"Expedited removal gives us the ability to establish the credibility of a claim to enter the country expeditiously," said Russell A. Bergeron Jr., a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The government said that it was assessing the credibility of a claim of responsibility by an obscure Qaeda-linked group, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, but that the group had made false assertions in the past.

The epistemological importance of such an exercise is evident, as is the fact that care would have to be taken to avoid circularity, to ensure that we did not make the credibility of a claim to knowledge depend upon beliefs that were not in the foundation.