President Bush’s top intelligence aide has confirmed that Iraqi terrorists have been captured coming into the United States from Mexico.
The confirmation comes from National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, who talked about the situation in an interview with the El Paso Times recently.
“Coming up through the Mexican border is a path,” McConnell said. “Now, are they doing it in great numbers? No, because we’re finding them and we’re identifying them and we’ve got watch lists and we’re keeping them at bay.”*
But, he said, “There are numerous situations where people are alive today because we caught them (terrorists).”
Intelligence officials say the numbers and details of such situations are classified, but McConnell pointed as an example to Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, who entered the United States through Tijuana, Mexico, in 2001, and later pleaded guilty to helping raise money for Hezbollah, which has been designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.
The goal, McConnell said, is for terrorists to gain admittance to the United States, and then produce “mass casualties.”
**The Taliban, incidentally, received $43 million from the U.S. government five months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The reason, stated Karl Rove–who has resigned in order to spend more time with the Manson family–was because the Taliban is a “faith-based organization.”