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CIA Failed To Share Botched Bomber Intel


bom.jpgThe following is a CNN report: The father of terrorism suspect Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab talked about his son’s extremist views with someone from the CIA and a report was prepared, but the report was not circulated outside the agency, a reliable source told CNN’s Jeanne Meserve on Tuesday.

Had that information been shared, the 23-year-old Nigerian who is alleged to have bungled an attempt to blow up a jetliner as it was landing in Detroit, Michigan, on Friday might have been denied passage on the Northwest Airlines flight, the source said.

U.S. officials said the father, a former Nigerian banker, expressed his concerns about his son’s radicalization during at least one meeting and several calls with officials at the embassy in Nigeria.

The information on AbdulMutallab had been sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, but it sat there for five weeks and was not disseminated, the source said.

Federal authorities have charged AbdulMutallab with trying to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear as the flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, made its final approach to Detroit. The device failed to fully detonate, instead setting off a fire at his seat.

An administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the federal government had information that should have been assessed and meshed with other information “that would have allowed us to disrupt the attempted terrorist attack” before the suspect boarded the jet.

“What we have here is a situation in which the failings were individual, organizational, systemic and technological,” the official said. “We ended up in a situation where a single point of failure in the system put our security at risk, where human error was compounded by systemic deficiencies in a way that we cannot allow to continue.”

But an intelligence official said that the son’s name, passport number and possible connection to extremists were indeed disseminated. “I’m not aware of a magic piece of intelligence somehow withheld that would have put AbdulMutallab on the no-fly list,” the official said.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said department staff did what they were supposed to have done by sending a cable to the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington about the matter. Kelly said any decision to have revoked the suspect’s visa would have been an interagency decision.

But a U.S. government official said the information in the cable offered nothing specific and was just one of hundreds of such reports that the center evaluates daily.

(Source: CNN)



9 Responses

  1. Same story all over again. That was the problem before 9/11, the agencies need to share information!
    That was (is) the tachlis of the Office of Homeland Security to collect all information and act on it.

  2. “the federal government had information that should have been assessed and meshed with other information”

    This quote from your article demonstrates the severity of our governments retardation. A father tells the CIA his son is a muslim jihadist and these brilliant CIA men need to assess and mesh, then mesh and assess, mesh assess, and mish mash the information in order to figure out we got a problem on our hands. They should get a dog to sniff the info because it could do a better job discerning things.

    CIA stands for intelligence. Cute.

  3. Once again a communications failure. The people who receive this information should not think any further than passing along the information to the next level, and they to the next level. Too often that which appears routine isn’t.
    Hashem Yishmor Aleynu.
    Miriam in Jeerusalem

  4. This is what any person with a brain said before the election. WE ARE LESS SAFE WITH OBAMA AS PRESIDENT. I have zero confidence that he will handle this properly. A CNN headline from this morning: Obama team more closely linking Al Qaeda to terror attempt. Really Mr. Prez? Okay. Let us know when you catch up.

  5. This guy had EVERY red flag to be prevented from flying (or at least very thoroughly questioned and checked):
    1) Father told authorities he was involved with radicals.
    2) Moslem name
    3) Bought ticket with cash
    4) Bought one-way ticket
    5) Had no luggage
    What Einstein let this animal on a plane???
    What’s the answer for this VERY, VERY, VERY serious problem?
    One word…
    Tefila!

  6. AinOhdMilvado, I want to let you know that as of this year there are more Jews living in Israel than in in the diaspora based on the lastest statistics from the Jewish Agency. Maybe there is something they know that we don’t….

  7. obamanation how is your sick administration going to blame this on Bush. Got an idea ha???
    I know because the war in Irag but your friendly people were blowing up building during clinton.
    obamanation your spend docs need to see how to blame Bush now really

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