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| WH Adviser Briefed in October on Underwear Bomb Technique | |
| 2010-01-03 | |
The briefing to Brennan was delivered at the White House by Muhammad bin Nayef, Saudi Arabia's chief counterterrorism official. In late August, Nayef had survived an assassination attempt by an operative dispatched by the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda who was pretending to turn himself in. The operative had tried to kill the Saudi prince by detonating a bomb on his body, but stumbled on his way into the prince's palace and blew himself up. Saudi officials initially thought the bomb had been secreted in the operative's anal cavity. But after investigating the matter more thoroughly, they concluded it had likely been sewn into his underwear, thereby allowing the operative to bypass security checks before his meeting with the prince. A main purpose of Nayef's briefing for Brennan was to alert U.S. officials to the use of the underwear technique. U.S. officials now suspect that Nayef's attempted assassin and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian suspect aboard the Northwest flight, had the same bomb maker in Yemen, intelligence experts tell NEWSWEEK. At the briefing for Brennan, Nayef was concerned because "he didn't think [U.S. officials] were paying enough attention" to the growing threat from Al Qaeda in Yemen, said a former U.S. intelligence official familiar with the briefing. (A senior Saudi official told NEWSWEEK Saturday that "we don't have any concerns that the U.S. government isn't sufficiently concerned about Yemen. In the latter part of the Bush administration and in this administration, the U.S. has been very focused on the dangers emanating from Yemen.") The briefing for Brennan could raise questions on Capitol Hill about how widely information was shared within the government about the apparently new technique used by Al Qaeda. A senior administration official said, however, that within a week after the assassination attempt on Nayef, President Obama had dispatched Brennan to Saudi Arabia to discuss the attack. "The October visit by Prince Nayef to Washington was part of this ongoing cooperation, which included developing the forensics out of the attack," the official said. "That forensics information was widely shared within the U.S. government, as is all information about the evolving threats and tactics employed by our enemies." The briefing for Brennan is among a series of pre-Christmas warnings suggesting that the breakdown in the U.S. intelligence system prior to the Northwest attack may have been worse than has been publicly acknowledged. In the months before the Christmas attack there were many warning signs coming out of Yemen. In early October, Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric based in Yemen, posted a provocative message on his English-language Web site: "Could Yemen be the next surprise of the season?" Al-Awlaki hinted at an upcoming attack that would make Yemen "the single most important front of jihad in the world." Al-Awlaki, who had had contacts with two of the 9/11 hijackers, is the same imam who had been exchanging e-mails with the U.S. Army psychiatrist who later killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas. He is a now central figure in the Detroit investigation: prior to the Christmas incident, the National Security Agency had intercepted communications between a phone used by al-Awlaki and Abdulmutallab, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official tells NEWSWEEK. The official says that al-Awlaki may also have been involved in other intercepted communications indicating that Al Qaeda was planning to use an unidentified "Nigerian" in an attack over the holiday season. As NEWSWEEK reported on Friday, U.S. intelligence officials at a White House Situation Room briefing on Dec. 22 presented President Obama with a document on pre-holiday terror threats called "Key Homeland Threats." But a senior administration official said there was no mention of Yemen in the written briefing document. The official would not say whether Yemen was discussed at the briefing. Former U.S law-enforcement and intelligence officials are scathing about the U.S. government's handling of pre-Christmas intelligence about Abdulmutallab and the prospect of a possible attack from Yemen. "The system should have been lighting up like a Christmas tree," said Ali Soufan, a former senior FBI counterterrorism agent who spent years tracking Qaeda suspects in Yemen (and often battled with the CIA over information sharing). When Abdulmutallab's father visited the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, in November to report his concerns that his son might have been involved with Islamic extremists in Yemen, the FBI had no representative at the meeting; the FBI maintains an attaché only in Lagos on the southern coast, not in Abuja, the capital. But the CIA, which did have an officer present who wrote up a report on the meeting, never told the FBI about Abdulmutallab. Much of the blame for the breakdown is being aimed at the National Counterterrorism Center, a unit of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was created as part of a host of 9/11 reforms aimed at promoting better information sharing within the U.S. intelligence community. Frances Fragos Townsend, President Bush's chief homeland-security adviser, says that analysts at the NCTC should have been pushing, or pinging, the system for more information on Abdulmutallab. "It was NCTC's responsibility to connect the dots, and ask for additional dots if they don't have enough," she said. Instead, the original report about the visit of Abdulmutallab's father appears to have been dropped in a "dead-letter file." (NCTC Director Michael Leiter issued the following statement on Saturday, "The failed attempt to destroy Northwest Flight 253 is the starkest of reminders of the insidious terrorist threats we face. While this attempt ended in failure we know with absolute certainty that Al-Qa'ida and those who support its ideology continue to refine their methods to test our defenses and pursue an attack on the Homeland. Our most sacred responsibility is to be focused on our mission--detecting and preventing terrorist attacks from happening on our soil and against U.S. interests. The American people expect and deserve nothing less.") White House officials say President Obama has been keenly focused on the Qaeda threat from Yemen for months. As the NEWSWEEK story reports, the president has authorized a covert war in the country: when Yemeni jets bombed Qaeda targets on Dec. 17 and 24 (including a strike that tried, but failed, to kill al-Awlaki), the United States supplied intelligence, missiles, and military support. American spies and special forces are on the ground, assisting the Yemenis. | |
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| #10 Problem with DHS (and TSA) is that, due to their rapid start-up, middle and upper career management were initially populated with individuals from other gov't agencies, whose ambitions far exceeded their capabilities. Not good for establishing the correct 'culture'. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2010-01-03 18:32 |
| #9 We have been calling for the beheading of Al Awlaki for a few years now. No one is listening, or wants to listn. This guy has walked the earth almost freely. He needs to be dealt with. OP is right, the guys on the ground are doing the best they can. The filters at the top need to get fired so the rest can work together. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2010-01-03 16:27 |
| #8 Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame were not political employees. Just the careerists whose names we know. The rot hay have started in the head, but it is now throughout. Shut 'em down. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2010-01-03 15:28 |
| #7 Excellent point and also an accurate one OP. It does not take the "gatekeepers" long to discover what pleases and displeases the.... 'boss.' |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-01-03 15:17 |
| #6 The problem isn't present among the analysts, but in the political appointees that supervise places like the CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI, DHS, State, and a dozen other agencies. These people often act as "gatekeepers" that keep information within their agency, instead of sharing it, or decide that such information "isn't plausible", and refuse to act on it. The professionals do a reasonably good job - it's the outsiders that don't understand the functions of such agencies, and screw things up. Heads SHOULD roll, especially at DHS, and possibly at State as well (there the problem is internal, where people bring personal biases to a technical job). |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2010-01-03 15:07 |
| #5 AMEN and AMEN! Too many individual and disconnected wars going on. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-01-03 14:14 |
| #4 Disband the CIA and let the DOD do what it needs to to support military operations. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2010-01-03 14:03 |
| #3 It was bull$shit when they leaked to make Bush look bad, it is bull$hit now. Some people should be fired for the leak, even if it is correct info and Obama was full of it himself when he blamed the CIA for whatever. An intelligence agency should not dictate policy through leaks. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2010-01-03 12:47 |
| #2 Bullshi* flag down. It is phueching every analyst's job and agency to "connect the dots" and conduct accurate, predictive analysis. Al-Awlaki's comings and goings to include his toilet habits should have been known to all within US Intelligence. The fact that he was tied to 9/11 and the Fort Hood attack should have rang alarm bells everywhere. Agency heads should have been proudly displaced along the rail on the Arlington Memorial Bridge following 9/11. The fact that they were not is indeed telling. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-01-03 11:27 |
| #1 The CIA has a knack for political leaking |
| Posted by: Frank G 2010-01-03 10:51 |