WASHINGTON — Despite a top-to-bottom overhaul of the intelligence community after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the nation’s security system showed some of the same failures when it allowed a would-be bomber to slip aboard an airliner, congressional investigators said Tuesday.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report at times contradicted the Obama administration’s assertion that the Christmas Day bombing attempt was unlike 9/11 because it represented a failure to understand intelligence, not a failure to collect and understand it.
The congressional review lays much of the blame on the National Counterterrorism Center, which Congress created to be the primary agency in charge of analyzing terrorism intelligence. The NCTC is the government’s clearinghouse for terrorism information and is the only government agency that can access all intelligence and law enforcement information.
Lawmakers found that the NCTC was not organized to be the sole agency in charge or piecing together terrorism threats.
“Some of the systemic errors this review identified also were cited as failures prior to 9/11,” Republican Sens. Richard Burr and Saxby Chambliss wrote in an addendum to the report.
The Christmas Day plot failed when a bomb failed to detonate aboard a Detroit-bound airliner, and FBI agents quickly arrested Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and charged him with the attack. Abdulmutallab has been linked to an al-Qaida spinoff group in Yemen.
The committee’s review also found fault with information-sharing within the CIA.
Specifically, the review found, a regional CIA division did not search other databases that would have had information relevant to the CIA’s reports related to Abdulmutallab. Part of the problem was not having adequate search technology, according to the review.
A spokeswoman said the CIA director put measures in place to speed the dissemination of threat information less than two weeks after Christmas.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
