Posted on 01/03/2010 6:23:59 AM PST by kristinn
U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss a "smoking gun" that could have prevented an alleged attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser said Sunday.
White House aide John Brennan cited "lapses" and errors in the sharing of intelligence and clues about the Nigerian man accused in the foiled attempt.
"There is no smoking gun," Brennan said. "There was no single piece of intelligence that said, 'this guy is going to get on a plane.'"
Brennan is leading a White House review of the incident. Obama has said there was a systemic failure to prevent the attack, which he said was instigated by an affiliate in Yemen of the al-Qaida terrorist network.
Obama ordered a thorough look at the shortcomings that permitted the plot, which failed not because of U.S. actions but because the would-be attacker was unable to ignite an explosive device. The president has summoned homeland security officials to meet with him in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab apparently assembled an explosive device, including 80 grams of Pentrite, or PETN, in the aircraft toilet of a Detroit-bound Northwest flight, then planned to detonate it with a syringe of chemicals. Passengers intervened, and the plan failed.
The 23-year-old suspect's name was known to intelligence officials, and his father had passed along his concern about the son's increasing radicalization.
"We had bits and pieces of information," Brennan said on CNN's "State of the Union." The father's warning, he said, was "one set of data."
But Brennan said other information available didn't provide the details needed to map it and attach it to Abdulmutallab.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
See, the idea is to catch them BEFORE there’s a “smoking gun.”
Interesting fact: The country is NOT rallying behind “the President” in this crisis. Because of the standard set by Bush and Cheney, the country EXPECTS “the President” to prevent such a crisis.
Yeah, the fact that he bought a plane ticket is totally irrelevant.
Administration’s PantyGate Version #999.
They are going for a record!
One-way, at that. Just like the 9-11 hijackers.
Obama’s task in office, the task given to him by his puppet-masters: Destroy the United States while maintaining plausible deniability.
The idea is for Obama to do as much damage as possible without doing anything quite so overt as actually nuking any American cities.
FBI: Maybe more terror clues missed
Meeting with reporters Wednesday, Mueller expressed more uncertainty than he had previously displayed on whether the September 11 attacks could possibly have been prevented.
He repeated his previous assertion that no single piece of intelligence available to the FBI would have revealed the plot.
Online NewsHour: Family Views -- April 9, 2004
MARGARET WARNER: What Dr. Rice said, of course, was that there was no real silver bullet that she believed would have prevented the attacks.
STEPHEN PUSH: Well, that's kind of a hedge. It has been one they have been using since Sept. 12, 2001. No, there is no single piece of intelligence, no single action that could have been taken. But there were a series of missteps.
This sh|t is getting old!
Oh, yes there was. But the dutch guy helped douse it.
Is a father who warns the US Embassy a smoking gun?
Yeah, the fact that he bought a ONE WAY plane ticket with cash and had no luggage to check on an international flight is totally irrelevant.
Hey Brennan, you freakin’ idiot, what about “when he purchased a ticket and walked about a plane”? Please resign in disgrace immediately. Stand on a street corner and allow us to throw garbage at you in retribution.
Here’s thought:
We had warnings that a “Nigerian” would try to get a bomb aboard a U.S. airliner.
The Saudis briefed the White House about the “underwear bomb”.
Based on these two indicators, we could have directed that all males with Nigerian passports be subjected to secondary screening prior to being allowed to board any U.S. airliner. Seems a reasonable approach to me.
One way, with no luggage, fresh out of Yemen with his father screaming his was going to the dark side and the government cleared his name on the pre-flight check from Amsterdam. I’d say the gun was cocked with the finger on the trigger.
Dear Obama Administration:
Can you find Waldo?
Even just the one-way ticket should have flagged him for additional screening. No dot-connecting required. In a way, it shows Al Qaeda is too cheap to buy a round-trip ticket to avoid notice. On the other hand, it shows TSA is too stupid to follow its own basic guidelines.
For additional “insider” information on the war on terror, much of which you will not have heard elsewhere, I invite all Freepers to visit and participate in The Terrorism and Intelligence Blog at http://terrorismandintelligence.blogspot.com/
Gunny, out
This is like a receiver getting wide open in the end zone and the defenders telling their coach that they didn’t blow their coverage assignments.
Brennan is being a cya jackass on behalf of Obama here but the truth is we still don’t have the tools in place to stop a guy with this type of bomb unless we know he’s a bad guy.
That is not a formula for success. We’re in trouble here. This is a technical challenge. Intel no matter how good is going to ensure 100% safety now.
Where there is “no intelligence” is among the career dumba&&es and P.C. morons that infest the gubmint.
I seem to recall just a few weeks earlier that the very same group were talking about a certain mooselimb army officer and making the same lame excuses.
And a few weeks prior to that the “big story” was about how the administrations commie lap dog A.G. was going to grill and prosecute C.I.A. officers that had actually done something that might protect us from the actions of our enemies.
And who can forget the ever popular decision to move the gitmo terrorists to Manhattan and give them a civilian trial?
To anyone with a functioning brain cell not eaten up by the disease that is liberalism, it should be abundantly clear that Americas most dangerous and insidious enemies don't need to get on a plane to attack us, they're already hard at work in cushy government offices.
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