Failure to Connect Dots Recalls 9/11 Shortfalls

WASHINGTON (Dec. 31) -- The headlines were sickeningly familiar.

"Spy Agencies Failed to Collate Clues on Terror," concluded The New York Times.

"U.S. Intel Lapses Helped Abdulmutallab," CBS News reported on the Nigerian suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

"What the CIA Did and Didn't Know About Alleged Underpants Bomber" was the post on Newsweek's Declassified blog.

President Barack Obama received a report today on the intelligence failures that let the alleged underpants bomber board a U.S.-bound airplane on Christmas Day. But details have already emerged about tantalizing clues that were never put together or somehow got lost in the bureaucracy.

The National Security Agency (NSA), in charge of electronic eavesdropping, the CIA and the State Department have all been called on the carpet to explain their part in letting the Nigerian slip through. The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), established in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to collect, collate and analyze intelligence from the others and beyond, failed in its central mission: connecting the dots. And all have begun to point fingers at one another.

According to published reports, including The New York Times, there may be plenty of blame to go around. Consider this timeline of events:

• May: The British government denies Abdulmutallab's request to renew a student visa and puts him on a watch list. The British apparently never tell U.S. officials.

• Early August: The NSA listens in on communications by al-Qaida leaders in Yemen as they discuss a terror plot to be carried out by a Nigerian man. The electronic intercepts were sent to the NCTC in Washington, but analysts there did not link them to other intelligence. The NSA also intercepted calls sometime in the fall between Abdulmutallab and Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born imam also linked to the Muslim soldier accused in November's Fort Hood shooting rampage.

• Mid-November: Abdulmutallab's father appeals to Nigerian and U.S. officials to help find his son. The father is alarmed by text messages sent by his son, whom he fears has joined up with Islamic extremists. The prominent former banker meets with officials in the American Embassy, including operatives from the CIA. A terrorism warning, known as a "Visas Viper," is sent to the NCTC. It refers to the father's concerns that his son has come under the influence of religious extremists but does not mention a specific planned attack. The same month, the CIA puts together a dossier on Abdulmutallab that includes his plans to study Islamic law in Yemen but keeps the details within the agency.

• Nov. 22: The NCTC puts the Nigerian into a database of 550,000 people suspected of – but not definitively tied to – terrorism. Analysts conclude they don't have enough information to put him on more exclusive watch lists that would flag him at airport security checkpoints.

• Dec. 16: A round-trip plane ticket is purchased for Abdulmutallab in Ghana by a person paying in cash.

• Christmas Day: The suspect checks in for his trans-Atlantic flight in Amsterdam but doesn't check any bags. An automatic electronic notice that may have included the telltale details about his use of cash and lack of luggage goes out to Homeland Security officials. But, again, nobody seemed to notice.

Obama this week laid the blame on a "mix of human and systemic failures" and ordered a full accounting by today. But his withering assessment before all the facts were in indicated the extent of the failure is deep and widespread.

"Somebody made a mistake and thought the stuff was not important and it didn't need to be flagged," said Arthur Hulnick, a former CIA agent and author of "Keeping Us Safe: Secret Intelligence and Homeland Security." "Human error is always the problem in these sorts of cases."

The same sorts of failures in sharing information were cited in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Back then, intelligence agencies were unable to connect the dots between disparate clues that alone didn't seem to add up to much. But when taken together – if only in hindsight – it was clear they had the makings of a huge and sophisticated terrorist plot.

"It looks like a rerun of the movie. Clearly the same problems," said Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission. "We had all kinds of bits and pieces floating around about the hijackers that we didn't put together. This looks similar. There was a lot of important information floating around about this fellow and not put together."

While one commission member told Sphere that the panel's recommendations were ignored, Hamilton said the government has been "very slow" to put them into action. Still, the central recommendations – to create the NCTC and a new director of national intelligence position to oversee and coordinate the CIA and 15 other intelligence-gathering agencies – were implemented. Yet neither prevented the attempted attack on the Northwest Airlines flight.

"We're much better off then we were prior to 9/11," Hamilton said, "but this Detroit incident shows we've got a long way to go."

Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff defended "the basic structure and architecture" established after 9/11 but said intelligence agents are only human.

"People do have to evaluate and consider huge amounts of data," he said. "The challenge is separating the wheat from the chaff."

Chertoff also said that a new sense of urgency is needed more than eight years after the 9/11 attacks. "There has to be a mandate from the highest levels about the need to act with speed and efficiency when these threats come in," he said. "The president is going to want to look at whether the focus has become a little dissipated."

Hamilton doubts the "almost-disaster" on Christmas Day will warrant a full-blown commission like the one that dissected 9/11. "The finger-pointing is going to be part of the political process," he said. "Everyone is scrambling to protect themselves, and the politicians will use it to their purposes."

Congress plans hearings next month. Adjustments are likely to be made. But while "everybody wants to roll heads," Hamilton said, "the real focus ought to be on correcting the flaws."

And it always will.

"Perfection is probably not achievable," Hamilton said. "The data management problem here is so horrendous, we're going to have to expect slip-ups. It's misleading to think we can have an absolutely flawless system. We cannot."