Who Failed the System in the Christmas Day Attack? NCTC? FBI?

by Maggie at Maggie's Notebook

Who failed the system in the Christmas Day attack? Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was already known as "The Nigerian" and already suspected of meeting with "terrorist elements" in Yemen at the time of his failed bombing attempt of NW Flight 253. By August 2009, the CIA knew about "The Nigerian." The CIA did not know "The Nigerian's" name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. And they did not put the two together when the father went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and met with a CIA agent in November 2009. Who was responsible for connecting the dots? From documents found online, it appears the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) is responsible for gathering and disseminating information to the No-Fly List and the simply failed.

Michael Leiter with President Obama

The CIA forwarded the information to the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). The connection was still not made. What does the NCTC do? Here are two pull-out quotes, more below:

...the Director of NCTC is responsible for providing strategic CT plans and for effectively integrating CT intelligence and operations across agency boundaries, both inside and outside the US.  

...and:

The primary source for all information relating to international terrorist identities in the TSDB is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) ...The NCTC, “serve[s] as the primary organization in the United States Government for analyzing and integrating all intelligence possessed or acquired by the United States Government pertaining to terrorism and counterterrorism,...

As we learned during the 9-11 Commission hearings, Jaime Gorlick's "Wall of Separation," specifically built to keep the intelligence community from sharing information, enabled the 9-11 bombers. How high and at what depth is today's Wall of Separation? The Wall still stands. Here is a statement from the Vice-Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton, about the Christmas Day bombing:

"We must get better at collecting these bits of information, putting them together at a central point, analyzing them and then acting," said Lee Hamilton, the vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission. 

"We're sharing information better than we did prior to 9/11, but this incident surely illustrates we've got a long ways to go," Hamilton said

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said after the meeting with the father in November, they worked with the U.S. Embassy to get Abdulmutallab's name into the "government's terrorist database:"

We also forwarded key biographical information about him to the National Counterterrorism Center. This agency, like others in our government, is reviewing all data to which it had access - not just what we ourselves may have collected - to determine if more could have been done to stop Abdulmutallab."

Yet, Abdulmutallab's name didn't make it to the No-Fly List. Clearly, someone was not paying attention. Michael E. Leiter's National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) did...what?...nothing? Leiter is the Director of NCTC and the following are a few comments from his testimony to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in September 2009:

Despite our counterterrorism (CT) progress, al-Qa‘ida and its affiliates and allies remain resilient and adaptive enemies intent on attacking US and Western interests—with al-Qa‘ida’s core in Pakistan representing the most dangerous component of the larger al-Qa‘ida network.  We assess that this core is actively engaged in operational plotting and continues recruiting, training, and transporting operatives, to include individuals from Western Europe and North America. ...

The NCTC evolved from legislation creating "a civilian-led unified joint command" for counterterrorism. Is it nothing more than another entity which decided to do nothing?

For the first time, an organization outside the Executive Office of the President was given the responsibility for government-wide coordination of planning and integration of department and agency actions involving “all elements of national power,” including “diplomatic, financial, military, intelligence, Homeland security, and law enforcement activities within and among agencies.”

Pursuant to this authority, the Director of NCTC is responsible for providing strategic CT plans and for effectively integrating CT intelligence and operations across agency boundaries, both inside and outside the US. 

Our CIA and FBI works under a President, a State Department and a Homeland Security Secretary that believes there is no war on terror, believes there are no foreign enemy combatants and believes there is no terrorism. Who places a name on the "No-Fly" list, or the "selectee" list, which alerts airline officials of the need for further, and deeper, examination of the person? Is it the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), the CIA, the State Department, Homeland Security, or all of the above? Since "the government" administers the list, is the civilian NCTC involved at all? Apparently so, and apparently the NCTC is directly responsible for the list. The following is from a declassified Homeland Security document dated July 2009, page 9:

The primary source for all information relating to international terrorist identities in the TSDB is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) ...The NCTC, “serve[s] as the primary organization in the United States Government for analyzing and integrating all intelligence possessed or acquired by the United States Government pertaining to terrorism and counterterrorism, excepting intelligence pertaining exclusively to domestic terrorists and domestic counterterrorism.”...

This information is provided to the NCTC through nominations of individuals made by federal agencies, often with the explicit intent for the record to then be exported to the TSDB [Terrorism Screening Datebase] for watch-listing.

So how many martini lunches and conferences to exotic locations were expensed by the NCTC?

President Obama referred to the attack on NW Flight 253 as an "alleged" attack. He wasn't specifically talking about the would-be-bomber - he was talking about the attack itself. It is possible to misidentify the bomber and refer to him as allegedly "Abdulmutallab," but, please, not the attack itself. He characterized the "alleged" attack as the work of an isolated extremist, after al-Qaeda in the Saudia Arabian peninsula had already taken credit for Abdulmutallab's actions - and yet he was already known as "The Nigerian," not "a Nigerian," but specifically "The Nigerian." His Director of National Counterterrorism knew Abdulmutallab's name, and so knew that he was connected to Yemen - yet refererred to him as an "isolated extremist." Knowing all this, at no time did he mention "jihad," "Islam," "Muslims,"  or radicals."

In Obama' second statement about the attack, the President said there were failures with our intelligence community in piecing the known information together, and then distributing that information. He said it was an unacceptable "systemic failure."  Abdulmutallab allegedly paid cash for his ticket and had no luggage; the CIA and the NCTC knew about him. At the simplest level, an airline accepted his cash, and checked no luggage, yet he was not tagged for a full pat down. Still yet, the President has not said the words "jihad," "radical Islam," or "Muslim."

If you are interested in additional information on Michael Leiter and the NCTC, the following are snippets from their "implementation plan:"

[Four Pillars]
1) protect and defend against terrorists;

2) attack their capacity to operate;

3) work diligently to undermine the spread of violent extremism and retard radicalization around the world; and

4) prevent terrorists from utilizing WMD. ...

On the domestic front, NCTC enables, informs and supports federal, state and local government efforts to engage with communities across our country.  Central to this effort is NCTC’s leadership of an interagency group to coordinate engagement projects and activities conducted by the FBI, DHS, State, Justice, Treasury and others.  In particular, NCTC has worked diligently through this group with its partner agencies to enhance the level of engagement between the US.

According to The NCTC, they are partners with the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Department of State, The Department of the Treasury, the departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, and Agriculture, as well as the U.S. Capitol Police, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency - and "foreign partners."

The Center provides a unique environment to optimize the USG's collective knowledge and formidable capabilities to identify and counter the terrorist threat to the nation.

What happened to the "formidable capabilities" of the NCTC in the Christmas Day attack?
Read NCTC Transcript   View Michael Leiter Video P.S. just listening to Catherine Herridge on FOXNews and the NCTC is spinning at warp speed.

CIA and Dick Cheney Assassinations

by Maggie at Maggie's Notebook

Democrats in Congress are outraged that the Pentagon and CIA were developing a plan to "assassinate" al Qaeda in Iraq. The assassination teams would be CIA personnel, and not U.S. Military. Especially heinous to Congress is that the Pentagon did not brief appropriate Congressional members about the incomplete and unimplemented plan.

CIA

Americans are no longer shocked to hear that we have not always targeted all al Qaeda members, including leaders...especially leaders...since the war began after 9-11. We are no longer shocked at much we hear, because doing what makes no sense is exactly what Congress always does. Nevertheless, while not shocked, we are surprised, and along with our surprise comes puzzlement. Why would we need a secret program, even assuming Congress is briefed, to kill top al-Qaeda members?

Targeted killing of terrorists is prohibited by presidential orders banning assassinations that date back to the Ford administration. But the president can waive that order, said Vicki Divoll, a former CIA counsel, because there is no specific federal law that bans the practice.

There's also no legal difference, she said, between killing al Qaeda targets with a hit team or with an unmanned drone, because the "intent to kill a targeted person" defines an assassination.

The "air strikes" are what made this never-implemented plan different. According to officials, it was okay to target and kill al Qadea with air strikes, but not okay to target and kill al Qaeda "at close range," - what might include hand-to-hand combat. Killing "at close range" might risk "civilian casualties." For now, the CIA will have to be satisfied with Predator Drones - except that Congress can't keep it's mouth shut about them either. While Pakistan recently complained about Predator drones taking off and landing inside their borders, officials assured Pakistan that only surveillance drones are used inside the country, not the Predator which is capable of launching missiles.

Privately, though, Pakistani officials doubt that claim, especially after the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Diane Feinstein, (D-CA), suggested 10 days ago that the CIA Predator drones do indeed use Pakistani airfields and not necessarily Afghan airfields, as most assume.

According to an anonymous source at the CIA, Dick Cheney directed the agency not to inform Congress of the specifics of the secret program.

Panetta told the committees there was no indication that there was anything illegal or inappropriate about the effort itself, the official said.

CIA directors since 2001 agreed with Cheney's decision not to inform Congress because the highly classified operation, described as "sporadic" and "embryonic," never managed to turn up the intelligence needed to carry out a kill and was not considered a covert operation, according to a former intelligence official. That official also was not authorized to discuss the program and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Congress has a right to know everything the CIA does, but the president can by law limit those told about covert operations to just the top four members of the House and Senate from the two parties and the senior members of the intelligence committees. Democrats on the House intelligence committee are pushing for a legal provision that would require the president to brief both committees in their entirety more often, but the White House has threatened to veto the move.

DefenseTech.org reminds us of Sandi Berger letting Osama bin Laden escape in Afghanistan, rather than chance civilian casualties: Doesn't this sort of smack of Sandi Berger-esque national security policy?

We know from the 9-11 commission report that Berger got cold feet when he had bin Laden in his sights for a proxy raid in Afghanistan because he was afraid of collateral damage and blowback. Now some of the same national security policy minds are back in the driver's seat so we can cancel a program to kill bad guys using CIA assets.

Here is the directive for how and when the CIA program would have been implemented:

Had it become fully developed, the CIA's aborted plan would have been a covert-action program. At the outset, the potential operation wouldn't have been limited to particular countries. The use of hit teams was in accordance with the authority granted by the 2001 order, said a former national-security official familiar with it.

In the most recent iteration of the project, top CIA leaders instructed officers involved to narrow its focus and report the plans to Congress if they reached a critical point where moving forward would involve activities that, if discovered, could embarrass the U.S., according to a former senior intelligence official.

Among all the punditry on this subject, we've heard little to nothing about the distinction between targeting for air strikes or targeting for "close contact," but surprisingly to me, there is a U.S policy prohibiting the "assassination" of anyone, not just heads of State!

Targeted killing of terrorists is prohibited by presidential orders banning assassinations that date back to the Ford administration. But the president can waive that order, said Vicki Divoll, a former CIA counsel, because there is no specific federal law that bans the practice.

There's also no legal difference, she said, between killing al Qaeda targets with a hit team or with an unmanned drone, because the "intent to kill a targeted person" defines an assassination.

However, that is not the end of the story. The rest of the story involves the Joint special Operations Command (JSOC). The JSOC is a somewhat secret branch of the U.S. Special Operations Command. The Special Operations Command is made-up of "special mission units." Among these units are the Delta Force and Seal Team Six. During the Iraq War other elite groups were known as "Grey Fox," "Capacity Gear" and "Titrant Ranger."

Pulitzer Prize winning investigating "journalist," Sy Hersh has charged that during the Bush-Cheney years the JSOC reported directly to Dick Cheney and no one else. He termed it an "executive assassination ring." The New York Times columnist didn't make the accusations in the NYT, but from podiums on college campuses, at the ACLU and public radio. New York Magazine writer Chris Suellentrop calls Hersh "the runaway mouth of America's premier investigative journalist."Bill Roggio writing for the Weekly Standard Blog says the Hersh claims that the JSOC reports to no one, or only to Cheney during the Bush-Cheney years, is false; they report to the Secretary of Defense and also falls under congressional oversight.

From Marc Ambinder:

JSOC units are very active in Iraq and Afghanistan; in those countries, since the U.S. is formally at war, their conduct can't really be analogized to an extra-legal hit squad....What's objectionable, in theory, is that the President can designate anyone as a terrorist and task JSOC with finding and executing them -- even if the person is not living in the war theatre and has never been charged with a crime. In practice, that's what presidents from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton have believed (the following from a 2001 report).

Senior intelligence officials confirm that a secret finding recently signed by President Bush, building on an earlier one by President Clinton, grant the CIA legal authority to conduct assassination operations against individuals designated as terrorists. As a result, the CIA is devising strategy and policy to that end, and is developing assets for assassinations within both the CIA and "uniformed military units," as well as foreign agents in Middle Eastern countries.

The outrage is likely a convenient smoke screen designed to take the focus off of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's accusation that the CIA "lies all the time." Target Dick Cheney's so-called assassination plots and the Dems might think they have a winner. Complain that the CIA targets al Qaeda and the Dems might think they have a winner...but maybe not. Just maybe we expect Congress to support every tactic possible to win these wars.