Accountability for Failure to Connect the Dots in Christmas Day Bombing Attempt

Yesterday I noted that President Obama emerged from a meeting with his national security team and announced that the intelligence community had failed to connect the various bits of intelligence about the Failed Underwear Bomber (henceforth: FUB) in time to prevent him from boarding Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day in Amsterdam. Obama said that he would not tolerate such serious human and systemic intelligence failures in the future. I ended my post by saying "let's see what that means".

Well, today the first response from the White House was heard from Denis McDonough, the National Security Council's chief of staff, in several morning TV interviews. McDonough said that everybody in the meeting with the President yesterday took responsibility for the failures to integrate the intelligence about FUB. He further stated:

"The fact of the matter is that everybody in that meeting said they have a solemn responsibility. But here's what it won't be — the typical Washington blame game where everybody passes the buck. "

This is, at least, the second White House staffer to complain about the "typical Washington blame game" since the Christmas Day airplane bombing was foiled by an alert Dutch passenger (rather than the government personnel who are paid to protect the traveling public). As I noted in my post about the first White House rant against the "blame game", this term seems to be used when White House staff people are concerned that their boss is being blamed for the problem under discussion.

In this case, the White House boss (AKA President Obama) is not the person being blamed at the moment. He is the one who may be looking for someone to hold responsible for the problem since he said: "I will not tolerate it". "It" being the failure of the intelligence community to connect the dots about FUB. So if the "blame game" that Mr. McDonough is concerned about means "passing the buck", as he suggests, our President should be reminded that one of his Democratic predecessors in the Oval Office said "The Buck Stops Here".

If no one else is held accountable, maybe we have to follow the wisdom of Harry Truman and look to the occupant of the Oval Office to take responsibility and stop passing the buck, as Mr. McDonough said.

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