The Pitfalls in Policing the U.S. Diplomatic Corps

American diplomat Thomas P. Carroll apparently had no clue he was a target of investigation when he landed in Miami last month on a flight from the Caribbean nation of Guyana, where he had been posted for two years.

And when he met that day at Miami International Airport with his successor as chief of the U.S. Embassy’s non-immigrant visa section, it is unlikely Carroll knew he was being taped.

His pitch to his replacement, according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, was as simple as it was chilling: “Carroll asked [his colleague] to approve approximately 250 U.S. visas in exchange for $1 million in United States currency.”

Since Carroll’s arrest at his parents’ home in suburban Chicago on March 17, the day after the airport meeting, investigators say they have uncovered a hoard of cash and gold bars in his safe-deposit boxes, bank accounts and other investments totaling nearly $1.8 million. Much of the wealth was amassed, according to seizure orders and other documents filed in federal court, during the 12 months that the $49,000-a-year civil servant had authority in Guyana to decide who could and could not enter the United States.

In a rare prosecution of a suspected visa-for-sale scam, and one of the largest such cases ever alleged by investigators for the State and Justice departments, federal agents also acknowledge that Carroll probably would not have been arrested without the cooperation of his successor.

Carroll pleaded not guilty last month to charges that include bribery, conspiracy and fraud. He is being held without bail in Chicago. Halim Khan, a Guyanese businessman charged with aiding him, is being held in Miami.

The affidavits filed in the case against Carroll, which identify his replacement only as a “confidential witness,” charge that, to avoid detection, the 32-year-old Carroll corrupted the visa system at the embassy in the Guyanese capital, Georgetown.

Carroll allegedly denied requests for U.S. visas from some qualified visitors while selling visas to others, so as to avoid issuing excessive numbers that would draw the attention of his superiors and anti-fraud investigators.

The case underscores the difficulty of policing the activities of the 800 or so U.S. diplomats in 230 consulates worldwide who have authority to issue much-coveted U.S. visas. It marks only the second federal prosecution of suspected visa fraud by a U.S. foreign service officer in more than a decade; the first ended in acquittal.

Nobody knows the extent of such fraud. The dealings of the vast majority of U.S. consular officials are assumed to be aboveboard. Yet investigators and congressional critics fear that the illegal sale of visas is more widespread than the scant number of prosecutions indicates.

Criminal Charges Difficult to Prove

A Times investigation published last May found that the majority of U.S. diplomats suspected of issuing visas in exchange for money, gifts or sexual favors were moved to other posts or allowed to retire rather than face criminal charges, which investigators say are difficult to prove.

A State Department official interviewed last week in connection with the Carroll case said the difficulty lies in the broad discretion given to visa officers under State Department regulations, which also require embassies to destroy application documents after a year because there is no system to archive the large volume of paperwork. About 8 million visa applications were processed worldwide in 1998.

Due in part to that rule, the official said, and despite extensive audiotapes that will be used as evidence in the Carroll case, investigators are still struggling to determine the number and identity of any undeserving visitors who may be in the U.S. as a result of the alleged scheme.

“This is a very important case because it sends a strong signal: Don’t sell visas,” said the official, who asked not to be named. “But it also shows it’s very, very difficult to make these kinds of cases because of the environment in which these diplomats work. Under the law, they have a huge amount of discretion in what they issue and what they don’t.”

The official added that agents of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, which shares responsibility for internal investigations with the department’s inspector general, have presented more than a dozen such cases in recent years to their superiors or Justice Department prosecutors, who most often decided there was insufficient evidence to win a conviction.

“It comes down to are you able to make the case criminally or not?” the official said. “And more often than not, it comes down to one guy’s word against another.”

Further complicating such prosecutions, investigators say, are the sheer number of corruption allegations--most of them baseless--made against U.S. visa officers overseas.

‘They Had a Contact at the U.S. Embassy’

In Carroll’s case, court records show, the internal investigation began in June after two “confidential sources” made such allegations in Guyana. They asserted “that they had been solicited by intermediaries for the purchase of United States visas . . . and that they had a contact at the U.S. Embassy who could secure the visas in exchange for money,” according to sworn affidavits signed by the Diplomatic Security Service investigator.

Subsequent investigation led to Carroll as the contact and Khan as his broker, the affidavits state.

But Carroll, who served as vice consul and chief of the non-immigrant visa section from March 1998 until March 1999, had become the embassy’s economic-commercial attache. It wasn’t until February, the affidavit indicates, that investigators began to gather what they say is extensive evidence against him.

Investigator Christopher Baker states in his affidavits that Carroll sought to corrupt his replacement as chief of the non-immigrant visa section during several conversations in Guyana in late February and early March.

Evidence introduced during a detention hearing in Chicago last month indicated that Carroll’s replacement secretly recorded those conversations. Court documents quote Carroll as saying he had amassed “over a million dollars” during his tour of duty in Guyana.

Baker’s affidavits allege that Carroll told his replacement to hide money in safe-deposit boxes in the U.S. because “those things are as safe as anything. . . . And then they can’t--nobody can say, ‘Hey, your bank account’s growing.’ ” Carroll said he would be the “primary contact concerning the sale of visas” and would share a portion of the profits, Baker alleged.

The court documentation asserts that during three days beginning Feb. 25, “Carroll paid [his replacement] a total of approximately $40,000 for approving visas.” Carroll also allegedly offered to pay $4,000 per visa in the future and to introduce his successor to a local businessman who would serve as his visa broker when Carroll was transferred from Guyana.

The meeting at the Miami airport last month was set up to make that introduction, Baker’s affidavits state. Carroll was on home leave and in transit to suburban Chicago, his successor was in Miami on medical leave, and Khan joined them. It was then, the affidavits state, that Carroll made the offer of $1 million for the approval of 250 visas.

Local, state and federal agents joined to follow Carroll after he arrived at his parents’ home in suburban Palos Hills, Ill. They watched him visit local banks, according to investigators’ affidavits, where he was later found to have safe-deposit boxes. After Carroll’s arrest, investigators searched his house and seized documents that they say led to the cache of currency and gold.

The case has drawn the attention of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who in a March 24 letter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asked for an accounting of all allegedly fraudulent visas Carroll issued in Guyana and an investigation into possible illegal visa sales during Carroll’s previous postings in Taipei and Beijing.

Helms sought the results of the State Department’s review of efforts to control visa fraud, which an inspector general’s audit in September found were deficient in such areas as staffing, training and experience.