In my posts earlier this week about the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack on a jetliner landing in Detroit, I made certain observations that have now been confirmed in statements made by other "great minds" more familiar with the government's analysis of what went wrong with the US intelligence integration process and the decisions on how to correct the failures in the US intelligence community that allowed the Failed Underwear Bomber (henceforth
FUB) to board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam on December 25, 2009.
Confirmed Observation #1
"For ultimately, the buck stops with me. As President, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people. And when the system fails, it is my responsibility."
President Barack Obama made the above quoted statement yesterday during his remarks in the White House on the intelligence community's failures to connect the dots between the known information about Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a planned attack by a Nigerian on US soil and FUB and how to correct the human and systemic failures that allowed FUB to board Flight 253 on Christmas in Amsterdam.
In my post on Wednesday, I suggested that, if no individuals in the Obama Administration or the intelligence community were to be held accountable for the intelligence failures that allowed the failed Christmas attack, that former President Harry Truman's standard should apply, which was that "The Buck Stops Here" in reference, obviously, to the President.
To his credit, President Obama publicly took that responsibility because it appears, from the White House Review on the failed terrorist attack on Christmas Day that was released yesterday, that so many people and technological systems contributed to the failures to connect the dots that Obama has to take responsibility in order to get the various elements of the intelligence community involved to take the action necessary to remedy the problems identified.
Confirmed Observation #2:
In my post of Monday, I noted that the White House counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan, went on four national Sunday morning TV shows and said that there was no single piece of information that was a "smoking gun" which could have identified FUB as a bad guy that should not be allowed to board Flight 253 in Amsterdam on Christmas Day. Based on reports I had read by then, it appeared to me that there were various bits of information, as Brennen himself even mentioned on Sunday, that should have been connected and consolidated by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which was created after 9/11 to carry out that responsibility, in order to assemble a "smoking gun" pointing at FUB, as my illustration above attempts to demonstrate.
In today's Washington Post, Dana Milbank made a similar observation about an answer that John Brennan gave during the press briefing that took place after the President's remarks discussed above. Milbank noted that, when the Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Weisman asked Brennan "why dots weren't connected."
"Brennan launched into a long discussion about "dots in separate databases" and "husbanding of those dots" and "access to more of those dots" and "making sure that we can leverage the access to those dots." And once the dots in separate databases are husbanded and accessed and leveraged, they form the shape of a smoking gun." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/07/AR2010010704069_2.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
I guess I could say that you read it first, but it only matters that the appropriate people in positions of responsibility and influence come to the right conclusions and that our national security is improved.
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