The State Department circulated a cable last week, outlining new guidelines concerning passport, security measures, and biographical information for visa applications from certain foreign countries. The Trump Administration has said these new measures are necessary to update the outdated security and identification processes of some foreign governments. However, some are associating the cable’s new restrictions with the administration’s ban on travel from six Muslim-majority countries, which is currently waiting for a Supreme Court decision on its legality. The Cipher Brief’s Bennett Seftel spoke with former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Michael Leiter about what the new guidelines mean, and how they might fit in with the travel ban and the Trump Administration’s larger counterterrorism strategy.
The Cipher Brief: How unusual is it to require traveler biometric and biographical data from all countries worldwide? How likely do you think it is that these countries will comply with this order?
Michael Leiter: This isn’t particularly new, and I’m not sure it is – in terms of the information requested – any different from past practice. The U.S. has long required data on travelers, and it has often required countries from where they travel to provide information. In addition, for countries hoping to have the advantage of visa waivers, the U.S. has required even further vetting by the host countries and quality standards for passports and the like. There must, of course, be protections in place for how the data will or will not be used, and countries will fairly demand such assurances, but ultimately visas are a privilege and not a right. Countries will comply because their citizens will want to travel to the U.S.
TCB: How does this, in your view, address the terrorist threat? Does this strike you as “extreme vetting” – and if so, is it likely to be effective?
Leiter: I don’t think there is anything remotely extreme about requiring host nations to provide relevant biographic or biometric information for those who want to travel to the U.S. Again, most, if not all, of this is already required. This information is critical to identifying potential bad actors – terrorists, criminals, and the like – even if no system of checks will be perfect. If this is what the Administration wants to call “extreme vetting,” they are doing it all for show; this is routine and appropriate vetting that has existed for years.
TCB: Does this order complement or even expand on the Trump Administration’s travel ban that recently went into effect?
Leiter: The basis for the travel ban was in part because the Administration claimed the countries didn’t have good systems or records for identifying individuals traveling to the United States. It is certainly true that some countries’ records are less perfect than others, but it isn’t at all clear to me that it tracks the six countries in the travel ban. I think the current approach is far more sensible in detecting bad actors than is the blanket travel ban, which has countless weaknesses both practically and in terms of global messaging.
TCB: How does the travel ban fit into the Trump Administration’s larger counterterrorism strategy?
Leiter: This is a hard one to answer because I don’t think we have a sense of what the larger counterterrorism strategy is. To the extent the Trump Administration looks at terrorism as largely keeping bad guys out of the U.S., then perhaps this fits the “strategy.” The problem is that although this is one aspect of the threat, I have seen much less that addresses what is at least as important: the homegrown radicalization challenge we face.
TCB: How can the U.S. measure the effects of the travel ban? Will it be the case of the dog that didn’t bark?
Leiter: There will be no real way to measure the effects of the travel ban other than some of the negative effects based on the diminishing status of the U.S. in terms of leading a fact-based, comprehensive, global counterterrorism campaign. I suspect some in the Administration will point to an attack outside the U.S. perpetrated by a national or refugee from one of the countries listed as proof of its effectiveness, but this will be completely specious.
The U.S. has never been, nor is it today, Europe. We have a system of vetting, watchlists, and interagency reviews that simply doesn’t exist elsewhere, plus we have the luxury of geography protecting us. In short, there are many ways to include this biographic and biometric data so that we can appropriately vet travelers to the U.S. And all of them are far short of the ban, which in my view serves no meaningful national security purpose and is counterproductive in other ways.
