The Only Thing Worse Than No Security Is False Security!

The use of camouflage is commonplace throughout nature.  All sorts of creatures use the ability to alter their appearances in order to hide in plain sight.  Chameleons are lizards that can change their colors but are not alone in this ability.  A wide variety of creatures are able to effectively blend into their surroundings to make it difficult for their enemies to spot them and turn them into a meal.  Some creatures need to blend into their environment in order to be able to attack creatures that they eat.  For creatures throughout the animal kingdom, the use of camouflage is nothing less than a matter of life and death!

Camouflage can also be of equal seriousness for members of the human species.  Soldiers wear camouflage fatigues that are of varying colors depending on the colors that they will likely find on the battlefield and all sorts of vehicles are festooned with paint schemes that act as camouflage.  Everything from tanks to trucks and aircraft are painted to best conceal them from their enemies.  The use of stealth technology has kicked camouflage up a notch!

There are other ways that those who seek to cover their tracks or hide in plain sight may accomplish their goals.  For criminals and terrorists, the use of false identities and false identity documents may also provide effective camouflage.  The use of aliases is an age-old tactic and provided the incentives for law enforcement to use fingerprinting and more sophisticated biometrics to combat the use of false names.  However, there are limitations where these countermeasures are concerned.  An illegal alien who has never been fingerprinted and uses a false name may well get away with his subterfuge.  This is why background checks are often easily defeated by malevolent aliens whose fingerprints are not on file and who use fictitious identities.  In fact, the 19 terrorists who so savagely attacked our nation on September 11, 2001, in the aggregate, used more than 300 false identities or variations of false identities.

This past week an illegal alien whose true name is believed to be Bimbo Olumuyiwa Oyewole, a 54 year old citizen of Nigeria was arrested by police as a result of a cold case investigation into the murder of an American citizen by the name of Jerry Thomas who was murdered in 1992.  During the course of the investigation it was determined that Oyewole had managed to obtain a number of identity documents relating to Mr. Thomas.  At the minimum Oyewole is presumably guilty of identity theft and possibly other violations of law relating to his use of the false name and his violation of immigration laws.  The more sinister possibility that needs to be addressed is the possibility that he had an involvement in the murder of Mr. Thomas.

This story by itself is certainly disturbing- but there is another dimension to this story that raises even more disturbing issues.  Up until his arrest in Elizabeth, New Jersey Mr. Oyewole has been working as a supervisor for a security firm that has been hired by the Port of New York and New Jersey to   provide security at Newark's Liberty International Airport, the same airport from which United Airlines Flight 93 departed on September 11, 2001.  Yes, that Flight 93!

More details about this case were noted in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article that was published on May 16, 2012 and was entitled, "Airport worker allegedly had man's ID before death."

One of the interesting bits of information that was reported in that news article is the fact that Oyewole's was increased from $75,000 to $250,000 when it was disclosed that he may have used additional false identities over the years.

As a supervisory security guard Mr. Oyewole would have been subjected to at least a fundamental background check- a check he easily passed.  If the administration was to attempt to provide unknown millions, perhaps tens of millions of illegal aliens with pathways to citizenship when these aliens are undocumented- meaning that they do not have reliable documentation to attest to their true identities, the likelihood is great that the criminals and terrorists among them would easily pass the background checks just as easily as Bimbo Olumuyiwa Oyewole did!

Incidentally, prosecutors are now stating that they are not even certain that this name is really his either- but the security tag that provided him with access to highly sensitive areas of the airport including the airplanes themselves bore the name Jerry Thomas.  This raises the question often repeated in "Marathon Man," a movie thriller released in 1976, “Is it safe?”

By now, we all know the answer to that question!