bobbyw24
12-29-2009, 06:26 PM
HONOLULU –In a marked change of tone from his previous comments on the incident, President Barack Obama said Tuesday that a “systemic failure” led to the unsuccessful terrorist attack aboard a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day and promised to hold accountable those responsible for it.
“When our government has information on a known extremist and that information is not shared and acted on as it should have been, so that this extremist boards a plane with dangerous explosives that could cost nearly 300 lives, a systemic failure has occurred,” Obama said, “and I consider that unacceptable.”
Responding to reports that the father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian man accused of trying to ignite explosives on a Northwest Airlines flight, had contacted the U.S. Embassy to warn officials about his son’s extremist views, Obama for the first time acknowledged that there had been a breakdown in U.S. intelligence procedures and that Abdulmutallab’s attempt to blow up the passenger jet could have been avoided. Obama blamed the breakdown on a post-Sept. 11 intelligence gathering system that “is not sufficiently up to date.”
“It now appears that weeks ago this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community but was not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect’s name on a no-fly list,” Obama said. “There appears to be other deficiencies as well.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/31044.html#ixzz0b7wwrCX6
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/31044.html
“When our government has information on a known extremist and that information is not shared and acted on as it should have been, so that this extremist boards a plane with dangerous explosives that could cost nearly 300 lives, a systemic failure has occurred,” Obama said, “and I consider that unacceptable.”
Responding to reports that the father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian man accused of trying to ignite explosives on a Northwest Airlines flight, had contacted the U.S. Embassy to warn officials about his son’s extremist views, Obama for the first time acknowledged that there had been a breakdown in U.S. intelligence procedures and that Abdulmutallab’s attempt to blow up the passenger jet could have been avoided. Obama blamed the breakdown on a post-Sept. 11 intelligence gathering system that “is not sufficiently up to date.”
“It now appears that weeks ago this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community but was not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect’s name on a no-fly list,” Obama said. “There appears to be other deficiencies as well.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/31044.html#ixzz0b7wwrCX6
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/31044.html