Another Black Eye For INS

In another black eye for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Wednesday that more than 1,000 foreign nationals already in the U.S. that the FBI wants to interview have vanished.

CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts reports that the stunning admission was another embarrassment for the INS - already smarting over last week's fiasco when it delivered student visa approvals to two of the September 11th hijackers. And it highlighted a perennial problem in the INS's ability to track foreigners in the United States.

"A significant number of individuals on the list could neither be verified as having left the country nor could they be located within the country," Ashcroft said. "We continue our attempts to locate these individuals in case they remain in the United States."

Ashcroft also announced that U.S. law enforcement authorities will ask some 3,000 foreign nationals for voluntary interviews in continuing attempts to learn more about the threat of terrorism.

"These visitors to our country have been selected for interviews because they fit the criteria of persons who might have knowledge of foreign-based terrorists," he said.

But, the Attorney General noted - based on past experience - it was unlikely investigators would find all - or even most of them.

"Their best efforts could not overcome the serious flaws in our current ability to locate visitors to our country," he said.

Ashcroft defended the initial questioning of several thousand foreign men, a program which critics have denounced as tantamount to racial profiling because it targeted young Arab and Muslim immigrant men.

Under the program, the Justice Department came up with an initial list in November of about 5,000 men, aged 18 to 33, who entered the United States on non-immigrant visas after Jan. 1, 2000, and have passports from countries where Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network has been present or active.

A Justice Department report on the initial round of questioning concluded that most of those interviewed had no information about the Sept. 11 attacks.

However, the report said some provided leads that may assist in the investigation into the hijacked plane attacks or other planned violence. For example, one person interviewed recalled seeing one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, the report said. Two other individuals identified acquaintances who had taken flight training. Examples in the publicly released report were heavily censored.

Fewer than 20 individuals were taken into custody as a result of the initial round of interviews – most of those for immigration violations - the report said. Three were arrested on criminal charges, but none of the cases appeared to have any connection to terrorism, the report said.

Ashcroft said only a "very small number" refused to be interviewed in the initial round of questioning. "Many of those interviewed volunteered to provide information on an ongoing basis in the future," he said.

And he cited a Justice Department report released Wednesday that found the interviews with people who were located yielded significant leads in the war on terror.