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| Spy chiefs turn on President Obama | |
| 2010-01-03 | |
In a statement, he said the CIA had been ‘tested as never before' and that agents had ‘served on the front lines in directly confronting the dangers of the 21st century'. He lauded the victims as ‘part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens and for our way of life'. Yet the previous day he had blasted ‘systemic failures' in the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies for failing to prevent the Christmas Day syringe bomb attack. ‘One day the President is pointing the finger and blaming the intelligence services, saying there is a systemic failure,' said one agency official. ‘Now we are heroes. The fact is that we are doing everything humanly possible to stay on top of the security situation. The deaths of our operatives shows just how involved we are on the ground.' But CIA bosses claim they were unfairly blamed at a time the covert government agency has been stretched further than ever before in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They point to the murder of seven operatives at a remote mountain base in Afghanistan's Khost Province as an example of how agents are putting their lives on the line at the vanguard of America's far-flung wars. The agents – including the chief of the base, a mother-of-three - were collecting information about militants when the suicide bomber struck on Wednesday. The attack was the deadliest single day for the agency since eight CIA officers were killed in the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut. ‘Those who fell were far from home and close to the enemy, doing the hard work that must be done to protect our country from terrorism. We owe them our deepest gratitude,' CIA Director Leon Panetta said. Some CIA officials are angry at being criticised by the White House after Abdulmutallab, 23, was allowed to slip through the security net and board a US-bound flight in Amsterdam despite evidence he was a terror threat. The president complained that a warning from the former London engineering student's father and information about an al Qaeda bomb plot involving a Nigerian were not handled properly by the intelligence networks. But CIA officials say the data was sent to the US National Counterterrorism Centre in Washington, which was set up after the 9/11 attacks as a clearing house where raw data should be analysed. Agents claim that is where the dots should have been connected to help identify Abdulmutallab as a threat. | |
| Posted by: |
| #6 Getting awfully crowded under Obama's bus. Nuts. This particular bus was build to accommodate 300000000 people beneath it. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2010-01-03 16:21 |
| #5 Getting awfully crowded under Obama's bus. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2010-01-03 14:16 |
| #4 As a CINC, you never ever tell the enemy that you had/have agents in the field and where they are/were. Read Sun Tzu. |
| Posted by: newc 2010-01-03 13:59 |
| #3 Excuse my sarc ref the Klingons but one must remain aware of both prevailing winds as well as attitudes. Correct me if I'm wrong Tip, but it really should be the mission as well as goal of all good intelligence analysts to "connect the dots" and participate in as much predictive analysis as the intelligence available will permit. General Tommy Franks was fond of saying, "Ok intel folks, thanks for the update, but now that you've given me this data, just exactly what does it mean, or could it mean to the warfighter?" He called it the "so what" test. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-01-03 13:32 |
| #2 Besoeker; I have some sympathy with your view but the job of the NCTC is to connect the dots. If all the raw data got to them and did not get flagged they have a problem. |
| Posted by: tipover 2010-01-03 12:59 |
| #1 But CIA officials say the data was sent to the US National Counterterrorism Centre in Washington, which was set up after the 9/11 attacks as a clearing house where raw data should be analysed. Agents claim that is where the dots should have been connected to help identify Abdulmutallab as a threat. Oh, you no longer want the Director, Central Intelligence and the Agency to take the lead...but rather the NCTC? No problem, enjoy the ride and have a nice phueching day! |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-01-03 11:39 |