[Richard]

Review Of Jet Bomb Plot Shows More Missed Clues
Eric Lipton, Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti, NYT, 18 Jan 2010
Page 2 of 2

(cont'd)
Flaws Laid Bare

The overhaul of America’s intelligence apparatus in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks was intended to break information logjams and ensure that spy agencies traded secrets with one another. It established redundant layers of terrorism analysts to ensure that disparate clues to the next attack would not be ignored or overlooked.

But in the weeks before Christmas, the flaws in the structure were laid bare. No single person or unit was in charge of running down every high-priority tip.

At the National Counterterrorism Center just outside Washington, where specialists can draw on streams of information from more than 80 databases across the government, two teams of intelligence analysts worked on different parts of the same problem. Yet they never collaborated to piece together clues about the Christmas Day attack that were coming in.

A group of “watch list analysts” had been told by the United States Embassy in Nigeria that Mr. Abdulmutallab had been reported missing by his father and was likely to be under “the influence of religious extremists based in Yemen.”

But American officials in Nigeria did not flag Mr. Abdulmutallab for closer scrutiny, and alarms were not raised with the American Embassy in Yemen, either. Inside their electronic files, which contain tips on tens of thousands of cases, the analysts at the counterterrorism center also had a draft C.I.A. memorandum with biographical information about the man.

These tips were enough for the team, made up of about two dozen specialists, to add Mr. Abdulmutallab into the so-called Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, a tally of 550,000 people worldwide who might be a threat to the United States. The analysts, though, had missed the other threads of information sitting in their computer systems, so they did not put him in a more restrictive database that could have resulted in his inclusion on a “no fly” list.

The second team, a cadre of about 300 “all-source analysts,” failed to make the link as well. They are supposed to be the deep thinkers charged with preparing long-term assessments of terrorist groups, their financing and recruiting methods and their leadership. But officials said that while dozens of such analysts were examining the Yemen threat, they failed to repeatedly scrutinize the raw intelligence for hints of a possible attack on the United States originating in Yemen.

Obama administration officials now say the counterterrorism center needs personnel assigned solely to follow up on all tips, acting like detectives who keep working cases until they are solved.

The analysts are stymied, however, by computer systems that cannot easily search automatically — and repeatedly — for possible links, officials said. Even simple keyword searches are a challenge, according to a 2008 report by investigators for the House Committee on Science and Technology.

“The program not only can’t connect the dots, it can’t find the dots,” Representative Brad Miller, Democrat of North Carolina and chairman of a House panel that oversees the program, said at the time.

At the C.I.A, some of the information that had been collected was not widely distributed. A draft memorandum on Mr. Abdulmutallab circulated through the agency, with information added by officers inside its Africa division and its counterterrorism center.

But on Christmas Day, the final draft of the memorandum was still sitting in the computer of a junior C.I.A. analyst, waiting until a photo of the young Nigerian was located. Unbeknownst to the analyst, officials said, Mr. Abdulmutallab’s photo had already been delivered to other counterterrorism agencies.

“There were so many things that could have altered the course of events,” one senior administration official said.

The fallout from the terrorist plot has already exposed some simmering tensions, complicating the government’s ability fix the problems.

One senior Obama official faulted Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, for failing to assign extra intelligence analysts to focus on Yemen while also hunting for possible emerging threats to the United States.

For their part, some senior intelligence officials bristled at what they saw as a White House effort to place blame for the breakdowns solely on American spy agencies.

Mr. Blair fought back after early drafts of the White House report on the bombing attempt did not, in his view, adequately acknowledge the difficulties of placing a name on travel watch lists, according to two government officials. The report’s release was delayed several hours, and Mr. Blair managed to get changes made to the final version.

The tensions have also added to the concern expressed by influential lawmakers, who said they were told by administration officials last week in a briefing that the United States believes that Al Qaeda in Yemen could use other young men like Mr. Abdulmutallab as suicide bombers aboard aircraft.

“We don’t know how many more individuals are still out there that were trained by this radical cleric in Yemen,” said Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security intelligence subcommittee, “and may be still trying to pull off the same stunt.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/us...pagewanted=all