Government Intelligence, Part 1 - Incompetent and Anti-Freedom

For the next two days we will look at some recent revelations about Federal government intelligence procedures and behavior, none of which seem to be competent or in support of liberty and freedom. Today we will revisit the case of Nigerian Umar Faroulk Abdulmutallab who tried to explode a bomb hidden in his underwear on December 25th on an airliner coming into to Detroit for a landing. According to a report in the January 29, 2010 issue of The Week magazine (http://www.theweek.com/) that summarized a New York Times Article, there were any number of screw ups by the entire Federal government intelligence apparatus:

• The Times reported that U.S. intelligence sources learned in November, from al Qaida communications in Yemen, that someone named "Umar Farouk" had volunteered for a mission. The volunteer's name looks mighty close to Mr. Abdulmutallab's name, doesn't it?
• Later communications intercepts pointed to a December 25th mission date.
• Some of these communications talked about "ways to move people to the West."
• Other communications referred to an unidentified militant who just happened to be Nigerian. Mr. Abdulmutallab is Nigerian.
• Counter terrorism officials assumed, incorrectly it turns out, that the terrorists in Yemen were incapable of getting any terrorism plot to the U.S., an assumption that proved to be so wrong since the bomb malfunctioned over the middle part of the United States. As a result of this assumption and despite the amount of data they had gathered, these officials did not forward any of this information to other intelligence authorities.

Combine this information with other information that is available regarding the plot:

• Abdulmutallab's father told the U.S. Embassy in October that his son might be a threat.
• Abdulmutallab was known to have gone to Yemen, a known terrorist haven.
• Abdulmutallab had purchased a one way ticket, with cash, and was not traveling with any luggage, three well established terrorist indicators.
• The British were high suspicious of him also, given his interactions with certain characters thought to be linked to terrorist operations.

Thus, the U.S. intelligence community knew from his father that Abdulmutallab might be dangerous, they knew someone with the same first two names had volunteered for a mission and that the volunteer was also Nigerian, they knew that terror cells in Yemen were trying to infiltrate the West, they knew something was going to happen on December 25th, and Abdulmutallab displayed many of the characteristics of a terrorist in the way he was ticketed and traveling. Looks like they knew at least some aspects of the who, the what, the where , the when and the why and were only missing the how. Given five of the six puzzle parts (who, what, where, when, and why), they still could not stop him from igniting a device that fortunately malfunctioned.

To add insult to injury, there are now reports that the best FBI interrogators were not involved in the debriefing of Abdulmutallab immediately after the incident. Although he talked freely for several hours after the incident, he immediately clammed up when read his Miranda rights before the most highly trained interrogators had a chance at him, possibly resulting in not getting all of the intelligence information out of him that they could.

For this type of horrific behavior, we pay tens of billions of dollars a year. In the private sector, if this kind of non-performance and waste had happened, many high level and low level employees would already be unemployed. However, this is government work where competence and performance do not appear to be mandatory. How do you not do your job with all of the information that was available and how to you not utilize your best resource in a case as important as this? Someone should be fired for this disgrace. This was not intelligence, it was utter stupidity and failure. And, according to Step 34 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," those firings should extend to those Senators and Congressman who sit on the Congressional committees responsible for this part of our intelligence community.

Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.