Fake Passports

Fraud soars, enforcement lags

After Drug Enforcement Administration agents nabbed a Chilean cocaine smuggler in Beverly Hills, Calif., they found in his bank safety deposit box only one item, a fraudulent U.S. passport. The phony passport and the forged visa have become standard equipment for drug traffickers, illegal aliens and others seeking a sure if shadowy passage abroad. A 1976 Justice Department report estimated that 80% of all hard drugs flowing into the U.S. were smuggled in with the aid of fraudulent passports. Today as many as 300,000 fugitives and terrorists use bogus identity papers, including U.S. passports and visas, to travel freely around the world. Says one DEA agent: “I can’t think of a major investigation involving hashish, heroin, cocaine or marijuana smuggling in the past five years that hasn’t involved passport fraud or false drivers’ licenses.”

Of the 3 million U.S. passport applications received yearly, federal officials estimate that 30,000 to 60,000 are fraudulent—and that only the most obvious ones, about 1,000, are detected. The State Department’s office of security has responsibility for pursuing passport and visa fraud, but its agents complain that their own superiors have handcuffed them. Says one agent: “The integrity of the passport system has gone down the drain.”

The problem, say department security agents, is that they spend less time enforcing passport laws than tending to their other duties, which include providing protection for State Department officials and visiting dignitaries and investigating colleagues for security clearances. As a result, the department’s 450 security agents investigate only about 200 of the 1,000 or so fraud cases detected annually. The rest are farmed out to other investigative agencies—FBI, DEA, Customs Service—or not investigated at all. Thus a potentially effective law enforcement weapon is left halfcocked. Says one State Department agent: “In every case I’ve done in years, the guy was involved in something other than just a passport violation.”

State Department officials counter that trying to verify the authenticity of the 3 million passport applications made every year would be prohibitively expensive. The officials concede they put more emphasis on the security agents’ other duties, but they defend that practice. “Do you provide protection to the ambassador in Beirut, who has been attacked twice, or do you do more passport investigations?” asks Marvin Garrett, acting deputy assistant secretary for security. “We have to have priorities here.”

Many critics of the U.S. passport system say the document itself is too easy to obtain. A criminal typically combs newspaper obituary columns for a suitable death and writes to the deceased’s home town for a copy of the birth certificate, the most useful document required to get a passport. Some thieves steal valid passports from unwary travelers. Others bribe U.S. consular employees to issue visas, which citizens of all foreign countries except Canada need to enter the U.S.

Some agents say consular personnel have made a million-dollar business out of the illegal sale of U.S. visas—and are getting away with it, largely because State Department higher-ups are terrified of a scandal. In rebuttal, State Department officials insist that they are investigating 40 to 50 cases of suspected visa malfeasance, though only two employees have been prosecuted in the past four years.

Passports could be made harder to obtain—by instituting fingerprint identification or designing passports that could be matched with prints on birth certificates. Other answers to the fraud problem, say State Department agents, include giving some other agency responsibility for security-clearance checks. The agents also want the power to make arrests. At present they have to bring along another law enforcement officer whenever they finally catch up with a violator.

One of the restrictions State Department security agents resent most is a rule against carrying firearms on fraud investigations. “When you whip out that badge, it looks like any other badge,” gripes an agent. “There’s nothing on it that says we’re not carrying guns and we’re harmless. You really don’t know who you’re going to find. It could be John Dillinger.” The agents regard the restriction as sure evidence of the State Department’s snobbish disdain for cops. When the question of allowing the agents to be armed came up a few years ago, a State Department official objected indignantly that gun toting “is abhorrent to the tradition and constitution of the State Department.”