Lies about 9-11 Terrorists used in Immigration Debate

From today's Philadelphia Inquirer we learn that lies about the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center are being used to advance a racist nativist immigration debate. Isn't that just like the right wing?

The lying allegation is that the 9/11 hijackers had 63 driver's licenses among them and like most of what comes out of the mouths of right wingers, it is just not true. They had 13 licenses, now how would lying about something like that help advance a far right agenda? Read on:

It's the biggest legend of the immigration debate, repeated as
gospel at town-hall meetings, on Sunday talk shows, and even on the floor of the House of Representatives.

That the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had 63 driver's licenses among them is just not true.

The origin of the false information remains murky, but the number has taken on a life of its own, fueling reams of Internet chatter and adopted as a talking point by those who say driver's licenses are not just an immigration issue but a matter of national security.

According to the FBI and others, political aides have suspected the number was problematic since October, when several staffers began inquiring about the claim.

Yet House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R., Wis.) and other champions of a national driver's license standard, such as California Republican Reps. Elton Gallegly and Gary G. Miller, continued to promote the phantom number as recently as December.

A loophole closed

In fact, according to the 9/11 commission, the hijackers had a total of 13 licenses, two of which were duplicates. They also had two U.S.- or state-issued identification cards. Several licenses were obtained in Virginia through a loophole that has been closed.

"I don't know where the 63 number came from. It did not come from our report," said Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the bipartisan commission. "If there's other research, we'd like to know."

With the driver's license debate poised to take center stage in Congress next year, the fallacy of the 63 licenses could again become part of the rhetorical drumbeat. While some immigration-reform advocates have distanced themselves from the number, none has renounced it.

"We don't have any reason to really question it," said Sensenbrenner's spokesman, Jeff Lungren.

Jack Martin, special projects director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said he was not aware that the 9/11 commission had issued fact sheets correcting the misinformation and did not acknowledge the figure was wrong.

"If it's established that's not a correct number, basically it will not change our argument that we need to tighten up the driver's license issuing process," he said.

He added the advocacy group had no plans to stop using the number "unless there's something that comes forward indicating that was based upon faulty information."

Proper documents

Exactly what information the "63 licenses" was based upon remains unclear, even to those who cite it. The statistic appears, however, to have originated at least a year before the 9/11 commission - known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States - issued its report in July 2004 on the attacks.

The commission found that each of the hijackers had proper immigration documents and legal licenses. However, seven of them used false statements of residency to acquire legitimate IDs from Virginia.

The state has since amended the legal loophole.

The search for the exaggerated number's genesis leads from Capitol Hill to a Pittsburgh security conference to the former head of the California Department of Motor Vehicles before the trail goes cold.

Media ethicists say the echo chamber that amplified the fallacy points to a disturbing Internet-age trend of journalism by cut-and-paste.

Lungren and other political aides said they felt comfortable using the 63 number because it was quoted in an April 2004 newsletter published by the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, as well as a 2002 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette news story.

The bureau is an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Laurel Smith, managing editor of the bureau's newsletter, Today, said it used the unattributed statistic based on press releases issued by members of Congress, as well as the Post-Gazette story.

That story, about a computer security workshop in Pittsburgh, quoted the then-director of Carnegie Mellon University's security lab, Robert Thibadeau, as saying "the 19 terrorists on September 11 were holding 63 state driver's licenses for identification."

Thibadeau said in an interview that he learned the number at an earlier workshop and was merely trying to ascertain whether anyone else had heard it.

The previous source, identified as former California Department of Motor Vehicles Director Larry Goleman, acknowledged citing the "63 licenses" figure but said he, too, obtained it from published reports that he can no longer specifically recall.

Opponents of a national driver's license standard say they are angry at the ease with which the false statistic gained currency.

"It's so frustrating and so maddening to listen to what they've been getting away with saying," said Michelle Waslin, an immigration policy expert with the National Council of La Raza, a Washington-based nonprofit group that advocates Hispanic American issues.