THE STATE DEPARTMENT - Express Deception.

George W. Bush's promise to bring a straightforward, truth-telling attitude to Washington apparently never registered at the State Department.

When National Review published an embarrassing story about the department, its response was to launch an extraordinary campaign of public deception. Joel Mowbray exposed a program that the department had created for the benefit of Saudi visa applicants. "Visa Express" allowed Saudis to submit their applications to travel agents, who would then pass them to State's consular officers. These officers generally rubber-stamped the applications without laying eyes on the applicants. Thanks to the program, three of the September 11 hijackers entered the U.S. without an interview. Even after, Visa Express remained in place.

In June, as Mowbray's story was breaking, State Department official Dianne Andruch told Congress that the program had been ended. In fact, only its name had been changed. On Fox News, State's Consular Affairs spokesman Ed Vazquez attacked Mowbray personally: "Every word that [he] writes is a lie, including 'the' and 'and.'" But Vazquez could offer no evidence of such thoroughgoing dishonesty, or any dishonesty at all. "We reserve the right," Vazquez offered by way of a rebuttal to Mowbray's reporting, "to interview a high percentage of people who come in in Saudi Arabia." That's nice, but reserving the right to interview applicants is different from actually doing so. According to an inspector-general report, from June to September 2001, State interviewed only 3 percent of Saudi visa applicants.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher then personally led a misleading campaign against Mowbray's work from his briefing podium. Boucher claimed that Mowbray had incorrectly reported that travel agents approved visa applications themselves -- when Mowbray clearly wrote that the travel agents passed applications along to consular officials. He claimed that Mowbray reported that only Saudi Arabia had a Visa Express-type program, when he really reported that other (actually friendly) countries like Japan have similar arrangements. With pressure from Congress building, State suddenly reversed field and fired the head of Consular Affairs, Visa Express-booster Mary Ryan. Then, in typical fashion, State denied she had been fired at all, maintaining that her abrupt "retirement" had nothing to do with Visa Express.

How could it, after all, if Visa Express didn't even exist? But a government whistleblower leaked to Mowbray a confidential cable from the ambassador to Saudi Arabia -- written the very day of Ryan's dismissal -- asking to terminate Visa Express and to interview all Saudi applicants. Boucher told the press that the memo from Riyadh only asked for more resources. Asked point-blank at a press briefing by Mowbray whether our ambassador had asked to terminate the program, Boucher said, "No." Never mind that the subject line of the memo was "Request for Guidance on Termination of Visa Express." When Mowbray stated that he had the memo in hand, and so knew that Boucher was fibbing, State Department security officials briefly detained him and demanded that he reveal his source.

So it goes at a Department of State populated by careerists like Boucher, who would be just as comfortable -- no, more comfortable -- if he were still working for Warren Christopher. Congress is now engaged in a debate over whether State should keep the visa-issuance power, an important national-security matter since terrorists get into this country primarily through visas. State's record in creating and then defending Visa Express proves it unfit for the task, which should go to the Department of Homeland Security or an entirely new, more national- security-conscious agency.

Boucher at one point attacked Mowbray for supposedly reporting that visa applicants are presumed eligible to enter the U.S. Mowbray actually hadn't written that -- but it is worse than he knew. High- level Colin Powell aide Richard Armitage recently wrote a memo to the Justice Department explaining that State Department regulations say, "If there are no grounds under the law on which to deny an alien a visa, the consular officer is required to issue the visa." In other words, applicants are presumed eligible. Just as Boucher, typically, didn't tell us. Maybe it's naive to expect government spokesmen not to deceive the public. If so, call us naifs -- the State Department's conduct in the visa controversy has been shocking, and unworthy of the Bush administration.