Obama: US intel had info ahead of airliner attack – Yahoo! News

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 1:17 am

HONOLULU – President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the intelligence community had bits of information that should have been pieced together that would have triggered “red flags” and possibly prevented the Christmas Day attempted terror attack on a Detroit-bound airliner.
“There was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security,” Obama said.
Senior U.S. officials told The Associated Press that intelligence authorities are now looking at conversations between the suspect in the failed attack and at least one al-Qaida member. They did not say how these communications with the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, took place — by Internet, cell phone or another method.
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.
Intelligence officials would not confirm whether those conversations involved Yemen-based radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, but other U.S. government officials said there were initial indications that he was involved. “The warning signs would have triggered red flags, and the suspect would have never been allowed to board that plane for America.”
Obama’s statement showed more fire than he had shown previously about the lapses that allowed the bombing attack to take place and came after his homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, had to backtrack on an assertion that “the system worked” in the Detroit airliner scare.
Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to destroy an aircraft, is being held at the federal prison in Milan, Mich.
Those warnings also did not result in Abdulmutallab’s U.S. visa being revoked.
Officials in Yemen were investigating whether Abdulmutallab spent time with al-Qaida militants there during the months leading up to the botched bombing attack.
Officials also noted Tuesday that Amsterdam, where Abdulmutallab boarded his flight to Detroit, is one of nine locations where U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials are stationed to do additional screening on U.S.-bound passengers who have been flagged as a potential risk.
The government put in place enhanced screening procedures for passengers after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington to catch potential terrorists. On U.S.-bound flights from overseas, CBP checks passenger names against some lists of potential terrorists, but not against all information the government keeps.

On top of that, airport security equipment did not detect the bomb-making devices and materials Abdulmutallab is accused of carrying on board the Northwest Airlines flight.

Obama said many things went right after the incident, with passengers and the flight crew subduing the man and government officials working quickly to increase security. He singled out Napolitano, backing her much-criticized comments that the attempted terror attack showed the aviation security system worked.

“As Secretary Napolitano has said, once the suspect attempted to take down Flight 253, after his attempt, it’s clear that passengers and crew, our homeland security systems, and our aviation security took all appropriate actions,” Obama said.

The two reviews, which Obama said got under way on Sunday, are looking at airport security procedures and the U.S. system of terror watch lists..

“It now appears that weeks ago this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community but was not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect’s name on a no-fly list,” Obama said.

___

Associated Press writers Audrey McAvoy in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, and Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.

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