The President’s report on Flight 253

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President Obama has spoken of the intelligence failures uncovered by the White House inquiry into the attempted Christmas Day airliner bombing. He said the government had the relevant information – scattered around the system, as he put it – to possibly prevent the attack, but failure to follow up on the information, coupled with a failure of analysis, had left the US exposed. Anchor Jeb Sharp talks with The World’s Matthew Bell about the President’s speech.

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp.  This is the World.  President Obama said today the government has to do a better job of connecting the dots when it comes terrorism threats.  And he said the nation’s terrorism watch lists need to be strengthened.  The President spoke today at the White House, at the end of the urgent review he ordered in the failed airline bombing on Christmas Day.  The World’s Matthew Bell has been following the story.  He’s here in the studio with me now. . Matthew, it didn’t seem as if there was a whole lot new in the statement, and yet it contained a powerful message.

MATTHEW BELL:  That’s right.  In terms of the plot, we’ve known so much, so many fine details, for days now, about how this thing seems to have played out.  The most important part of the speech, and the part that really struck me came at the end, and it’s when the President appeared to address criticisms from the right, from conservatives who’ve said that this President doesn’t seem to be taking the issues of terrorism and talking about being at war so straightforwardly.  So here’s what he had to say.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  We are at war.  We are at war against al Qaeda, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people and that is plotting to strike us again.  And we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.  And we’ve made progress.  Al Qaeda’s leadership has hunkered down.  We have worked closely with partners, including Yemen, to inflict major blows against al Qaeda leaders, and we have disrupted plots at home and abroad and saved American lives.

BELL:  So what I’m hearing there is the President trying to take control of this issue and say, “Look I’m at the helm.  This is the bottom line.”

SHARP:  What did he actually say about the investigation and the problems?

BELL:  He laid out a few details and obviously there are going to be more in that report that was put up on the White House website today.  I’ll break down a couple of them.  He said intelligence leads have to be followed up on.  For example, when the Detroit bombing suspect’s family talked to US officials in Africa, said that he’d been radicalized, that appears to have been dropped at some point.  He talked about strengthening the analytical process in the intelligence world.  He talked about strengthening the criteria to add people’s names to watch lists.  When you look at details like chatter evidently coming out of Yemen, that there was a Nigerian operative tied to al Qaeda, involved in some operation.  And then you look at some of the other information that was out there about this guy, you wonder, why wasn’t his name put on this no-fly list?  Well, that’s going to be addressed evidently.  The President said changes have been made, but there are more, and this is an evolutionary process.

SHARP:  And the President has made it abundantly clear for days now, and again, in this statement, that he is really unhappy about what happened.  What did he have to say about accountability?

BELL:  That was another theme in this statement.  He basically seemed to be trying to say to me, “The buck stops here.  I’m the one ultimately responsible and my people understand that they are responsible, and I’m holding them responsible for this issue.”  The report, as he flagged earlier, this was about a screw up.  This was about an intelligence screw up.  Here’s a little bit more of what the President had to say about what went wrong.

OBAMA:  The US government had the information scattered throughout the system to potentially uncover this plot and disrupt the attack.  Rather than a failure to collect or share intelligence, this was a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already have.

BELL:  So there you have it.  This is the President and the administration that came into office saying, “Look, we are going to be transparent.  We’re going to lay everything out.”  And I think that’s part of what you’re hearing right now.

SHARP:  This comes at a pretty interesting moment.  We’re one year into the presidency. The President seemed to want to underline this whole incident today and move beyond it.  What’s ahead, Matthew Bell?

BELL:  It’s interesting, isn’t it, that yeah, he’d like to move beyond this particular plot.  But when you start looking at the plot and all the details, it’s this thread that you kind of pull, and there’s so many connections here, right?  There’s the  Yemen connection.  There are huge questions about what is US policy toward Yemen and this group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula there?  What about Afghanistan?  What about US policy toward the Muslim world?  These are all huge national security priorities that are connected for the Obama administration and for this President.

SHARP:  The World’s Matthew Bell, thank you so much.

BELL:  You’re welcome.

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