Review of Jet Bomb Plot Shows More Missed Clues

[alp227]

Source: Eric Lipton, Eric Schmitt, and Mark Mazzetti (The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — Worried about possible terrorist attacks over the Christmas holiday, President Obama met on Dec. 22 with top officials of the C.I.A., F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security, who ticked off a list of possible plots against the United States and how their agencies were working to disrupt them.

In a separate White House meeting that day, Mr. Obama’s homeland security adviser, John O. Brennan, led talks on Yemen, where a stream of disturbing intelligence had suggested that Qaeda operatives were preparing for some action, perhaps a strike on an American target, on Christmas Day.

Yet in those sessions, government officials never considered or connected links that, with the benefit of hindsight, now seem so evident and indicated that the gathering threat in Yemen would reach into the United States.

Just as lower-level counterterrorism analysts failed to stitch together the pieces of information that would have alerted them to the possibility of a suicide bomber aboard a Detroit-bound jetliner on Christmas, top national security officials failed to fully appreciate mounting evidence of the dangers beyond the Arabian Peninsula posed by extremists linked to Yemen.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/us/18intel.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

[peacetalksforall]

1. This article has an odor. It smells of a set-up. The choices are:

A build-up to an invasion of Iran - the number one target of Israel and the US (UK?)

A build-up to an invasion of Yemen - to set up bases to be close to safe passage of ships.

Either one or both would be a devestating mistake to the world.

A cover-up of the truth of the chaos that existed with Cheney-Bush and not yet corrected. Perhaps this experience exposed more or new holes and traitorous secrets held back.

A cover-up of an agency or contractor who had an agenda. I vote for this.

To top it off - this article says nothing about what happened at the airport in Amsterdam. Precise knowledge / acknowledgement is missing from the news.

It has been reported that the bomber had a passport and visa.

It has been reported that the bomber was passed off as a Sudanese refugee who didn't have a passport.

The NYT has a reputation for helping the Pentagon and the baron-poltical machine set up wars and propaganda. Posting something like this at this time is probably preparation.

Which was it and why is there no attention given it. If there has been something announced that I've missed, please share. Thanks.

[Igel]

2. Or perhaps the odor is something entirely different.

An attempt to say that it's the "system" that failed instead of people. After all, the system takes a long time to rebuild and to alter, so nobody's really at fault here.

Consider this and the Hasan incident.

In this case, it's low-level people who didn't have access to information that they mostly could have had access to; because the technology wasn't in place--hardly the current administration's fault--they weren't forced to confront it. But if there are hints that upper-level people were somehow involved, either by overlooking information or by not focusing their staffers on pieces or classes of information, well, it's a more serious problem.

In the Hasan case it's the people immediately above him that have been castigated and blamed. Suddenly the information that in January information about Hasan was dismissed and never picked up again in February and beyond as additional information became available is ignored. Why was the information not reviewed by intelligence services? Because they're overworked, because somebody failed to pass it along, because of some other reasons? Similarly, if you're Hasan's superior and you have problems with Hasan, why sit on them? To keep from looking bad--either because you're picking on a Muslim of color, because you let him slide so far, because you are under so much pressure to keep the medical corps staffed by your superiors that you're forced to not care about their quality?

All this sounds very similar, very human.

Both these are the opposite sort of questions that were asked about places like Abu Ghraib. There any low-level person's error bespoke significant error, intentional error, at the top. The bumbling incompetents were all knowing and all controlling. Here, any low-level person's error speaks to accidental error at the top, trivial error. The all-wise adults and wise folk at the top are all-ignorant and unable to exert authority. Both seem highly unlikely, whatever import we give to the 40-60 * officials who burrowed in.