Intelligence failures over Christmas remind politicians of 9/11

Abdulmutallab

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has finally released its unclassified executive summary of the investigation into the government's failures leading up to the attempted 2009 Christmas Day terrorist attack in the skies over Detroit.

The 14 failures specified by the committee read like a laundry list of intelligence mishaps, reminiscent of those issued by the 9/11 Commission almost a decade ago. The scathing report primarily slams the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the agency created after the 2001 attacks to be a clearinghouse for the intelligence community (IC) on all terrorism threats, for not identifying Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before he boarded a flight to the U.S. in December. But, the redacted summary also makes clear that the committee has discovered the continued existence of numerous systemic failures within the CIA, the FBI, the NSA and even the Department of State (DoS), all of which contributed to the attack.

In a letter accompanying the summary from Senators Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Richard Burr (R-NC), the lawmakers wrote, "DNI Blair stated that, ‘this was not a failure to connect, integrate, and understand the intelligence we had…,’ We respectfully disagree. Some of the systemic errors this review identified also were cited as failures prior to 9/11.”

The 14 points of failure identified by the committee are labeled as "a series of human errors, technical problems, systemic obstacles, analytical misjudgments and competing priorities.” They include:

-       The failure of DoS to revoke Abdulmutallab’s visa because they did not use their “independent obligation to evaluate a non-U.S. person’s suitability for entry into the U.S., but instead relie[d] on the IC’s assessment of whether an individual meets the standard for placement on the terrorist watchlists”;

-       The fact that Abdulmuttalab was not placed in the “Terrorist Screening Database” (TSDB) because the standards “were interpreted too rigidly;"

-       Intelligence was “inconsistently” distributed to the agencies with a need-to-know;

-       Because intelligence was not properly disseminated, the wrong database searches were undertaken on Abdulmuttalab, leaving analysts (especially at the FBI) unaware of reports issued about him and were therefore unable to “connect the dots” of intelligence from across the intelligence community;

-       Faulty computer configurations for analysts at the FBI prevented them from gaining access to necessary databases which would have provided them conclusive information on Abdulmuttalab;

-       The CIA kept important information within the agency that should have been disseminated more widely;

-       The failure of the NCTC to bring together fragmented reporting from across the intelligence community;

-       The failure of the NSA to pursue potential information, connect that information and focus on direct threats to the homeland, rather than just on general threats of terrorism worldwide;

-       The failure of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to make clear to the intelligence community -- despite having a mandate from the government -- as to whom is responsible for the collection, dissemination and analysis of information.

Read the full findings of the report, here.