(CNSNews.com) – Carrying a fake New York birth certificate and a phony Florida driver’s license, an investigator walked into a Maryland post office in December to apply for a U.S. passport, filling out documents with the Social Security number of a man who died in 1965. In four days, the investigator received his passport.
 
The investigator, working for the Government Accountability Office (GAO), used assumed identities to gain genuine – but fraudulently obtained – passports at three other locations as part of a GAO probe into the security of the U.S. State Department’s passport process. The investigation began in May 2008 and ended in March 2009.
 
In one case, the investigator even used the fraudulently obtained information to buy a plane ticket for a Jan. 29, 2009 flight, was issued a boarding pass at a major metropolitan airport, and walked through the gate.
 
“The GAO investigation shows that terrorists or criminals could steal an American citizen’s identity, use basic counterfeiting skills to create fraudulent documents for that identity, and obtain a genuine U.S. passport from State,” the GAO report said.
 
Passports allow people to travel freely in and out of the country, prove their U.S. citizenship, obtain further identification documents, and establish bank accounts, among other things. The 9/11 Commission Report said that “for terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons” because travel allows terrorists to meet, train and plan an attack.
 
Further, passport fraud can be used for such crimes as illegal immigration, money laundering, drug trafficking, tax evasion and smuggling illegal aliens, the GAO report says.
 
“Although we do not know what checks, if any, State performed when approving our fraudulent applications, it issued a genuine U.S. passport in each case,” the report says. “All four passport applications were issued to the same GAO investigator under four different names.
 
“Our tests show a variety of ways that malicious individuals with even minimal counterfeiting capabilities and access to another person’s identity could obtain genuine U.S. passports using counterfeit or fraudulently obtained documents,” the report added.
 
State Department spokeswoman Megan Mattson declined to say whether this represents a systemic problem in the issuance of passports.
 
“The truth is, this was human error,” Mattson told CNSNews.com, adding that it was a matter of experience among those who issued the passports. “All four were new adjudicators.”
 
The State Department has taken action since the GAO report was released on March 13, Mattson said.
 
First, the department has suspended the authority to issue passports of the four individuals who processed applications by the GAO investigator. The State Department also ordered additional training for U.S. Postal Service employees and other government employees with the authority to process passport applications.
 
Further, the State Department temporarily suspended the authority to process passport applications of one U.S. Postal Service location in Virginia, two post offices in Maryland, and the State Department’s regional passport-issuing office in Washington, D.C. – the four locations where the GAO investigator obtained passports using bogus documents.  
 
State Department officials told the GAO that it is difficult to detect phony applicants because of a lack of information-sharing and data access with other federal and state agencies.
 
Further, according to the GAO report, the State Department “does not have the ability to conduct real time verification of the authenticity of birth certificates,” and that “birth certificates present an exceptional challenge to fraud-detection efforts, as there are currently thousands of different acceptable formats for birth certificates.”
 
Further, State Department officials explained to the GAO that while “State attempts to verify SSN [Social Security Number] information submitted on passport applications on a daily basis with SSA, the results of this data-sharing  process are imperfect.” It added that “many of the mismatches identified through this verification process are actually due to typos or other common errors.”
 
The State Department is addressing these vulnerabilities, Mattson said. In about six months, the department expects to have facial recognition technology – used in issuing visas – available for any office issuing passports.
 
“We will also be checking against the Social Security Administration’s database, with the Department of Motor Vehicle records and vital records departments in each state, and we intend to redouble our training efforts,” Mattson said.
 
The problem is not a new one. From July 2005 through August 2008, the FBI identified 112 individuals who had fraudulently obtained passports by using birth certificates of dead people. The individuals who obtained the passports included fugitives, sex offenders and tax cheats.
 
The case where a passport was secured using the Social Security number of a man who died in 1965 was the “most egregious,” according to the GAO report. But the report found severe fault in the three other cases as well.
 
In July 2008, the GAO investigator used a fake West Virginia driver’s license and a bogus New York birth certificate at a post office in Virginia and received the requested passport in eight days.
 
That August, the investigator used a genuine District of Columbia identification card obtained through fraudulent means at the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles to prove his U.S. citizenship.
 
He used these D.C. documents and a phony New York birth certificate at the State Department’s regional Washington D.C. passport-issuing office to obtain a passport on the same day that the application was filed.
 
Then, last October, the investigator used a counterfeit West Virginia driver’s license, a counterfeit New York birth certificate, and the genuine Social Security number of a fictional five-year-old child created from a previous GAO probe.
 
The investigator listed his age as 53, even though the Social Security number should have matched that of a five-year-old. He got the passport in seven days.
 
The report was requested by the chair and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, respectfully Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).
 
“The GAO’s findings have affirmed our worst fears – that U.S. passports are not secure and have been unlawfully issued by the U.S. State Department,” Feinstein said in a statement. “These passports can be used to purchase a weapon, fly overseas, or open a fraudulent bank account. This puts our nation in grave danger.”
 
Kyle questioned how much safer America is since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
 
“A U.S. passport is a key to virtually anywhere in the world,” Kyle said in a statement. “It's very troubling that in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks someone could use fraudulent documents to obtain a U.S. passport.”