John Brennam: "Officials 'Didn't Understand The Intelligence"

On Christmas Day a Nigerian national tried to blow up a U.S. airliner with a bomb in his underwear.

Since that incident, the Obama administration has repeatedly said the “failure to connect the dots” (intelligence reports” that might have prevented the Christmas Day bombing attempt. The administration says it was not a result of spy agencies failure share information.

However, John Brennan, counter-terrorism and homeland security Czar, stated, "As the president has said, "This was not a failure to collect or share intelligence. It was a failure to connect and integrate and understand the intelligence we had. We didn't follow up and prioritize the stream of intelligence indicating that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula sought to strike our homeland because no one intelligence entity or team or task force was assigned responsibility for doing that follow-up investigation."

NSA Intelligence intercepts captured a steady stream of chatter before the bombing attempt, including one that said a Nigerian with connections to al Qaeda was planning an attack.

Other major red flags -- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab bought his ticket to Detroit with cash and was traveling with no luggage -- were also missed.

They can keep making excuses, but there was ample data, in standalone reports to add this terrorist to the no fly list. There was also ample data to revoke his Visa.

For months, we have been hearing from intelligence sources that the Obama administration had relaxed many of the policies (of the Bush administration) as regards counter-terrorism. We know that to be the case in the Fort Hood massacre and it is probably a contributing factor in our failure to prevent the attempt to blowup an airliner over a heavily occupied section of Detroit on Christmas Day!


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