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“ADDITIONAL CONCERNS REGARDING MATTHEW OLSEN'S NOMINATION” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1381-E1382 on July 21, 2011.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ADDITIONAL CONCERNS REGARDING MATTHEW OLSEN'S NOMINATION
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HON. FRANK R. WOLF
of virginia
in the house of representatives
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I submit additional concerns about the President's nomination of Matthew Olsen to lead the National Counterterrorism Center.
During a May 7, 2009, Senate hearing, Attorney General Eric Holder said,``With regard to those you would describe as terrorists, we would not bring them into this country and release them, anyone we would consider to be a terrorist.''
It is now well known from numerous press accounts, including Newsweek, The Washington Post, and National Journal, that the Obama Administration's Guantanamo Review Task Force, led by Matthew Olsen, recommended the transfer and release of at least two Uyghur detainees, who were members of a recognized terrorist group, to the United States in April 2009. The secret transfer was to take place on or around May 1, 2009.
The Uyghur detainees held at Guantanamo Bay are trained terrorists and members or associates of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement
(ETIM), a designated terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda, as designated by both the U.S. government and the United Nations. Whether their intended victims were Chinese or Americans, a trained terrorist is a terrorist, under U.S. immigration law.
According to testimony and government documents, many of the Uyghur detainees have admitted to training at ETIM camps in Tora Bora under the direction of ETIM leader Abdul Haq prior to their capture by Pakistani authorities in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan.
By recommendation of the task force led by Mr. Olsen, the Uyghur detainees were to be secretly settled in an apartment in northern Virginia under an unknown immigration statute. The immigration status of these detainees remains one of the critical unknown questions surrounding this failed effort. A careful reading of U.S. immigration law shows a broad and strict ban on the entry of any member of a terrorist organization.
As a former special counselor to the attorney general, Mr. Olsen should have been well aware of the strict statutory restrictions that would bar the admission of any alien who is affiliated with a recognized terrorist organization into the U.S. As the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence considers Mr. Olsen's nomination to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, they should carefully consider his judgment in recommending the legally-questionable secret release of the Uyghur detainees into the U.S.
Under Title 8, Chapter 12 of U.S. Code on ``Inadmissible Aliens,'' the law clearly and unconditionally bars a member, representative or associate of a recognized terrorist organization from receiving any sort of visa, refugee or asylum to the U.S. The law prohibits entry to the U.S. for any individual who has ``engaged in a terrorist activity'' or is ``a representative of a terrorist organization,'' ``a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity,''
``is a member of a terrorist organization,'' ``endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization,'' or ``has received military-type training from or on behalf of any organization that, at the time the training was received, was a terrorist organization.''
The only limited exception to this strict ban is for the attorney general to exercise ``parole'' status into the U.S. for a limited amount of time in the case of ``significant public benefit.'' If this option were to be exercised, it would conflict with the administration's stated intent to permanently settle the Uyghur detainees in the U.S. It also would raise serious questions about whether the task force, led by Mr. Olsen, recommended the settlement of terrorist detainees would have ``significant public benefit.''
The ETIM is a terrorist group that uses violence against civilians for the creation of an independent, Islamic state--in the image of the Taliban's Afghanistan--in the Xinjiang region of China. The group is linked to a number of terrorist attacks in China during the mid-1990s, including several bus bombings that killed dozens and injured hundreds of innocent civilians, as well as threats of attacks against the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Over the past decade, the group has predominantly operated out of Afghanistan and Pakistan and has developed close links with al Qaeda and the Taliban.
On August 19, 2002, then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage designated the ETIM as ``a terrorist group that committed acts of violence against unarmed civilians.'' The group was designated by the State Department under Executive Order 13224, ``Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions With Persons Who Commit, Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism,'' which defines terrorist as ``activity that (1) involves a violent act or act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and (2) appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.'' In 2004, the State Department further added the ETIM to the ``Terrorist Exclusion List'' (TEL) under section 411 of the USA Patriot Act of 2001
(P.L. 107-56), which prohibits members of designated terrorist groups from entering into the U.S.
Later in 2002, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing reported that two members of the ETIM were deported from Kyrgyzstan after allegedly plotting to attack the U.S. embassy there. Following the attempted attack, the U.S., Peoples Republic of China, Afghanistan, and Kyrgyzstan asked the United Nations to designate the ETIM as a terrorist group under Security Council resolutions 1267 and 1390, which provide for the freezing of the group's assets.
In April 2009--the same month the release of the Uyghur detainees was being planned--the Obama Administration added the current leader of the ETIM (also recognized as the ETIP), Abdul Hag, to terrorist lists under Executive Order 13224, following U.N. recognition of Haq, under Security Council Resolution 1267, as an individual affiliated with Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, or the Taliban. According to Stuart Levey, Treasury under secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence,
``Abdul Haq commands a terror group that sought to sow violence and fracture international unity at the 2008 Olympic Games in China.''
The ETIM's relationship with al Qaeda has grown since it was invited by the Taliban to conduct training in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, followed by the move of the ETIM headquarters from the Xianjang region to Kabul in September 1998.9 By 2005, Abdul Haq had been admitted to al Qaeda's ``Shura Council and on November 16, 2008, an al Qaeda spokesman
``stated that a Chinese citizen named `Abdul Haq Turkistani' was appointed by Osama bin Laden as the leader of two organizations--`al Qaeda in China' and `Hizbul Islam Li-Turkistan.'' This appointment was also confirmed by Abu Sulieman, a member of al Qaeda.
It is abundantly clear that the Uyghur detainees held at Guantanamo Bay are affiliated with the ETIM and trained under Abdul Haq in 2001. According to the detainees' sworn statement to U.S. authorities, many acknowledged that they had trained in an ETIM training camp in Tora Bora from June to November 2001 and at least one confirmed, ``The person running the camp was named Abdul Haq.''
Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in fall 2001 cooperation between the ETIM and the Taliban increased. It is reported that the ETIM's leader prior to Abdul Hag, Hasan Mahsum, ``led his men to support Taliban and fight alongside them against U.S. and the coalition forces. On 2 October 2003, Hasan Mahsum was killed, along with 8 other Islamic militants, by a Pakistani army raid on an al Qaeda hideout in South Waziristan area in Parkistan.''
Additionally, a January 2008 al Qaeda in Afghanistan publication,
``Martyrs in Time of Alienation,'' identified 120 ``martyrs''--
including five Uyghurs from Xianjiang and who trained in Tora Bora--who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan against U.S. troops. One is reported to have been killed fighting U.S. forces during the invasion in 2001. Hasan Mahsum confirmed, prior to his death in 2003, that ETIM members trained and fought with al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.
In addition to their affiliation in a designated terrorist organization and association with al Qaeda leader Abdul Hag, these detainees fervently believe in the creation of a Taliban-style Islamist state in northwestern China and do not share American values of respect, tolerance, and religious pluralism. In fact, one recent press account stated that, ``Not long after being granted access to TV [at Guantanamo], some of the [Uighurs] were watching a soccer game. When a woman with bare arms was shown on the screen, one of the group grabbed the television and threw it to the ground, according to the officials.''
Reports indicate that the ETIM's philosophy has dramatically evolved as a result of their training and cooperation with al Qaeda and the Taliban over the last decade. According to two experts, Rohan Gunaratna and Arabinda Acharya, ``In the post-9/11 era, ETIM began to believe in the global jihad agenda. Today, the group follows the philosophy of al-
Qaeda and respects Osama bin Laden. Such groups that believe in the global jihad do not confine their targets to the territories that they seek to control . . . [The ETIM] is presenting a threat to Chinese as well as Western targets worldwide.''
Although the Uyghur detainees may not have been considered ``enemy combatants'' by the Obama Administration, U.S. immigration law clearly bars the admission of members of recognized terrorist groups. The Senate should carefully consider the legal steps that Mr. Olsen and his task force recommended be used to bring the ETIM detainees into the U.S. for permanent settlement. If his task force advocated exploiting limited ``parole'' entry for the detainees with the intended goal of permanent settlement, it would go against the letter and spirit of the law.
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