Obama to Receive Report on Failed Airline Attack
FOXNews.com
FOXNews.com
President Obama is set to receive a preliminary report Thursday detailing what warning signs were missed before a 23-year-old Nigerian who was already on a terror watch list boarded a plane to Detroit armed with explosives.
The president declared Tuesday that a "systemic failure" on multiple levels allowed the suspect to board and said he should have been on a "no-fly" list. The preliminary report is the administration's first step in trying to reform both airport screening and the terror watch list system to prevent a repeat of the Christmas Day incident.
Officials said it was unlikely Obama would speak publicly about the report, although the vacationing president likely would talk several times throughout the day with his national security team.
Obama has demanded answers on why information never was pieced together by the U.S. intelligence community that could have prevented terrorist suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to destroy a Detroit-bound airliner, from ever getting on the plane.
In August, intelligence officials picked up phone intercepts from an Al Qaeda offshoot in Yemen, discussing a plot involving someone they called "The Nigerian." In November, the suspect's father told the U.S. embassy in Nigeria that he was worried about his son's extremist views.
This warning got the suspect's name on the terror watch database -- but officials did not realize he was "The Nigerian" until the attempted attack.
A senior intelligence official said the CIA's Africa desk was also preparing a report on the suspect, but didn't send it to the National Counterterrorism Center because they were waiting for pictures of the suspect.
There are some concerns about the leader of the review. Current and former intelligence officials told Fox News he could face a conflict of interest, since he basically put together the National Counterrorism Center, the agency that manages watch lists.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an offshoot of Usama bin Laden's group, claimed it was behind the attempt to bomb the Northwest airliner.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the conversations were vague or coded, but the intelligence community believes that, in hindsight, the communications may have been referring to the Detroit attack.
The goal now, officials say, is to do everything the U.S. can to prevent a repeat. Even so, they acknowledge a perfect system is impossible to create and that it will take weeks for a more comprehensive investigation into what allowed Abdulmutallab to get into U.S. airspace.
