Powell asks head of State’s visa program to retire

Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday asked the head of the State Department's embattled visa program to retire. Bureau of Consular Affairs chief Mary Ryan, a 36-year Foreign Service officer, will stay on until this fall to serve on Foreign Service promotion panels, but she will step down as head of the bureau at the end of this week. Her bureau has come under fire on Capitol Hill for lax visa issuance procedures in Saudi Arabia, fraud in Qatar and limited cooperation with law enforcement and intelligence agencies to prevent suspected terrorists from entering the country. Some critics are calling for the bureau to be removed from State and placed in the proposed Department of Homeland Security. But Powell on Thursday denied that his request for Ryan to retire was because of the controversies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. "We reached a point where we are now changing with respect to the Homeland Security Department … and with other agencies of government," Powell told reporters following a briefing with French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. "It was always clear at some point she would retire, and I thought this was an appropriate time for her to retire." Under Ryan's decade-long tenure as head of the Bureau of Consular Affairs, consular officers have been outfitted with better tools to catch would-be attackers. Most notable is a sophisticated name-checking system that can, for example, check variations in spelling of Arabic names against the U.S. government's terrorist watch lists. Domestically, the passport agencies that Ryan oversees have beefed up the anti-fraud features of American passports, which are replacing easily manipulated cut-and-paste photos with digitized ones. The improvements have been funded partly from visa fees that the bureau has been allowed to reinvest-rather than return to the Treasury-since 1994. But the bureau came under fire in recent weeks after lawmakers learned that many Saudi Arabian visa applicants have been issued visas without first being interviewed by consular officers. Only 45 percent of visa applicants in Saudi Arabia were interviewed over the past year. State Department officials have also announced an investigation into visa fraud at the embassy in Doha, Qatar, where 71 people from other countries illegally obtained visas between July 2000 and May 2001. Employees are being investigated for allegedly taking thousands of dollars to issue visas to people without proper documentation. Louise Crane, vice president of the State Department section of the American Foreign Service Association, said Ryan was well-respected throughout the department for looking out for consular officers. "She was a model public servant," Crane said. "Ms. Ryan did a fabulous job up until 9-11." Ryan was awarded the prestigious rank of career ambassador in 1998. She served in Italy, Mexico, the Ivory Coast, Sudan and other posts during her 36-year Foreign Service career and is one of the most respected officers at the State Department. Though Ryan was appointed to her post by President Clinton, Secretary of State Colin Powell kept her on as a member of the department's top management team. George Lannon, deputy assistant secretary for visa services, will serve as acting consular affairs chief until a replacement is named, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday.