WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss a “smoking gun” that could have prevented an alleged attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser said Sunday.
White House aide John Brennan cited “lapses” and errors in the sharing of intelligence and clues about the Nigerian man accused in the foiled attempt.
“There is no smoking gun,” Brennan said. The Transportation Security Administration announced Sunday that, starting Monday, passengers flying into the United States from Nigeria, Yemen and other “countries of interest” will be subject to enhanced screening techniques, such as body scans and pat-downs. All passengers on U.S.-bound international flights will be subject to random screening, the agency said.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian student who allegedly tried to set off an explosive device aboard the Northwest airliner, has told U.S. investigators he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.
Brennan is leading a White House review of the incident. The president has summoned homeland security officials to meet with him in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday.
Brennan cited “a number of streams of information” — the 23-year-old suspect’s name was known to intelligence officials, his father had passed along his concern about the son’s increasing radicalization — and “little snippets” from intelligence channels. It didn’t, and she clarified her remarks to show she meant that the system worked only after the attack was foiled, Brennan said.
He said the situation was not like before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when intelligence agencies failed to share tips and information that might have uncovered the plot.
“There’s no evidence whatsoever that any agency or department was reluctant to share” information.

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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser said Sunday an active threat from al-Qaida led the U.S. to close its embassy in Yemen, where an al-Qaida affiliate apparently trained and armed the man accused in the Christmas Day plot against a U.S. airliner.
“We’re determined to destroy al-Qaida whether it’s in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Yemen, and we will get there.”
Britain also shuttered its embassy, citing security reasons.
“There are indications al-Qaida is planning to carry out an attack against a target inside of San’a, possibly our embassy.”
Brennan said the threat against Americans and Westerners would not ease until Yemen’s government got a better handle on the threat from terrorists inside the country. He estimated there are several hundred members of al-Qaida in Yemen. “We are very concerned about al-Qaida’s continued growth there,” Brennan said.
He said recent events are showing a “culmination of the effort here of al-Qaida to carry out these attacks. Obama said Saturday that an al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen apparently ordered the airliner plot, training and arming the 23-year-old Nigerian man accused in the failed bombing.
The president emphasized that the U.S. would continue its partnerships with friendly countries — citing Yemen, in particular — to fight terrorists and extremist groups. The U.S. plans to more than double its counterterrorism aid to the impoverished, fragmented Arab nation in the coming year to support Yemen’s campaign against al-Qaida.
Officials have said Abdulmutallab’s father warned the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria that his son had drifted into extremism in the al-Qaida hotbed of Yemen. “We know that he traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies. It appears that he joined an affiliate of al-Qaida, and that this group — al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula — trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America,” Obama said in his address.
Obama noted that in recent years, the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen has bombed government facilities there as well as Western hotels, restaurants and embassies. An attack on the U.S. Embassy in 2008 killed one American.
“So, as president, I’ve made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government — training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike al-Qaida terrorists,” he said.
The United States provided Yemen $67 million in training and support under the Pentagon’s counterterrorism program last year. Petraeus arrived in Yemen on Saturday and met with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Yemeni government official said. Security officials in Yemen said Saturday the government deployed several hundred extra troops to two mountainous eastern provinces that are al-Qaida’s main strongholds in the country and where Abdulmutallab may have visited.

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WASHINGTON – A top counterterrorism official is warning that al-Qaida and other extremists are working to test U.S. defenses and launch an attack on American soil.
National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter says the failed Christmas Day attempt to bring down a U.S. airliner is the starkest reminder of that threat.
Terrorism expert Harvey Kushner of Long Island University said a significant concern is that many U.S. airports don’t currently have the necessary technology to protect flights from the type of explosives attack attempted on Christmas.
The suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, apparently assembled an explosive device, including 80 grams of Pentrite, or PETN, in the aircraft toilet of a Detroit-bound Northwest flight, then planned to detonate it with a syringe of chemicals. Passengers intervened, and the plan failed.
Associated Press writer Jackie Quinn contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON – CIA employees are believed to be among the dead in Wednesday’s suicide bombing inside a base in eastern Afghanistan, a congressional official said.
U.S. officials said the attack occurred at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province, killing eight American civilians and wounding others.
CIA officer Micheal “Mike” Spann was killed in a prison uprising in November 2001. An agency officer died in a training exercise in 2003, and two contractors operating out of a CIA base in Shkin were killed in 2003.
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WASHINGTON – Taking an important step on the thorny path to closing the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the White House plans to announce Tuesday that the government will acquire an underutilized state prison in rural Illinois to be the new home for a limited number of terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo.
Administration officials as well as Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn will make an official announcement at the White House.
Officials from both the White House and Durbin’s office confirmed that President Barack Obama had directed the government to acquire Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Ill., a sleepy town near the Mississippi River about 150 miles from Chicago. A Durbin aide said the facility would house federal inmates and no more than 100 detainees from Guantanamo Bay.
The facility in Thomson had emerged as a clear front-runner after Illinois officials, led by Durbin, enthusiastically embraced the idea of turning a near-dormant prison over to federal officials.
The Thomson Correctional Center was one of several potential sites evaluated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to potentially house detainees from the Navy-run prison at Guantanamo Bay. The Thomson Correctional Center was built by Illinois in 2001 as a state prison with the potential to house maximum security inmates. Local officials hoped it would improve the local economy, providing jobs to a hard-hit community. State budget problems, however, have kept the 1,600-cell prison from ever fully opening. Obama has faced some resistance to the idea of housing terrorism suspects in the United States, but in Thomson many have welcomed the prospect as a potential economic engine. Thomson Village President Jerry Hebeler, was asleep when the word came that Thomson had been chosen.
Some Illinois officials have not supported the idea. Kirk has lobbied other officials to contact the White House in opposition to using the facility.

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