First, the President has moved to increase the number of air marshals and better intel sharing.
Hundreds of law enforcement officers are being trained as federal air marshals to ramp up security as the Obama administration tries to prevent a repeat of the near-catastrophic attempt to blow up an airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day.
President Barack Obama ordered the U.S. intelligence agencies to do a better job of recognizing serious terror threats and sharing information with those who can disrupt a plot as quickly as possible.
There's no word whether or not he's ordering the intel sharers to actually pay attention...
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The President has wasted no time in getting in front of the cameras to accept responsibility.
Taking a decidedly different tack from his predecessor in the face of a government failure, President Barack Obama on Thursday took the blame for shortcomings that led to a failed Christmas Day bombing plot, saying “the buck stops with me.”
Aides to Obama signaled that he was consciously seeking to be the anti-Bush, airing the administration’s dirty laundry and stepping up to take his share of the responsibility.
“The president also wanted to do something, I think, unusual today,” National Security Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said during a web chat after Obama’s speech. “Not only was this a very quick accounting, not only did the president accept responsibility for it, but the president also wanted to do this as transparently as possible.”
Quick, transparent, willing to take the blame – all things Obama has said President George W. Bush was not.
It was a distillation of everything Obama has criticized Bush for over the years — whether about intelligence in the war in Iraq, about diverting resources away from Afghanistan, about opening a terror prison in Cuba.
And that's fine, so long as he fixes the problems. But if the buck stops with him, and the problems re-occur, it's going to be a short trip to 2012.
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An excerpt from the official statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
We will take a fresh and penetrating look at strengthening both human and technical performance
and do what we have to do in all areas. I have specifically been tasked to oversee and manage work
in four areas:
• Assigning clear lines of responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats, so
they are pursued more aggressively;
• Distributing intelligence reports more quickly and widely, especially those suggesting
specific threats against the U.S.;
• Applying more rigorous standards to analytical tradecraft to improve intelligence integration
and action; and
• Enhancing the criteria for adding individuals to the terrorist watchlist and “no fly” watchlist.
While the December 25 attempt exposed improvement needs and flaws in coordination, it did not
expose weakness in the concepts of intelligence reform or suggest that its progress should be
redirected. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) and the progress of the
past five years will continue to guide our future improvements.
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David Broder asks whether or not this is President Obama's 9-11 moment.
Was Christmas Day 2009 the same kind of wake-up call for Barack Obama that Sept. 11, 2001, had been for George W. Bush?
The near-miss by a passenger flying into Detroit plotting to blow up an American airliner seems to have shocked this president as much as the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon did the last.
Both presidents had had plenty of warnings in the form of prior threats and even incidents. But both were caught off-guard: Bush reading to a classroom of youngsters; Obama on a family vacation in Hawaii.
Bush reacted with anger and a determination to punish the people who wreaked the havoc. Obama was just as mad, but a good portion of his anger was targeted on the members of his own intelligence bureaucracy he said had missed the abundant clues and failed to forestall the attack. Like Bush, he vowed to see that the consequences also fell on the foreign country that gave birth to the plot - Afghanistan eight years ago, Yemen today.
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In the meantime, someone is actually trying to sell a mind-reading device for airport security.
A would-be terrorist tries to board a plane, bent on mass murder. As he walks through a security checkpoint, fidgeting and glancing around, a network of high-tech machines analyzes his body language and reads his mind.
Screeners pull him aside.
Tragedy is averted.
As far-fetched as that sounds, systems that aim to get inside an evildoer's head are among the proposals floated by security experts thinking beyond the X-ray machines and metal detectors used on millions of passengers and bags each year.
This is such a bad, bad idea on so many levels. McCain-Feingold has already criminalized political speech (which is specifically protected in the Constitution), so now we're going to criminalize mere thought? What the hell is the matter with us?
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And it's good to know that the US aren't the only ones to screw up airport security, as a security screening test between Slovakia and Ireland goes horribly wrong after the 'test bomb' isn't recovered before the passenger boards the plane.
Nowadays, even a stray pair of tweezers or a bottle of saline solution can make a journey through airport security an unpleasant experience. So when Irish authorities were alerted on Tuesday that a man had passed through Dublin Airport days earlier carrying high-grade plastic explosives, it's not surprising that a large-scale security alert was triggered. The roads around the 49-year-old electrician's apartment in Dublin were cordoned off, and bomb-disposal experts searched the premises, turning up 3 oz. of the powerful explosive material RDX. The amount was greater than what Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused of carrying on board Detroit-bound Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day.
The man, who had returned to Ireland from his native Slovakia on Jan. 2, was promptly arrested by police and detained for questioning. Good news, right? The Irish authorities could congratulate themselves on foiling a potential terrorist threat, couldn't they? Not quite.
The explosives had in fact been planted in the passenger's bag by security staff at Poprad-Tatry International Airport in northern Slovakia as part of a test of screening procedures. The Slovakian Interior Ministry said on Wednesday that a sniffer dog had discovered the explosives but the officer got called away to another task and forgot to remove the materials from the bag. The electrician then boarded his Danube Wings flight, completely unaware of his hidden cargo. The Slovakian government says the airport authorities then contacted the pilot, who decided the explosives did not pose a safety risk as they were not connected to other necessary bomb components.
By: Brant
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