at my disposal so that when I put your name and picture in that computer, it spits something out to get me to ask more questions to find out if I have a bad guy in front of me. Mr. Eldridge - the question is: do the consular officers get the training they need to deal with not just the intending immigrant but the intending terrorist? If the terrorists are smart they wont be in the data base - what do we do what is the best way to prepare our consular officers assuming there is nothing in the data base. Mr. Polt said we have something called ConGen (used to be Rosslyn) in Arlington I think its an excellent training facility. I know that when I went through it terrorism detection was not high on the agenda - I very strongly suspect that it is a much more prominent element of the training now. It should continue and even more so be a prominent element - I think we should afford our younger officers and our mid level and senior

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level managers in the consular field opportunities outside that environment to get additional training, all the way through psychological training and other kinds of methods. Mr. Eldridge - interviewing techniques? Mr. Polt - interviewing techniques even we got fairly good ones when I came in. More specific to where you were going - not about your average Middle East terrorist who might be coming before you. Ithink we can do a lot more in training; and Ithink we are training the right kind of people who are able to absorb this material and use it to the best of our interests. Iwill at the same time not discount the tremendous amount of education that we get on the job in a very short period of time when you are out there. Because the people out there have a lot more experience who will introduce to the subject, the supervisors who will watch you interview; to be sure you got the right answers that you need to have . Mr. Eldridge is there something we haven't talked about that you think we should know about the nature of our inquiry to get us to the 3 goals we set out? Mr. Polt said you haven't asked me about what my sense is of the importance of foreign policy in the visa and consular process. Do Ibelieve there should be a relationship or should it just be D.S. domestic security concerns and that's it. Iobviously have a very parochial State Department interest in this and Iwill defend our position in this and that is Ithink it is an incredibly powerful foreign policy tool- the visa process - that is why I am completely and totally opposed to totally separating the visa function out of the Department of State - not because Ifear to loose the function - not because Ithink that DHS could not do it as well as we can - that's not it - their smart people; their just as smart as we are. Visa policy is foreign policy - and if you think we think that, the other countries think even more that. As soon as you take that tool away from our chief foreign policy agent, you are robbing him of a tool that you want him to have to work on your behalf So Ithink it would be a very bad idea to go ahead and completely take this apart. Mr. Eldridge asked if Mr. Polt has seen the MOD. Mr. Polt said Ithink the MOD right now is good - it does the right things and a great deal of credit goes not only to Maura Hardy(?) for negotiating a good MOU together with her colleagues at DHS, but the willingness of Colin Powell and Governor Ridge to go ahead and do this as a collaborative, cooperative effort and not make it a bureaucratic head butting. Mr. Eldridge asked if tse MOU appropriately preserves the Secretary's power in this area? Mr. Polt said Ithink that at this point it has. The one concern Ihave, not about the MOU, but about the relationship in the future. So much depends on personalities and the willingness of people to work together and cooperate appropriately. Iknow MOUs are

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supposed to fix all this beyond personalities but we also know it doesn't' always work that way. Mr. Eldridge - thank you very much.

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