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To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (10411)	8/8/2006 3:41:17 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 14758

Most test takers at trucking school have Middle Eastern names by Laurie Patton, KY3 News WEST PLAINS, Mo. -- Most of the people who’ve been tested to drive big rigs at a trucking school here have names that sound as if they are Middle Eastern in origin. The FBI has been scrutinizing the South Central Career Center’s Truck Training Program since at least early this month. KY3 News obtained the names of the test takers through Missouri’s Open Records law. The names on the list first caught the eye of the director of this school, who later tipped off the FBI. West Plains School District Superintendent Karla Eslinger says the director of her district’s truck driving school started noticing something odd in the spring of 2003. “Middle Eastern-origin type of names,” she said. For example, the list of people who took the commercial drivers license exam in May 2004 shows that 26 out of 30 people appear to have names of Middle Eastern descent. Seventy percent of those tested from May 2004 until December 2005, as shown in billing records, have Middle Eastern names. “It was a surprise to me,” said Eslinger. The superintendent says, in 2003, the director thought the trend was out of place in West Plains. “He had contacted the Highway Patrol,” she said. Eslinger says the director of the program notified the Missouri State Highway Patrol in 2003, which in turn notified the FBI. After a few brief phone calls, she said, that was the last they heard of it until the FBI served a search warrant at the driving school on Feb. 2 and 3, taking documents from the testing part of the school. An FBI spokesman said Tuesday that he could not comment on the case. School officials know at least one of the investigators identified himself as being with the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Since the terrorists’ attacks in 2001, truck driver training schools, like flight schools, have undergone increased scrutiny by the FBI. The agency is worried that under-qualified drivers, some of them illegal immigrants, are slipping through the cracks. Even worse would be that drivers who aren't citizens and haven't passed a terror threat assessment could be hauling thousands of gallons of hazardous materials. The FBI looks at it as a terrorism threat. The FBI has executed search warrants on driving schools in Utah, Tennessee and Illinois. Some so-called third-party license examiners have been indicted for helping immigrants and legal residents sidestep stringent laws, as was the case in an FBI bust at a school in Utah called Operation Road Warrior. The highway patrol has since removed the South Central Career Center Truck Training Program’s ability to test for commercial driver's licenses. Eslinger says she is doing all she can to cooperate with the investigation. “We want to be able to resolve the situation,” she said. The list obtained by KY3 News is not a list of the students of the school. Rather, it includes those people who walked in off the street to take the test. The past FBI cases have dealt more with skirting immigration issues than they have with any actual imminent threat. The superintendent says the director said these people who came in all had the required paperwork, the paperwork need to do take the test, including proof of their identity and evidence that they had taken a written test that is required to take the commercial drivers test. The director of the program and one of the examiners are on a leave of absence with pay on the advice of the district’s lawyers. As for where the people on this list are, the list only includes names -- no phone numbers and no addresses. Immigrant populations are in West Plains and in southwest Missouri area but they’re predominantly Hispanic. There’s also a community of Russian immigrants. ky3.com