President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, sent an email on Thursday evening to his employee referring to “Northwest Flight 153 for Detroit” as the plane that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up on Christmas day. The problem with this is that the plane Mr. Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up on that afternoon was Northwest flight 253, not 153.
On the day President Obama criticized the intelligence community for its inability to “connect the dots” in the Abdulmutallab case, the person in charge of guiding the United States Intelligence Community made a major mistake in identifying the plane Abdulmutallab tried to obliterate.
“It’s wrong,” said a senior State Department official on Thursday evening.
Early in the day President Obama directed Mr. Blair to take the lead in improving the intelligence community efforts to gather, collect and detail all the information related to suspected terrorists and people who should be in the government’s "no fly” list.
“I'm directing that we strengthen the analytical process, how our analysis -- how our analysts process and integrate the intelligence that they receive,” said President Obama on Thursday at a White House speech. “My Director of National Intelligence, Denny Blair, will take the lead in improving our day-to-day efforts.”
Here’s the email Mr. Blair sent to his employees:
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
WASHINGTON, DC 20511
January 7, 2010
The following message by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair was sent to employees of the United States Intelligence Community:
Colleagues:
The President has completed his preliminary review and briefed the nation regarding the Abdulmutallab attempted terrorist attack on December 25. He has directed me to lead the Intelligence Community’s work in improving our procedures and systems to detect and prevent a similar attempt from succeeding.
That Mr. Abdulmutallab boarded Northwest Flight 153 for Detroit was a failure of the
counterterrorism system. We had strategic intelligence that al Qa’ida in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) had the intention of taking action against the United States. We did not direct more resources against AQAP, nor insist that the watchlisting criteria be adjusted. The Intelligence Community analysts who were working hard on immediate threats to Americans in Yemen did not understand the fragments of intelligence on what turned out later to be Mr. Abdulmutallab, so they did not push him onto the “no fly” list.
We will take a fresh and penetrating look at strengthening both human and technical performance and do what we have to do in all areas. I have specifically been tasked to oversee and manage work in four areas:
• Assigning clear lines of responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats, so they are pursued more aggressively;
• Distributing intelligence reports more quickly and widely, especially those suggesting specific threats against the U.S.;
• Applying more rigorous standards to analytical tradecraft to improve intelligence integration and action; and
• Enhancing the criteria for adding individuals to the terrorist watchlist and “no fly” watchlist.
While the December 25 attempt exposed improvement needs and flaws in coordination, it did not expose weakness in the concepts of intelligence reform or suggest that its progress should be redirected. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) and the progress of the past five years will continue to guide our future improvements.
As the White House review stated, “the work by America’s counterterrorism (CT) community has had many successes since 9/11 that should be applauded… On a great number of occasions since 9/11, many of which the American people will never know about, the tremendous, hardworking corps of analysts across the CT community did just that, working day and night to track terrorist threats and run down possible leads in order to keep their fellow American safe.” I strongly agree.
The review also recognizes the barriers to information sharing that existed just five years ago, which we have worked so hard to dismantle, have indeed been broken down.
The job of collecting, analyzing, and integrating information on a global scale is difficult, and this community performs that work at high levels every day
