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| Home Front: WoT |
| Firings possible over fumbled case of Undieboomer |
| 2010-01-02 |
| President Obama held off Thursday on shaking up his national security team over the undies bomber fiasco, but the nation's top spy says heads will roll. The task is to "commend those who did their job well and hold accountable those who did not," said retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the director of National Intelligence. In an all-hands message to his troops, Blair, who could be in the cross hairs, sounded almost a valedictory note. "I could not be more proud of this community, of all we have accomplished together," Blair said. But he acknowledged that "mistakes were made" in the tangled tale of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his underwear bomb. In Hawaii, Obama received from White House counterterror chief John Brennan the preliminary review he had demanded on the intel and security screwups that allowed Abdulmutallab to board a Detroit-bound jet on Christmas Day. In a statement, Obama said he would convene a major White House sitdown of agency heads next Tuesday before deciding on "intelligence-sharing improvements." He planned to pore over reports before leaving Hawaii, but took a break Thursday to join his family at the movies to see "Avatar." Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, under fire since her "the system worked" gaffe last Sunday, dispatched top aides around the world to check on airport security at major hubs. The aim, she said, was "to determine exactly what went wrong" in the screening process. Yemeni officials said that Abdulmutallab may have met in an Al Qaeda safehouse in Yemen with radical Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, The Washington Post reported. Rashad Mohammed al-Alimi, Yemen's deputy prime minister, said that al-Awlaki was believed to have survived recent air strikes on Al Qaeda hideouts. Awlaki communicated with Maj. Nidal Hasan, the suspect in the Fort Hood massacre, and also allegedly met with Abdulmutallab while the 23-year-old Nigerian was in Yemen ostensibly to study Arabic. Alimi complained that the U.S. kept Yemen out of the loop when Abdulmutallab's father went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria to warn about his son last month. The father acted after Abdulmutallab called to say it would be his last contact with the family, ABC News reported. "If we had received the information at the appropriate time, our security apparatus could have taken obvious measures to stop him," Alimi said. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 Correction noted. |
| Posted by: Perfesser 2010-01-02 14:02 |
| #2 I have to argue with that, His credo is, and always has been MEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEME, all others rconised are "Usefull" again to MEMEMEME. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2010-01-02 13:02 |
| #1 Remember President Obama's credo: Tough with your friends, easy on your enemies. |
| Posted by: Perfesser 2010-01-02 09:37 |