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The would-be Christmas Day bomber boarded his flight in Amsterdam to frigid Detroit with no coat — perhaps the final warning sign that went unnoticed leading up to what could have been a catastrophic terrorist attack, lawmakers were told.

Congress got its first behind-the-scenes look Wednesday at the botched airline bombing and officials said the security failures were even worse than President Barack Obama outlined last week. It remains unclear, however, how those failures will be fixed.

“He was flying into Detroit without a coat. That’s interesting if you’ve ever been in Detroit in December,” New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said after a briefing by presidential counterterrorism adviser John Brennan.

[...]

Critical warning signs arrived even earlier, in mid-October, when a National Security Agency wiretap picked up discussion out of Yemen that referred to a Nigerian being trained for a special mission, according to a House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting.

Obama has ordered agencies to review and tighten their procedures but has mostly left it up to them to figure out how.

[...]

In November, Abdulmutallab’s father in Nigeria reported to the U.S. Embassy that his son had gone to Yemen and had fallen under the influence of radicals there.

Another point of failure, acknowledged last week by the White House, was that a misspelling of Abdulmutallab’s name at the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria initially made the State Department believe he did not have a U.S. visa and therefore was less of an immediate concern.

While these are certainly issues that need to be forcefully addressed, I am also concerned about the Congress leaking information from a classified intelligence briefing.  Congress has always leaked, but in matters of national security, the leadership should be searching out the leakers and punishing them.  Unless, of course, it IS the leadership.

Posted by Owen at 2156 hrs
Politics + Politics - General

1. “He was flying into Detroit without a coat. That’s interesting if you’ve ever been in Detroit in December,” New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said after a briefing by presidential counterterrorism adviser John Brennan.

   That statement is absolutely ridiculous.  To say that’s a potential warning sign that might have been missed is just plain asinine.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 13, 2010 at 2212 hrs
   
   
   

2. You are right Jason, he could have had his coat packed in his luggage, oh wait, he didn’t have any luggage.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 14, 2010 at 0739 hrs
   
   
   

3. Maybe he was just stopping in for a cup of coffee, oh wait, he didn’t have a return ticket.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 14, 2010 at 1016 hrs
   
   
   

4. I’m all for finding out what went wrong, but why leak this.  It is the little things, like him not wearing a coat, that give him away (even though we missed it, of course).  But better emphasis, we catch the next guy.  By leaking all this info, your basically giving the terrorist a constructive critique and ways to improve.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 14, 2010 at 1101 hrs
   
   
   

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