U.S. Intel Failures Helped Terrorist

Incompetent U.S. intelligence agencies actually helped the al Qaeda terrorist who came dangerously close to blowing up an airplane on Christmas, shifting the Obama Administration’s initial assessment of the incident from a delusional “the system worked” to a more realistic "potential catastrophic breach" of security.

It turns out that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been sitting on valuable information about the bomber’s (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab) terrorist connections for more than four months, according to a major news agency. In early August, the CIA dubbed Abdulmutallab “the Nigerian” when it began tracking his meetings with “terrorist elements” in Yemen.

Incredibly, the nation’s premier “intelligence” agency failed to connect the dots when the terrorist’s own father, a prominent Nigerian banker, warned American embassy officials in November that his son had “become radicalized” and was planning some sort of attack. Abdulmutallab’s father even told U.S. authorities that his son went to Yemen to participate in “some kind of jihad,” which the CIA had known for months.  

Regardless, Abdulmutallab was granted a U.S. visa and allowed to board a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. He smuggled a powerful explosive device and could have brought down the jet with nearly 300 people aboard had his makeshift detonator not malfunctioned. U.S. intelligence officials finally made the connection that he was the radicalized Nigerian they had been tracking after he tried to blow up the jet.

The State Department, which grants foreigners U.S. visas, claims that it was the responsibility of the National Counterterrorism Center to revoke Abdulmutallab’s visa into the U.S. and not the State Department, which simply issues it. Officials say the warning alone from Abdulmutallab’s father “didn’t fit the bill” to revoke his visa since the agency receives daily calls from disgruntled people who say their relative or friend is “dangerous.” 

Alarming details are surfacing daily regarding this serious lapse on the part of the U.S. government, leaving President Obama no choice but to briefly interrupt his Hawaiian vacation to blast the aviation security system. Days after his joke of a Secretary of Homeland Security (Janet Napolitano) assured that “the system worked” and that the traveling public is “very, very safe in this air environment,” Obama finally came clean. 

The commander-in-chief called the attempted bombing a "potential catastrophic breach," an unacceptable “systemic failure” and a serious breach of national security. He also blasted the intelligence community for not doing its part to ban the terrorist from boarding a plane. The question now is, what will he do about it?