HONOLULU – President Barack Obama is demanding answers on why information was never pieced together by the U.S. intelligence community to trigger red flags about an alleged terrorist and possibly prevent his botched Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner.
Administration officials are poring over reams of data, looking for failings that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian with suspected ties to al-Qaida, to board the Northwest Airlines flight from Nigeria by way of Amsterdam.
Obama’s criticism came as senior U.S. officials told The Associated Press that intelligence authorities now are looking at conversations between the suspect in the failed attack and at least one al-Qaida member. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the conversations were vague or coded, but the intelligence community believes that, in hindsight, the communications may have been referring to the Detroit attack. One official said a link between the suspect’s planning and al-Qaida’s goals was becoming clearer.
The New York Times reported in Wednesday’s editions that the government had intelligence from Yemen before Christmas that leaders of a branch of al-Qaida there were talking about “a Nigerian” being prepared for a terrorist attack. The newspaper said the information did not include the name of the Nigerian.
You know what annoys me about this whole story? The continued description of the information that was out there in the lead up to the bombing attempt as clues. Calling them such conveys a certain amount of vagueness. There are no vagueries here. There was a massive failure of intelligence and security not because they didn’t piece some small random pieces of information together, but instead because multiple agencies chose to ignore what was plainly in front of them.
It’s ridiculous to discount this as a case of not connecting the dots. This is a case of having a picture, dots connected, in front of you, and being asked “What do you see?” and saying, “Nothing, as far as I can tell!”
Heads need to roll or things won’t change and right about now, i don’t see any urgency in making those heads roll. That, at the end of the day, is the worst part of this whole situation.