WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama declared Thursday that “the buck stops with me” for the nation’s security, taking responsibility for failures that led to the near-disastrous Christmas attack on a Detroit-bound airliner and vowing the problems would be corrected. He said the lapses were widespread but suggested no officials would be fired.
Obama didn’t tell intelligence officials to dramatically change what they’re doing. Instead, he told them to do it better and faster. He left it to them to figure out how.
Clearly aware of the potential political fallout, Obama struck a tough tone toward the fight against terrorism, taking the rare step — for him — of calling it a “war.”
Among the changes it is making, the administration plans to:
• Add more air marshals to flights.
• Strengthen criteria used to add individuals to the terrorist watch lists.
• Increase the use of explosive detection technology, including imaging technology, at airports.
• Direct the intelligence community to assign specific responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats. Agencies must pursue leads until plots are disrupted.
• Distribute intelligence reports more rapidly and widely and strengthen how analysts process and integrate intelligence reports.
Hundreds of law enforcement officers from the Homeland Security Department agencies are being trained and deployed to the federal Air Marshal Service, said a government official familiar with the strategy.
An alarming picture
In the president’s bleak assessment and a White House-released report about what went wrong, the country got an alarming picture of a post-Sept. 11 debacle: an intelligence community that failed to understand what it had. U.S. intelligence officials had enough information to identify the suspect as an al-Qaeda terrorist operative and keep him off a plane but still could not identify and disrupt the plot, and security measures didn’t catch him, either.
Obama announced the changes designed to fix that, and more inquiries are on the way.
“It is appalling that we have not learned from our mistakes, eight years after the worst terror attacks in our nation’s history,” said Sen. Olympia Snow, R-Maine, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which will hold its first hearing on the subject on Jan. 21, probably in private.
While Obama promised improved security, his solutions were laced with bureaucratic reshuffling.
Americans might be surprised that the government was not already taking some of the steps Obama ordered. For instance, he directed the intelligence community to begin assigning direct responsibility for following up leads on high-priority threats.
Obama himself hinted at the difficulties of improving intelligence and security against a terrorist network that devises new methods as fast or faster than the U.S. can come up with defenses.
“There is, of course, no foolproof solution,” he said. “We have to stay one step ahead of a nimble adversary.”
He spoke from the State Dining Room at the White House, his remarks delayed twice as officials scrambled to declassify a six-page summary of a report he had ordered from top officials on the security failures. That summary was released immediately after he spoke, as was Obama’s three-page directive to agency chiefs.
“When the system fails, it is my responsibility,” Obama said.
The White House is eager to resolve and move beyond the issue, which threatens to damage the president politically and distract further from his agenda.
“A series of human errors”
Republicans have pointed to the attack and Obama’s handling of it to criticize him as weak on national security — a perennial election-season charge against Democrats that has sometimes been effective in the past. His language Thursday was strong.
“We are at war, we are at war against al-Qaeda,” he said. “We will do whatever it takes to defeat them.”
According to the report, “a series of human errors” occurred, including a delay in the dissemination of a completed intelligence report and the failure of CIA and counterterrorism officers to search all available databases for information that could have been tied to Abdulmutallab. Unlike the run-up to the 2001 terrorist attacks, intelligence officials did share information. But authorities didn’t understand what they had.
The president seemed to settle the question of whom to blame by declaring that blame was shared by many.
He ordered all involved agency heads to set up internal accountability units to review efforts to make changes. “We will measure progress,” he said.
White House report on airline bomb-plot security lapses
FINDINGS
Failed to connect dots: The U.S. government had enough information before the attempted Dec. 25 attack to have potentially disrupted the plot by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula but failed to connect the dots.
Not enough resources: The intelligence community’s leadership didn’t put enough resources into analyzing the threat from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Watch lists need improvement: The system of terrorist watch lists is not broken but needs to be strengthened and improved, as shown by the government’s failure to add Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspect in the attack, to the “no-fly” list. Doing so would have kept him from boarding Northwest Airlines Flight 253 altogether.
Reorganization not necessary: A reorganization of the intelligence or the broader counterterrorism community is not necessary to address problems highlighted by the review, “a fact made clear by countless other successful efforts to thwart ongoing plots.”
RECOMMENDATIONS
Toughen watch-list criteria: Strengthen criteria used to add individuals to the nation’s terrorist watch lists, especially the no-fly list. Keep dangerous people off airplanes while not disrupting air travel.
Better screening technologies: Increase the use of explosive detection technology, including imaging technology, at airports. Strengthen international partnerships to improve screening and security at airports around the world. Task Energy Department and national labs to develop next generation of screening technologies.
Pursue all leads on threats: Direct intelligence community to assign specific responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats. Agencies must pursue leads until plots are disrupted.
Faster intel dissemination: Distribute intelligence reports more rapidly and widely.
Better processing, integration: Strengthen how analysts process and integrate intelligence reports. The Associated Press
