Here are a few facts culled from recent news reports from the New York Times and Fox News websites about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to destroy Northwest Flight 253.
- In August 2009, NSA intercepted conversations among Yemeni based Al Qaeda leaders discussing a plot to use a Nigerian man, who we now know was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, for an upcoming terrorist attack – the intercepts were translated and the resultant intelligence disseminated within the U.S. Government and its Counter Terrorism community (comprised of specific elements of the various intelligence agencies).
- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, visited the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria in November and expressed concerns about his son’s increasing radicalization to State Department officials and a CIA representative or representatives. Mr. Mutallab apparently went so far as to show the U.S. embassy and CIA personnel his son’s text messages.
- Shortly after the meeting in Abuja, embassy officials sent a “Visas Viper” cable to the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) on 20 November 2009.
- Also In November, the CIA compiled some biographical data on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, but waited to disseminate that data until photographs of Umar could be obtained.
So why did Abdulmutallab nearly succeed?
He succeeded do to a nasty combination of poor IT infrastructure within the intelligence community, inattentive and negligent intelligence analysis, a visa revocation process that is not appropriate to a nation in a war with violent extremists, and the end of the calendar year.
Part of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s challenge in the 21st Century, particularly in the global information age, is to establish and integrate the various agencies stove-piped information systems. While the agencies have made great strides in modernizing their individual internal infrastructures, they have been less successful in designing and building information systems that can cross-connect and share information efficiently, in a common understandable format. Progress is being made in this area, but it will be many years before it can happen. One of the major problems is the institutional mindset that will not, for example, permit CIA to use the same integrated IT system that NSA uses. Neither agency wants the other able to potentially see everything the other agency is doing, in spite of the fact that it is technologically possible now to have both agencies share a common system, but keep vital sources and methods data separate from the usable intelligence. If this antiquated mindset could be set aside by political mandate, it would likely take five years before the USIC had one integrated system that would provide all analysts with all available intelligence information. Had this common analytic knowledge system been available, Abdulmutallab would likely have been identified as a serious threat much sooner.
Naturally, identifying Abdulmutallab as a threat would have required an analyst or analysts to correlate the data from the CIA, NSA, and State Department reporting and then flag him on the no-fly list. If nothing else, when his father reported him to the State Department and CIA officials in Nigeria, the embassy personnel should have had the common sense to check to see if he was a holder of a current visa and the immediate authority to suspend it, pending further inquires. The U.S. is not obligated to allow non-U.S. citizens into this country. The temporary suspension of a travel visa should not require a committee decision in the D.C. area, nor should we operate under a “come one, come all” mind set, when common sense would dictate otherwise. Further, the CIA analyst who created the biographical information on Abdulmutallab should not have waited until he had photographs to share it. CIA, being a “people focused” business, undoubtedly breeds an analyst that is focused as much on a physical description as the relevant intelligence a human asset can provide. These analysts must better learn how to live in the information age, where a data file can be constantly updated as new information presents itself, and not waited to share. As is demonstrated in this case, even an incomplete picture of the facts could have been helpful.
The analysts in the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), who without doubt are working long hours and receiving very little public fanfare for all the attacks they have helped the military and U.S. law enforcement stop, also need to work on their procedures. Certainly no one can expect an analyst to work with no facts at all in hand, but the NSA reporting that a “Nigerian” was going to be used by Al Qaeda to conduct an attack, should have triggered an immediate scrub of all terror watch lists for Nigerian nationals, and subsequent alerts to the TSA and our foreign partners to give additional security screening to all Nigerians destined for the U.S. We don’t know everything that the people in NCTC did and didn’t do in response to the admittedly minimal data that current news reporting indicates was available, but I suspect NCTC’s internal procedures and analytic methodology will be getting a thorough review.
Lastly, the end of the calendar year didn’t help us much. As someone who spent long years in government service, I can tell you for a fact that many of the most experienced, and capable people in the civil service begin to burn through their accumulated leave at the end of the year. Much of this happens during Thanksgiving week, and in the week prior to Christmas through the New Year. Does that mean that the watch standers at the various agencies and centers are poorly trained, inexperienced dullards? No. But it does mean that there are less of our best paying attention, because they are looking after their families during the holiday season. Is it an excuse or even a major contributing factor, probably not. Did it contribute to Abdulmutallab’s ability to successfully board a plane and nearly destroy it on Christmas Eve but for luck and the courage of the passengers and cabin crew? It did to some degree.
The poor visa denial procedures, the less than ideal IT systems, and the potential analytic failures, and our own holiday schedule enabled Abdulmutallab’s attempted act of terrorism and mass murder on Al Qaeda’s behalf, proving again the truth of the statement, “We have to be perfect every time. They only have to get lucky once.”
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
U.S. Withdraws From Iraqi Cities
Today, many Iraqis celebrated the withdrawal of most American forces from their major cities. This is a tremendous milestone on the road to Iraq's complete sovereignty and Iraq's citizens have every right to be thankful and happy that this day has finally come. Another strong step towards an Iraq governed by its people has been made, and there are more to come as Iraqi leaders and the Iraqi people step forward to choose their own destiny.
The political justification offered to the American people for invading Iraq was, as we now know, based on poor or "cherry picked" intelligence and overly rosy views of the occupation to come.
Personally, I believe that the removal of Saddam Hussein, his corrupt and evil sons, and the Bath Party from power in Iraq provided an opportunity for a democratic process to take root; rather than continue to permit the perpetuation of a depraved dictator's rule and the brutalization and exploitation of 31.2 million people and their national resources. Women in Baghdad need no more fear Saddam's son's choosing one or more of them off the street for rape and perhaps death. Saddam, his family and his political party will no longer plunder his nation's resources for personal profit and aggrandizement.
The conquering of Iraq (the actual War) was won quickly and decisively. The occupation of Iraq was mismanaged in same haphazard manner our own government usually operates here at home. Decisions were made by senior leaders with apparently incomplete facts; or worse yet, with an American-ized view of the situation, not understanding the culture of the nation we just invaded. One such example was the complete disbanding of the Iraqi Army. Instead of removing only the senior army leadership loyal to Saddam, or excising specific divisions like the Republican Guard who were intensely loyal to him, leaving us a corps of Iraqis willing to protect their country in cooperation with their liberators; we created an instant pool of unemployed young men, disgraced by summary discharge, unable to feed their families. They became a perfect group of willing recruits for the insurgent leaders willing to pay them, or who told the more anti-western leaning among them that the western "crusaders" had returned and they must defend the Arab world against them.
We all know our poor effort at nation building suffered greatly in the initial years, as the insurgency gathered momentum and spiraled nearly out of control; then improved as coalition forces learned to respect Iraqi and Islamic cultural norms and adapt their occupation and counter-insurgency efforts to the objective realities on the ground. I laud our troops and their commanders for their courage, fortitude, and cunning in adapting and overcoming on the battlefield and the city with their Iraqi partners.
As is the case in every war, there have been casualties on all sides. Innocent Iraqis caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time, when a coalition missile or bomb obliterated a target; Iraqi military members who died in service to their nation, coalition troops who answered their nation's call, and people in all three categories who were killed during the insurgency. While a full accounting of the death and suffering may never be accurately determined, that suffering and those deaths will not be forgotten.
No democracy is every born bloodlessly. Our own freedom cost the lives of 25,000 Americans during the Revolutionary War. The Civil War ravaged our land and cost another 646,000 American lives, World War I and II cost more than 1.3 million American lives.
While we now know that the threat to the U.S. from Iraq was effectively non-existent, 4,300 American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines have given their lives in what I hope has been the birth of Iraqi freedom after a long dictatorship. The Iraqis, by one estimate, have also lost more the 110,000 people to the war.
The next major step comes in January of 2010, the next major Iraqi election. The Iraqis must provide fully for their own internal security between now and then as the U.S. readies a major draw down in troops in 2010.
If the Iraqis do not seize this opportunity, step forward boldly, and continue the progress made since the U.S. troop surge through to the end of 2010 to secure their new liberty; then they will have rendered the deaths of those 114,300 people and the suffering of tens of thousands of American and Iraqi wounded meaningless.
The political justification offered to the American people for invading Iraq was, as we now know, based on poor or "cherry picked" intelligence and overly rosy views of the occupation to come.
Personally, I believe that the removal of Saddam Hussein, his corrupt and evil sons, and the Bath Party from power in Iraq provided an opportunity for a democratic process to take root; rather than continue to permit the perpetuation of a depraved dictator's rule and the brutalization and exploitation of 31.2 million people and their national resources. Women in Baghdad need no more fear Saddam's son's choosing one or more of them off the street for rape and perhaps death. Saddam, his family and his political party will no longer plunder his nation's resources for personal profit and aggrandizement.
The conquering of Iraq (the actual War) was won quickly and decisively. The occupation of Iraq was mismanaged in same haphazard manner our own government usually operates here at home. Decisions were made by senior leaders with apparently incomplete facts; or worse yet, with an American-ized view of the situation, not understanding the culture of the nation we just invaded. One such example was the complete disbanding of the Iraqi Army. Instead of removing only the senior army leadership loyal to Saddam, or excising specific divisions like the Republican Guard who were intensely loyal to him, leaving us a corps of Iraqis willing to protect their country in cooperation with their liberators; we created an instant pool of unemployed young men, disgraced by summary discharge, unable to feed their families. They became a perfect group of willing recruits for the insurgent leaders willing to pay them, or who told the more anti-western leaning among them that the western "crusaders" had returned and they must defend the Arab world against them.
We all know our poor effort at nation building suffered greatly in the initial years, as the insurgency gathered momentum and spiraled nearly out of control; then improved as coalition forces learned to respect Iraqi and Islamic cultural norms and adapt their occupation and counter-insurgency efforts to the objective realities on the ground. I laud our troops and their commanders for their courage, fortitude, and cunning in adapting and overcoming on the battlefield and the city with their Iraqi partners.
As is the case in every war, there have been casualties on all sides. Innocent Iraqis caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time, when a coalition missile or bomb obliterated a target; Iraqi military members who died in service to their nation, coalition troops who answered their nation's call, and people in all three categories who were killed during the insurgency. While a full accounting of the death and suffering may never be accurately determined, that suffering and those deaths will not be forgotten.
No democracy is every born bloodlessly. Our own freedom cost the lives of 25,000 Americans during the Revolutionary War. The Civil War ravaged our land and cost another 646,000 American lives, World War I and II cost more than 1.3 million American lives.
While we now know that the threat to the U.S. from Iraq was effectively non-existent, 4,300 American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines have given their lives in what I hope has been the birth of Iraqi freedom after a long dictatorship. The Iraqis, by one estimate, have also lost more the 110,000 people to the war.
The next major step comes in January of 2010, the next major Iraqi election. The Iraqis must provide fully for their own internal security between now and then as the U.S. readies a major draw down in troops in 2010.
If the Iraqis do not seize this opportunity, step forward boldly, and continue the progress made since the U.S. troop surge through to the end of 2010 to secure their new liberty; then they will have rendered the deaths of those 114,300 people and the suffering of tens of thousands of American and Iraqi wounded meaningless.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Is Disclosing Classified Information a Crime?
Fox News reported today that Senator Dianne Feinstein (D - California), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), during a public committee hearing last week, apparently compromised the use of a Pakistani airbase by U.S. Predator drones. The SSCI was questioning the new Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair about the threat assessment he had just delivered to the committee. The Fox News article quoted her as follows:
" 'Mr. Holbrooke, in Pakistan, ran into considerable concern about the use of the Predator strikes in the FATA area of Pakistan," Feinstein said to Blair, referring to Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. "And yet, as I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base.' "
The fact that Predators were flying from a Pakistani airbase had apparently been determined to be a classified fact by the Department of Defense and presumably by both President Bush's and President Obama's administrations. As a member of the SSCI, Senator Feinstein, along with members of her professional staff, would have been required to sign non-disclosure agreements formally acknowledging that she was obligated to protect classified national security information and ensure it was not improperly disclosed to unauthorized individuals.
Had a professional member of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), or Intelligence Community (IC) had publicized or provided to a member of the news media this fact, they would likely have been guilty of violating U.S. Code, Title 18, Part I, Chapter 37, Section 793, paragraph D of U.S. law.
Assuming the professional member of the DoD or U.S. IC had been identified and prosecuted, the penalty under the law, as identified in 18 USC, Part I, Chapter 37, Section 793 is a fine and/or ten years imprisonment. The individual would also have had his or her security clearance rescinded immediately, and have likely had been placed on administrative leave.
If, in fact, the presence of the Predator airbase inside Pakistan was a classified fact, and that Senator Feinstein was informed that this information was classified; you would expect that she would be prosecuted for this violation of law.
I would I sincerely hope that the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and the FBI Field Office, would conduct an investigation into this disclosure. However, I'm quite sure that as a sitting U.S. Senator, she will be given far more latitude for her verbal faux pas, the internal embarrassment an admittedly imperfect ally must now suffer, and her potential violation of U.S. law.
It's a shame that the more common U.S. citizen or career employee of the U.S. government would not likely receive the same treatment.
" 'Mr. Holbrooke, in Pakistan, ran into considerable concern about the use of the Predator strikes in the FATA area of Pakistan," Feinstein said to Blair, referring to Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. "And yet, as I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base.' "
The fact that Predators were flying from a Pakistani airbase had apparently been determined to be a classified fact by the Department of Defense and presumably by both President Bush's and President Obama's administrations. As a member of the SSCI, Senator Feinstein, along with members of her professional staff, would have been required to sign non-disclosure agreements formally acknowledging that she was obligated to protect classified national security information and ensure it was not improperly disclosed to unauthorized individuals.
Had a professional member of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), or Intelligence Community (IC) had publicized or provided to a member of the news media this fact, they would likely have been guilty of violating U.S. Code, Title 18, Part I, Chapter 37, Section 793, paragraph D of U.S. law.
Assuming the professional member of the DoD or U.S. IC had been identified and prosecuted, the penalty under the law, as identified in 18 USC, Part I, Chapter 37, Section 793 is a fine and/or ten years imprisonment. The individual would also have had his or her security clearance rescinded immediately, and have likely had been placed on administrative leave.
If, in fact, the presence of the Predator airbase inside Pakistan was a classified fact, and that Senator Feinstein was informed that this information was classified; you would expect that she would be prosecuted for this violation of law.
I would I sincerely hope that the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and the FBI Field Office, would conduct an investigation into this disclosure. However, I'm quite sure that as a sitting U.S. Senator, she will be given far more latitude for her verbal faux pas, the internal embarrassment an admittedly imperfect ally must now suffer, and her potential violation of U.S. law.
It's a shame that the more common U.S. citizen or career employee of the U.S. government would not likely receive the same treatment.
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