Laden, Osama B.
Just about anybody can get a passport these days. Eric Lipton writes in The New York Times that the screening process leaves something to be desired:

The names of more than 30 fugitives, including 9 murder suspects and one person on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most-wanted list, did not trigger any warnings in a test of the nation's passport processing system, federal auditors have found.

Insufficient oversight by the State Department allows criminals, illegal immigrants and suspected terrorists to fraudulently obtain a United States passport far too easily, according to a report on the test by the Government Accountability Office to be released Wednesday.

The lapses occurred because passport applications are not routinely checked against comprehensive lists of wanted criminals and suspected terrorists, according to the report, which was provided to The New York Times by an official critical of the State Department who had access to it in advance. For example, one of the 67 suspects included in the test managed to get a passport 17 months after he was first placed on an F.B.I. wanted list, the report said.

The State Department also too often fails to aggressively pursue leads that could allow the government to catch black-market sellers of fake identification documents essential to getting a fraudulent passport, said Michael Johnson, a former State Department security official.

Once issued, a passport typically becomes a critical tool for illegal immigrants who are seeking work or who want to travel internationally, as well as for people involved in drug smuggling, money laundering, Social Security fraud and even terrorism, the federal auditors said.

"A fraudulent passport can enable a holder to conceal his true identity and his citizenship," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "These are exactly the kinds of problems that allowed the terrorists to attack our country."

The security committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the subject of passport fraud on Wednesday.

State Department officials said they were already moving to expand the crosschecking of passport applications against more complete lists of suspected criminals and terrorists. But they disputed reports that the department had been lax in its investigation of suspected fraud.

Really? They disputed the reports on what grounds, that "lax" was mean, and hurt their feelings?