Can Terrorists Trained as Doctors Slip into the United States?

July 4, 2007— -- Despite a shortage of doctors in this country and a growing reliance on foreign-trained physicians, medical professionals looking to immigrate to the United States must undergo the same "vigorous screening process" as all other foreign nationals, a State Department official told ABC News.com.

News that the eight suspects, recently arrested in connection with last weekend's foiled terror attacks in Scotland and England, were all foreign-born doctors or medical students has altered British perceptions that the professional class is an unlikely place to find terrorists and has raised new questions in America about immigration procedures.

In the aftermath of the June 7, 2005, attacks on London's subways and buses, British authorities assumed the next attack would similarly come from home-grown, disaffected, poor Muslim youths, but doctors, experts say, have never been strangers to terrorism.

Ayman al-Zawahri, spokesman for al Qaeda and the organization's second-in-command behind Osama bin Laden trained as a doctor in Egypt.

Three different militant groups in Gaza -- Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the PLO -- all have had physicians in their senior ranks.

"People often assume that terrorists are poor, disadvantaged people who are brainwashed or need the money. But the ones who actually perpetrate violence without handlers and manipulation are highly intelligent by necessity," Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm told The Associated Press.

"It's only the smart ones who will survive security pressures in a subversive existence. Sometimes they are doctors, a profession that provides a brilliant cover and allows entry to countries like Britain," he said.

Regardless of the outcome of the British investigation, a debate is already under way in that country regarding its reliance on foreign doctors. As the United Kingdom requires fewer foreign physicians to meet demand, the United States is becoming increasingly reliant on them.

Some 37 percent of Britain's 238,739 doctors were trained overseas, according to the General Medical Council. As the supply of doctors meets demand, Britain last year enacted stricter requirements for foreign doctors seeking work there.