Posted on 11/16/2015 7:03:20 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The Islamic State’s claim of responsibility for the Paris attacks that killed 129 people -- including one American college student -- has potential to dramatically alter U.S. intelligence assessments of the group's capabilities to carry off well-orchestrated, mass casualty attacks.
At the same time, the attacks underscore the mounting difficulties U.S. and Western intelligence agencies are having in tracking the terror group, resulting in repeated warnings that their efforts to conduct surveillance of Islamic State suspects were "going dark."
Over the past year, current and former intelligence officials tell Yahoo News, IS terror suspects have moved to increasingly sophisticated methods of encrypted communications, using new software such as Tor, that intelligence agencies are having difficulty penetrating -- a switch that some officials say was accelerated by the disclosures of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The result played out in deadly fashion in Paris: At least eight terrorists, armed with heavy weaponry and suicide vests, and most likely aided by a support network, plotted and executed a highly elaborate mass casualty attack on multiple targets without the French or any other Western intelligence agency having a clue.
"Absolutely, this was an intelligence failure," said Ali Soufan, a former top FBI counterterrorism official who now runs an international security firm that has been warning about the dangers posed by IS, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, for over a year.
Soufan noted that the Paris attack would have required extensive planning, including support from a network of IS sympathizers who would likely have had to assist the terrorist perpetrators in obtaining weapons and explosives as well as casing the targets and conducting countersurveillance. (Police in Belgium today arrested three suspects linked to the attacks after tracing a rental car with a Belgian license plate that was seen at Bataclan Theatre )
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Time to deny ISIS all Command & Control. Remove all telecom, electric power resources. Ramp us NSA and begin relentless retaliation.
You have to expect these kinds of issues when an enemy agent is commanding your military and intelligence gathering.
They are confusing failure with aiding and abetting.
I read this AM, on FR?, that Playstations can be used to communicate w/o going through cell phones and other traceable networks.
And Playstations seen in terrorists apts.
Don’t know how that works, not being a gamer.
The French obviously have not been surveilling their own mosques enough, either. Three of the eight Paris murderers were French citizens.
Let's see if they now start doing what WE should have started doing on 9/12/01; deporting all non-citizen Muslims and placing surveillance on all citizen Musilms.
I think this is CYA. There was intelligence before it happened. My concern is that the left wing leaders don’t want to act on information but Hollande has been forced to face reality. We know Obama thinks ISIS is contained and that Islam is a religion of peace. Thus his inaction and spreading the loving people of Islam over our country. All I can say is that we better get into those communities and evangelize while we still can.
The Paris attack was a massive intelligence failure.
Paris attacks do not show that intelligence is going dark until proven, it more likely shows how much influence the moslim brotherhood has in the Obama administration. Now that is the scary prospect.
Sure, blame Snowden instead of the Terrorist in Chief.
Yu might want to limit the height to 500
But yet they can somehow vet hundreds of thousands “Syrian refugees?”
We also missed clues to the fall of the USSR & 9/11, among dozens of things. Our intel is lousy.
We also missed clues to the fall of the USSR & 9/11, among dozens of things. Our intel is lousy.
Where is Commander Joe Rochefort when you need him..
(Broke the Jap code at Midway)
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