Red Faces

The anger among administration officials over the circumstances surrounding the attempted Christmas Day bombing has been plain to see. Yesterday saw further details released on the chain of events, and on who in the security community knew what and when. Tough questions are being asked about the visa system, about terrorism databases, and about physical security within airports. Singled out for particularly strong criticism yesterday were the National Counter Terrorism Center and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate a device sewn into his underwear as his Northwest Airlines flight with 278 passengers aboard approached the U.S. city of Detroit. The flight had originated in Amsterdam, where Abdulmutallab had connected from a flight from Lagos, Nigeria. He boarded the latter flight after arriving from Accra, Ghana several hours before. He had flown into Accra, in turn, from Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). Abdulmutallab reportedly spent time with al-Qaida in Yemen’s remote Shabwa Province in October and November, meeting there with the now-notorious U.S.-born radical preacher Anwar al-Awlaki. The building where they met is believed to have been bombed on 21 December by Yemeni forces. Al-Awlaki has also been linked to the shooter (Major Nidal Malik Hasan) in the Fort Hood military base massacre in November 2009 (the two had exchanged email messages). Abdulmutallab had previously lived in the U.K. capital, London, where it seems he was radicalised and possibly recruited by al-Qaida. Abdulmutallab left Yemen on 4 December, possibly with the bomb components.

The intelligence agencies knew of a plot originating in Yemen using a Nigerian man four months earlier, and they had also received warning from Abdulmutallab’s father on 18 November about his radicalisation and disappearance in Yemen. One intelligence failure resulted from a simple misspelling of the man’s name. This led the State Department to conclude that he did not have an existing visa. The warning from Abdulmutallab’s father was meanwhile picked up by the NCTC, but it was deemed insufficient to add him to the no-fly list. One cable might not have met the NCTC’s standards, but operatives should have cross-checked and found the intelligence about the Yemeni plot. Importantly, the report does point out that agencies did have access to each other’s information (unlike prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks); the problem was that it was not accessed. Also revealed yesterday was that U.S. intelligence had learned in August that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (the Yemeni branch) had devised means to conceal pentaerythritol (PETN) in undergarments of suicide bombers. This method was used in the attempted assassination on 27 August of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who heads the Saudi anti-terrorism campaign, and again in the case of Abdulmutallab.

What is most troubling is the number of processes that failed to spot the problem. The report released yesterday concludes: "The intentional redundancy in the system should have added an additional layer of protection in uncovering a plot like the failed attack on Dec. 25. However, in both cases, the mission to "connect the dots" did not produce the result that, in hindsight, it could have." In terms of airport security, it seems the bomb equipment may have passed undetected through Sana’a (Yemen) Addis Ababa, Accra, Lagos, and Amsterdam.

The Response

Obama is keen to prevent his Republican opponents taking advantage of the situation and painting him as weak on terrorism. He pointedly said yesterday that "We are at war" with al-Qaida, a rebuff to those who have highlighted the administration’s abandonment of the phrase "war on terror". The president nonetheless urged against a siege mentality and the kind of fear-mongering of which the last administration stood accused. He was clearly taking aim at former vice-president Dick Cheney, who has frequently criticised Obama in the media.

Obama has outlined the following immediate actions in response to the failures:

• The Homeland Security Department will accelerate the installation of advanced-technology passenger-screening equipment in airports. Controversially, this includes body scanners that, critics argue, invade privacy. The U.S. authorities are working not only with domestic airports but also with international airports where flights to the United States originate.
• Intelligence reports relating to threats will be distributed more widely among government agencies.
• The State Department will review its visa policy to ensure those with terrorist connections are vetted more carefully. In future, individuals will be checked after they have received visas as well as on application/renewal.
• Measures have already been announced to increase screening of passengers from certain countries, including Nigeria and Yemen.
• There is now a much closer focus on al-Qaida in Yemen, whose sophistication and resources have clearly taken the U.S. authorities by surprise. The president’s chief counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan said yesterday: "We didn’t know they had progressed to the point of actually launching individuals here." The CIA is now focusing additional analysts on Yemen, and there are signs that U.S.-backed raids on al-Qaida suspects there have been stepped up.

Outlook and Implications

Obama's unusually outspoken criticism underlines the gravity of the failed plot and its ramifications, and has come as U.S. military intelligence in Afghanistan is also under fire in the wake of the suicide attack against CIA personnel in Khost. After the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government embarked upon the most significant reorganisation and reform of intelligence activities since the National Security Act of 1947, aiming to streamline the unwieldy multi-agency apparatus that frequently led to turf battles over responsibilities and competencies, as well as a lack of inter-agency co-operation. Central to these efforts was the creation of the office of the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for co-ordinating the diverse activities of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies and removing the director of the CIA from primacy in intelligence co-ordination. Criticism nevertheless continued over the failure under former president George W. Bush to nominate a single agency to lead counter-terrorism operations, while further controversy also affected Obama, whose choice of Leon Panetta to head the CIA—a political appointee with no previous intelligence experience—was also criticised for potentially having a negative impact on operational efficiency. The review published yesterday nonetheless finds that information-sharing is much improved—it is how this information was acted upon that was really at fault. Lessons from the episode will help improve processes, but the disparate nature of the terrorist threat and the inevitability of future intelligence gaps mean that no reform can ever be assured of completely eliminating the possibility of future attacks on U.S. soil.

Global Insight (Reino Unido)