A revealing blunder.

Byline: The Register-Guard

President Bush calls the belated mailings of visa approval notices for two Sept. 11 hijackers an "inexcusable" blunder that should serve as a "wake-up call" for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft joins the president in denouncing the INS debacle as "inexcusable" and adds a stern warning that "individuals will be held responsible for any professional incompetence that led to this failure."

Is there anyone in charge out there in Bush administration land? Anyone willing to stand up, as both the president and attorney general should, and state the obvious truth that it's the Bush administration's Justice Department that oversees the INS - and that the agency's embarrassing failure occurred on their watch?

The INS situation is actually the second record-keeping cataclysm involving terrorists on Ashcroft's watch. It was only last year that the attorney general was forced to delay the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh after the FBI failed to turn over thousands of documents to defense attorneys.

The INS screw-up comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the agency's abysmal record in recent years. From top to bottom, the INS has been one of the most inefficient, problem-plagued, abuse-ridden, backlog-laden agencies in federal government. Its thorough, complete reform has long been overdue, not only to protect our national security but also to protect law-abiding immigrants from the delays and ineptitude that they have too long endured.

Ironically, the Bush administration announced plans last November to restructure the agency by splitting its enforcement and service functions to make it more accountable and efficient. Not surprisingly, the plans remain under study. The INS also is in the process of installing a new computerized record-keeping system an astonishing six years after it was approved by Congress.

The INS could scarcely have made a more humiliating - and revealing - mistake. A Florida flight school received the visa approval notices for Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi last week, exactly six months after they piloted separate jetliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

The INS documents notified the school, Huffman Aviation International, that the pair had been awarded student visas. Compounding the government's humiliation was the fact that Atta and Al-Shehhi were believed to be the ringleaders of the hijackings that destroyed the World Trade Center.

Atta's picture and name have appeared countless times in U.S. newspapers, magazines and television news reports. Yet none of that stopped the paperwork from slowly, inexorably working its way through the backed-up bureaucratic intestines of the INS.

INS officials had the audacity to point out that the visas were approved last summer before the government knew that Atta and Al-Shehhi were terrorists. How reassuring to learn that the mistake resulted from the same delays that routinely afflict law-abiding immigrants in this country and that demonstrate the agency's poor grasp on the critically important matter of who receives student visas in this country.

The president wants Americans to know that he's "plenty hot" over this mistake, while the attorney general proclaims that he's "extremely concerned and furious."

It would be more heartening to hear them simply accept full responsibility for the failings of the INS and then to explain what's being done to fix this most flawed of federal agencies.