And exactly where will the data out of Syria come from that will satisfy our much more stringent requirements?
Finding 2: While America has a proud tradition of refugee resettlement, the United Stateslacks the information needed to confidently screen refugees from the Syria conflict zone toidentify possible terrorism connections.FBI Director James Comey on the challenges of screening Syrian refugees: “We canquery our databases until the cows come home, but nothing will show up because wehave no record of that person…You can only query what you have collected.”
• Top U.S. counterterrorism officials have been warning for months that the intelligence on theground in Syria is insufficient to thoroughly vet individuals traveling to the United States fromthe conflict zone. It is difficult both to confirm that Syrian asylum-seekers are who they claim tobe and to determine they do not have ties to terrorist groups.
• Recently, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official Matthew Emrich disclosed that thegovernment does not have access to any database in Syria that can be used to check thebackgrounds of incoming refugees against criminal and terrorist records.17 Nevertheless, it wasrevealed that over 90% of Syrian refugee applicants get approved, despite intelligence gapsand absent the ability to thoroughly check for security risks.18
• According to former FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes, “Our human sources [in Syria] areminimal, and we don’t have a government we can partner with, and that’s a key thing.”19
• National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen explained that “the intelligencepicture we’ve had of this [Syrian] conflict zone isn’t what we’d like it to be… you can only review[data] against what you have.”20
• Affirming these concerns, FBI Director James Comey testified in October to the Committee that“we can only query against that [data] which we have collected. So if someone has not madea ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their iden y or intentions reflected in ourdatabases, we can query our databases until the cows come home, but nothing will show upbecause we have no record of that person…You can only query what you have collected.”21
• Earlier this year, FBI Assistant Director Michael Steinbach said that “the concern in Syria is thatwe don’t have the systems in places on the ground to collect the information… All of the datasets, the police, the intel services that normally you would go and seek that information [from],don’t exist.”22Finding 3: Despite security enhancements to the vetting process, senior officials remainconcerned about the risks and acknowledge the possibility of ISIS infiltration into U.S.-boundSyrian refugee populations.4National Intelligence Director James Clapper stated that “we don’t obviously put it pastthe likes of ISIL to infiltrate operatives among these refugees.”
• Departments and agencies responsible for the security of the refugee vetting process haveexplained that additional screening measures have been put place to ensure that Syrianrefugees do not have ties to terrorism. However, after extensive briefings, Committee staffwere not satisfied that these measures would meaningfully mitigate the risks associated with alack of intelligence on the individuals being admitted.
• FBI Director James Comey explained that “there is risk associated with bringing anybody infrom the outside, but especially from a conflict zone like [Syria]…My concern there is that thereare certain gaps I don’t want to talk about publicly in the data available to us.”23
• DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson added, “It is true that we are not going to know a whole lot aboutthe Syrians that come forth in this process.”25 He also explained that “organizations like ISILmight like to exploit” the Syrian refugee resettlement program into the United States.24
• Similarly, James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, stated that “we don’t obviously pu past the likes of ISIL to infiltrate operatives among these refugees.”25
• Retired General John Allen, the president’s recent envoy on the coalition to defeat ISIL urgedsimilar caution. “We should be conscious of the potential that [ISIS] may attempt to embedagents within that [Syrian refugee] population.”27Finding 4: Surging admissions of Syrian refugees into the United States is likely to result in anincrease in federal law enforcement’s counterterrorism caseload.
• Following the rise in admissions of Iraqi refugees into the United States, it was discovered thattwo al Qaeda terrorists had managed to slip through the cracks and resettle in Kentucky in2009.28 The FBI reportedly still has “dozens” of ongoing counterterrorism cases tied to theseadmissions.29
• The Committee has been made aware that officials in multiple departments and agencies areconcerned about accelerating Syrian refugee admissions and fear that the lack of caution willresult in a range of new terrorism cases domestically.
• Given the current high-threat environment, agencies are stretched extremely thin in termsof their ability to monitor suspects and disrupt plots. This year the FBI has been forced toconfront nearly a thousand terrorism-related cases in every single U.S. state, according to FBIDirector Comey, straining law enforcement resources. “We had to surge hundreds of peoplefrom criminal cases—which are important—and move them over to the national security side,”he noted. Comey said he was unsure what the Bureau would do if there was a return to thislevel of operational tempo.3
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