WASHINGTON — A Senate investigation of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day has criticized U.S. spy agencies for squandering a series of opportunities to detect the threat ahead of time.
The report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that the government had enough information to block the suspect from boarding the flight, but was hobbled by breakdowns that included human error as well as computer glitches at agencies such as the State Department, the CIA and the National Counterterrorism Center.
The report amounts to a bleak assessment of U.S. security agencies at a time when they are facing renewed scrutiny because of another narrowly averted domestic plot: the attempted bombing of Times Square this month.
Overall, the Senate panel found “systemic failures across the intelligence community,” despite widespread attempts to restructure it in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“There is no longer any doubt that major intelligence failures allowed the Christmas Day bomber to almost turn our airplanes into deadly weapons once again,” said Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the intelligence committee.
The attack was thwarted when passengers on the Northwest Airlines flight detected smoke and quickly subdued Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23.
In addition to faulting the State Department for not revoking Abdulmutallab’s U.S. visa, the report asserts that the National Counterterrorism Center failed at its fundamental mission of serving as the government’s nerve center for terrorist-related threats.
