"The buck stops with me," declared President Obama on Thursday as he spoke about the results of an internal investigation into the failed Christmas Day airline bombing attempt. The president avoided blaming any particular agency or official for the security failures that allowed Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board an American airliner heading from Amsterdam to Detroit wearing explosives in his underpants.
Travelers will soon get used to going through full-body scanners, like they have gotten used to taking off their shoes at security checkpoints at airports, since Richard Reid, a/k/a the shoe-bomber, tried unsuccessfully to take down another airliner in late 2001. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda and other groups will try to find other methods to bypass the new security measures until they succeed.
Last summer, Abdullah Asieri, one of Saudi Arabia's most wanted men, avoided detection by two sets of airport security including metal detectors and palace security, by borrowing a trick from the Colombian cartel. Asieri had a pound of high explosives, plus a detonator inserted in his rectum. His target was Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, head of Saudi Arabia's counter terrorism operations. The bomb was remotely detonated via a cellular phone call, but the Prince miraculously was left lightly wounded. The assassination attempt failed, but al-Qaeda managed to defeat security.
The US security failure is not at airports, but rather with overseas intelligence agencies. The President did not name the agency, but I will: the CIA which has done a shoddy job of gathering information in Arab and Muslim countries and has relied heavily on information provided by security agencies of corrupt and despotic regimes.
What Americans should be worried about is not the few failed attempts by the likes of Reid or Abdulmutallab, but rather by what happened recently with the suicide bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a medical doctor who had been recruited by Jordanian intelligence and then agreed to work for the CIA. He was assigned a Jordanian handler who had a close working relationship with the CIA and was subsequently sent to Afghanistan to help locate top al-Qaeda leaders. In reality, he was also a jihadist sent to infiltrate US intelligence: a "triple agent!"
The reason this succeeded is due to the fact that Afghanistan is an intelligence nightmare, and the CIA does not have enough Arabic or Pashto speakers on the ground. This is also the case in Yemen, Somalia, and Northern Africa, a fact that was confirmed to me by a former CIA employee. Many of he CIA's so-called Middle East specialists lack the language skills needed to analyze the material provided to them and rely on translations, which, as part of my experience producing a news show from the Middle East, I have discovered can be misleading and inaccurate. Many CIA agents are no different than those so-called experts on al-Qaeda that one sees on CNN or FOX news.
This latest infiltration of the CIA is worse than a thousand Abdulmutallabs, and will certainly cause a set back to the agency for years to come, something that the President did not talk about.
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"So, this al-Balawi person was going to help Jordan and the US find al-Qaeda leaders Usama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Sure he was. Walmart does better background checks on its store clerks than the CIA and Jordanian intelligence did on this guy."
It missed the 9-11 attack despite a lot of intelligence al Qaeda was planning on hijacking airplanes.
It enabled Bush Jr. in his quest to go to war with Iraq by supporting his WMD lies.
These were the two biggest intelligence failures since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The CIA needs to be taken to the woodshed and forced into a top to bottom overhaul.
The failure to thoroughly investigate 9/11 is what has led to these failures. That day was a royal screw up and yet no one paid the price.
Hopefully, this latest screw up will lead to a few heads rolling, but I won't hold my breath.
Ohh yeah lets just deprive everyone else of their liberties while ignoring the elite multi entry visa system where the problem really lies.
Why did the brittish stop him, he didn't have a multi entry visa and had to apply again. Why didn't we. He had a multi entry visa and was not rescreened subject to what we knew.
Or we can search everyones underpants.
Jamal,
You always cut to the heart of the matter. Last night, I finally had enough courage to watch the film "Rendition" which was released a couple of yrs. ago. Of course, it speaks heartfully to the violations of civil rights by the practices of rendition & the integrity of one lone CIA agent, but it also (in one short scene) showed how non-violent demonstrations, protests are suppressed by the regimes in the region that we support in any number of ways, overtly with military presence & aid, covertly with CIA activities or a combination of both. The ultimate outcome is how extremism is fostered when there are no other outlets for dissent. No one benefits from this dangerous extremism, here or abroad & many are hurt by it, except possibly the war profiteers who are intent on perpetuating their dirty sources of monies by fostering grievances abroad.
Fanned!
The US security failure is not just the fault of executives or underlings at the CIA.
What has happened, time and time again, is that the normal checks-and-balances which have worked in the past for our governmental system have been removed. Power has been consolidated with no accountability.
Need an example? How about one that most everyone in the flying public is aware of? How many people have flown on commercial airlines and watched or heard about TSA abusing their positions and doing stupid things like paying excessive attention to grandmothers in wheelchairs, toddlers with their parents, and other things.
The TSAs even stopped the Marine Corps number one ace from WW II, Joe Foss, from flying on a commercial plane to Washington, DC with his Medal of Honor because they somehow thought - or pretended to think - that the sharp edges could be used by an 86 year old WW II hero as a weapon.
Without checks-and-balances, without accountability to the public, no one gets fired for doing stupid things and wasting resources.
But both within and without the agency there's too much faith in, and reliance on covert operations which serve short term goals without regard to the long term consequences. Pinochet in Chile, Noriega in Panama, Osama bin Ladin, the Taliban all were supported by the CIA at one time, and we came to regret each association.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=115681§ionid=351020403
Unknown attackers have fired three rocket-propelled grenades at the US consulate building in the western Afghan city of Herat.
"The building was targeted by RPG7, but did not cause any casualty," as there was no one in the building on Friday, said Ikramuddin Yawar, a senior police official.
One rocket hit the building, shattering windows, while two other rockets landed nearby.
A US embassy official in Kabul confirmed the attack and said that there were no American diplomats at the consulate at the time of the attack.
The US consulate building was formerly a five-star hotel, which was leased by the American government in 2009. The US has yet to station its diplomats there but plans to open the consulate this year.
but also tells me THAT suicide bombers will be able to damage somehow somewhere .
so let us be VIGILENT ...........but please do not allow yourself to think that these TERRORISTS are winning ...............even when they BOTCH an attempt.
This nigerian boy I am sure was brainwashed and being alone there among those terrorists COULD NOT BACK OFF.............and had to go on that plane.
perhaps he actually did something to be caught.....
I don’t care how many spooks you have in Muslim and/or Arabic countries. No agency is ever going to stop all attacks. In trying to stop attacks against the U.S., the CIA, and all of the other agencies charged with prevention of terrorist attacks, are only mitigating the consequences of U.S. interventions abroad.
The question is not whether Obama was asleep at the switch during the most recent attack, but whether Obama has altered foreign policy toward the arab and muslim world from his predecessor. And for that, despite some lofty rhetoric from Cairo, he has failed miserably.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=115629§ionid=351020206
Seems to be an upcoming power struggle for the next oil-rich region.
Another unstable government about to fall, one way or the other.
What's going on here? I have not seen ANYONE call for Panetta's (CIA) resignation -- or anyone else's. There's something very weird about the way Napolitano was clearly set up at the straw figure for everyone to run their bayonets through and vent their anger and frustration on. Given that the CIA suffered a horrific loss of life just a few days after Christmas, it makes me wonder if it wasn't know that "things were afoot" and that there was a need not to tie Panetta up with press interviews and all this hoo-hah.
On top of that, there's no way that Obama did not brief Napolitano and TELL her exactly what she was and was not to say in national TV interviews.
SAD the way Napolitano -- who is a(as Broder of the NYTimes wrote this week) a REALLY smart woman, works INCREDIBLY hard and one of the best that we have in D.C. (not to mention nice, which he also noted) has been so horrifically maligned. No matter how she is exonerated down the line, people won't read it. It's like any 10th-page retraction of a blazing front-page headline. A real shame.