9/11 hijacker used bypass to obtain California license
Jihad Watch
By Robert
And what of the other 184,000? From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
SACRAMENTO - The terrorist believed to have flown a hijacked airliner into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, obtained a California driver's license without providing the required Social Security number for identification, officials are acknowledging for the first time.
Nawaf M.S. Alhazmi then used that license when he registered for the flight training that enabled him to pilot the doomed airliner.
Alhazmi used a loophole, since closed, in California law that allowed hundreds of thousands of foreign drivers without Social Security numbers to use a generic number in its place. Even some foreign citizens with Social Security numbers skirted the identity check required of U.S. citizens.
Though the process changed a year ago, some of the drivers still have their original licenses. Only this fall, when their licenses come up for renewal, will the Department of Motor Vehicles run identity checks on the last of the drivers who used the loophole....
From December 2000 through February 2002, the department issued more than 184,000 licenses using the bypass code, which works out to more than 13,000 a month or more than 600 each business day.
"My hair is getting gray from thinking about this stat," Satkowski wrote in a March 6, 2002, e-mail to department Deputy Director John McClellan. "In my opinion, that is a lot of persons welcomed into this state on foreign student visas where the Social Security numbers are not verified!" |
