Another Intelligence Screw Up
“We will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don’t hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust. That is exactly what our adversaries want, and so long as I am president, we will never hand them that victory. We will define the character of our country, not some band of small men intent on killing innocent men, women and children” – President Barack Obama
That mindset and mentality is to be applauded. However, the incident that prompted the president to make that statement has to send some chills through the spine of most people all over the world. It is chilling because while many people are breathing a sigh of relief that “no-one was badly hurt”, we seem to totally miss the point that this could easily have turned out in a very ugly way – like American fighter jets raining five thousand ton bombs on Abuja kind of ugly.
We appreciate the president’s candor in accepting responsibility for the near-tragic ineptitude of the U.S. intelligence agencies, again. It boggle our minds that while similar agencies in other countries with a fourth of the budget of their U.S. counterparts seem to find ways to get the job done, our agencies seem content to push the work to “technology” – more scanners, more peeping toms, more secret wire-tapping, more satellite pictures. Yet, when a father voluntarily walks into our embassy to alert us that his son could be involved with some dangerous people, he was dismissed and the information was not acted upon. Consider this statement that was in the White House Review of the incident:
A misspelling of Mr Abdulmutallab’s name initially resulted in the State Department believing he did not have a valid US visa . . .A series of human errors occurred–delayed dissemination of a finished intelligence report and incomplete/faulty database searches on Mr Abdulmutallab’s name.
Are we serious? A misspelling and the laziness of the people at the State Department almost sent 290 people to a horrendous death? Haven’t we heard those same excuses before?
Ok, what about these:
- US intelligence had been following him for a while, dubbing him “the Nigerian” (one assumes there was a reason).
- He was on a watch list.
- He had been banned from Britain.
- The British intelligence service had identified him to our intelligence agencies in 2008 as a potential threat.
- He’d just visited Yemen, an al Qaeda hotbed.
- He bought a one-way ticket to the United States in Africa through Europe (red flag 1).
- He paid cash (red flag 2, although in cash economies that exists in most of Africa where the use of credit card is still in its infancy, this is not really strange).
- He checked no luggage (red flag 3).
Mr. president, as magnanimous as you may want to be, someone has to provide some answers. How did this fellow get past the airport security system in Europe? What is the point of spending billions of dollars on airport security if we could not anticipate that the enemy will try to find new ways of carrying out their deadly intent, or worse still, using old methods?
One would think that we learnt something from the “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid, who bought a one-way ticket to the US, using cash and checked no luggage 8 years ago. What, other than the location of the explosives (shoe to crotch) changed in those 8 years? As Bruce McQuain aptly stated, our lack of security sure hasn’t changed when the same MO used 8 years before succeeds again. All that changed after Reid was we had to take our shoes (and socks in some cases) off for screening. Is our underwear next?
From all indication, the top brass will find a way to avoid taking the fall for this when one reads the White Review of the Christmas Day plot and see statements like:
The thorough analysis of large volumes of information has enabled a variety of departments and agencies to take action to prevent attacks . . .many of which the American people will never know about.”
The significant findings of our review are :
The watchlisting system is not broken. . .
A reorganisation of the intelligence or broader counterterrorism community is not required. . .”
When the president says “We are at war. We are at war against al-Qaeda, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, and that is plotting to strike us again. And we will do whatever it takes to defeat them,” he is partially correct. We should remember that hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died directly and indirectly from the 9/11 attack – Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Yemen. What we would like to see is the adoption of a new strategy by the administration in addressing the root cause of why “they are trying to kill us”. People do not just wake up one morning and decide to take other people out. What is driving this overarching hatred that makes a young man decide to convert himself into a human bomb?
It is encouraging that the president, one hopes at least, has a rational mind and will not revert to the hideous tactics of his predecessor and make life unnecessarily miserable for people in the countries involved. That has always been our response to embarrassing failures – we over compensate and react in ways that makes the situation worse.