Government Failures

While the media has been appropriately focused on the tragedy in Haiti following the earthquake of a week ago, as well as the US Senate race in Massachusetts, there have been more revelations about various failures in the federal government noted on the back pages of newspapers and news posts near the bottom of websites.

Christmas Day Terrorist Threat: The New York Times reported on January 17, 2010 that a White House intelligence briefing was held on December 22, 2009 at which John Brennan, the President's counterterrorism advisor, described increasing information about a potential Al Qaeda attack against American interests on Christmas Day. Most of the information involved terrorist plots being planned by Al Qaeda in Yemen. However, the officials evaluating this information did not anticipate that the threat could reach into the United States, such as on an international flight into Detroit.

The New York Times article went on to describe other information known to US counterterrorism officials on December 22 that was not mentioned in the "Failure to Connect the Dots" Report issued by the White House on January 7, 2010:

"In September, for example, a United Nations expert on Al Qaeda warned policy makers in Washington that the type of explosive device used by a Yemeni militant in an assassination attempt in Saudi Arabia could be carried aboard an airliner.

In early November, American intelligence authorities say they learned from a communications intercept of Qaeda followers in Yemen that a man named “Umar Farouk” — the first two names of the jetliner suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — had volunteered for a coming operation.

In late December, more intercepts of Qaeda operatives in Yemen, who had previously focused their attacks in the region, mentioned the date of Dec. 25, and suggested that they were “looking for ways to get somebody out” or “for ways to move people to the West,” one senior administration official said."

This information was, of course, all in addition to Abdulmutallab's father reporting to the US Embassy in Nigeria in November about his son's extremist philosophy and decision to cut off contact with his family. This New York Times article can be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/us/18intel.html?hp

The article also includes a graphic depiction of the unconnected dots of information that existed in various intelligence agencies before Christmas about the underwear bomber at: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/01/18/us/18intel-graphic.html

Fort Hood Shooting: Also last week, the Pentagon report on the Fort Hood shooting in November was released. The report determined that the Army supervisors of Major Nidal Hassan, the officer charged with the shooting, "bungled his performance reviews by excluding instances of erratic behavior in treating patients and signs that he might be growing sympathetic to suicide bombers." As a result of this conclusion:

"The leaders of the review, former Army secretary Togo D. West Jr. and retired Adm. Vernon E. Clark, a former chief of naval operations, recommended in a report released Friday that the Army examine whether "several officers" should be disciplined in the Hasan case."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/15/AR2010011502010_pf.html

The FBI is also reviewing its role in failing to determine the threat posed by Hasan before the shooting and has begun to improve its sharing of information with the Pentagon, its information technology and its training of the members of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, which had been involved in investigating Hasan's behavior before the shooting.

Financial Crisis: Last week, the Congressionally established Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission began hearings in Washington to investigate the causes of the economic collapse in the US. On Friday, the heads of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. testified about the role of their government agencies in the contributing to the financial meltdown. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said:

"Not only did market discipline fail to prevent the excesses of the last few years, but the regulatory system also failed in its responsibilities.... Record profitability within the financial services industry also served to shield it from some forms of regulatory second-guessing."

Mary Schapiro, SEC Chairman, also said that there had been "regulatory lapses" at the SEC. The Washington Post has also reported on the series of "whistleblowers who in recent years tried to tip off the SEC to potential wrongdoing, only to be ignored, misunderstood or left to wonder whether they were being listened to. The SEC has no system in place to guide how officials should handle tips and complaints from outsiders, making it difficult for investigators to take advantage of an invaluable source of information."

The failure to effectively investigate whistleblowers' tips led to the government failing to uncover misdeeds at rating agencies (such as Moody's) that failed to alert investors to financially collapsing companies or to reveal the Ponzi schemes by Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford, among others. In both the Madoff and Stanford cases, whistleblowers had been contacting SEC staff for years to reveal the wrongdoing and no adequate follow-up investigations occurred. Unlike other federal agencies with law enforcement responsibilities, the SEC does not have the right technology to analyze tips that come in or clearly articulated policies on how to handle the tips.

CIA Base Attack in Afghanistan: A particularly tragic failure resulted in seven CIA officers being killed last month when a double agent for Al Qaeda successfully detonated a suicide bomb as he was entering a previously secret CIA base near the Pakistan border. Many articles have been written about how this Jordanian Muslim terrorist was able to gain the trust of the intelligence officers in a war zone in order to get past several check points and explode a bomb that murdered men and women vital to our war on militant jihadists.

White House Gatecrashers: A government failure that has been the subject of late night comedians and other joking commentary is the incident commonly referred to as the "White House gatecrashers" who entered a State Dinner at the White House in November without invitations. Congressional hearings into how Tareq and Michaele Salahi were able to get into the White House event started this week, but the Salahis stood on their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent while federal investigations continue into whether they will be criminally charged for this breach of Secret Service security around the President of the United States.

Altered FBI Photo of Osama bin Laden: Another government foul-up of the past week was the updated FBI photo of what Osama bin Laden might look like now more than 10 years after the photo currently on file at the FBI (and on FBI Most Wanted Posters). Unfortunately, the artist who took on the assignment to "age" bin Laden's photo used a photo from the Internet of a Spanish lawmaker, who was not very pleased with this latest example of US government ineptitude. Gaspar Llamazares, the Spaniard whose face was now melded into bin Laden's on websites all over the world, was shocked at the FBI's sloppiness. He said:

"I was surprised and angered because it's the most shameless use of a real person to make up the image of a terrorist..... It's almost like out of a comedy if it didn't deal with matters as serious as bin Laden and citizens' security."

Update on January 21: All of the reports above do not even include the colossal failure of the Democrats (who control most of the federal government) to retain the US Senate seat in Massachusetts on January 19, 2010 that will now lead the Obama Administration and Congressional leaders to start afresh on their health care reform legislation, if not drop the attempt to pass it entirely. This surprising election upset for the Dems, of course, is the result of the Democrats in Washington failing to listen to the public's concerns about the health care proposals that were passed before the holidays with various back room deals or to listen to any ideas offered by their Republican colleagues. Sphere: Related Content