President Obama Addresses Security Report
Tags: Al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Government, National security, President of the United States, Terrorism
The failed Christmas day bombing of Northwestern flight 253 and the subsequent revelations that intelligence agencies had all of the information they needed to prevent Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab form boarding the plane in the first place has been weighing heavily on the President and the Intelligence community. Today, the President addressed a new security report at 4:30 PM Eastern, which National Security Advisor James Jones described as shocking.
President Obama spoke on Tuesday after meeting with all of the heads of the nation's intelligence agencies and said that there was a systemic failure to analyze and connect fragmented information amongst the intelligence and security communities.
Today the President laid out the new steps the administration will be taking to address the failures of the intelligence and security community in the wake of the foiled Christmas day bomber. However, first he detailed three points about the situation saying that intelligence agencies already knew a great deal about al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but that the intelligence community did not follow up on leads about teh organization. Second, he reiterated what he described as a failure to connect the dots by the various agencies, and lastly the failure to connect the dots led the watch list system to fail to prevent the Christmas day bomber from being added to the no fly list.
To address the findings of the report commissioned by the President himself, he listed 4 items. The first was that in the future, Homeland security head Janet Napolitano would be assigning clear lines of responsibility for each and every lead that is divined by the intelligence community. Second, he has ordered each department and agency to streamline their analysis process so that the huge amount of information collected does not go unread and assessed. Third, he ordered immediate changes to the criteria used to add people to the no fly list. And lastly, he ordered each department and agency to distribute intelligence reports more rapidly across organizations.
The President made it clear that they are on top of the situation, but that there was no silver bullet for the security of the United States. He said that the investigation has not revealed any one person responsible, but rather a systemic problem across agencies and added what seemed to a direct retort to recent criticism of his handling of terrorist threats.
Watch the Presidents remarks below:
Watch White House briefing on attempted Christmas day attack:
President Obama spoke on Tuesday after meeting with all of the heads of the nation's intelligence agencies and said that there was a systemic failure to analyze and connect fragmented information amongst the intelligence and security communities.
Today the President laid out the new steps the administration will be taking to address the failures of the intelligence and security community in the wake of the foiled Christmas day bomber. However, first he detailed three points about the situation saying that intelligence agencies already knew a great deal about al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but that the intelligence community did not follow up on leads about teh organization. Second, he reiterated what he described as a failure to connect the dots by the various agencies, and lastly the failure to connect the dots led the watch list system to fail to prevent the Christmas day bomber from being added to the no fly list.
To address the findings of the report commissioned by the President himself, he listed 4 items. The first was that in the future, Homeland security head Janet Napolitano would be assigning clear lines of responsibility for each and every lead that is divined by the intelligence community. Second, he has ordered each department and agency to streamline their analysis process so that the huge amount of information collected does not go unread and assessed. Third, he ordered immediate changes to the criteria used to add people to the no fly list. And lastly, he ordered each department and agency to distribute intelligence reports more rapidly across organizations.
The President made it clear that they are on top of the situation, but that there was no silver bullet for the security of the United States. He said that the investigation has not revealed any one person responsible, but rather a systemic problem across agencies and added what seemed to a direct retort to recent criticism of his handling of terrorist threats.
Watch the Presidents remarks below:
Watch White House briefing on attempted Christmas day attack:
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