Post’s Stein Thinks National Counterterrorism Center Director Should Resign

I didn’t get a substantive response from the National Counterterrorism Center or its director, Michael Leiter, to yesterday’s Senate report singling it out for failure in the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab case. Instead, I got pointed to Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair’s Wheatena-flavored reply. That might reflect the More…

Intel Chief Issues Tepid Reaction to Senate’s Abdulmutallab Report

It’s so dry it borders on passive-aggressive. “Immediately following the attempted attack, Director Blair initiated reviews to identify [intelligence community]-wide shortcomings and potential solutions,” reads a statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, responding to this afternoon’s declassified Senate report on systemic intelligence failures More…

Senate Intel Committee Blasts National Counterterrorism Center on Abdulmutallab

A long-awaited report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into the failed bombing attempt aboard Northwest Flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab essentially finds that the nation’s premier center for terrorism intelligence didn’t do its job ahead of the Christmastime danger.

“Prior to 12/25,” reads the report, spearheaded by More…

Feinstein, Bond: No Definitive Evidence Yet Tying Pakistani Taliban to Times Square Bomber

Following a classified briefing on the attempted car-bombing of Times Square for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the panel’s leadership said there was not yet definitive evidence tying the Pakistani Taliban to the failed terrorist attack believed to be perpetrated by naturalized U.S. citizen Faisal Shahzad.

But committee chairwoman More…

Feinstein, Bond & the Blair Imbroglio

Following on Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair’s star-crossed testimony in the Senate yesterday about Northwest Airlines Flight 253 — which the GOP leadership is using as a political cudgel against the Obama administration — the Senate intelligence committee heard from Blair and his intelligence colleagues in a More…

Leiter Clarifies Watchlisting Policy Standards

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) wants to know more about the watchlisting standards that Michael Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said were crucial to the failure to prevent Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding Northwest Flight 253.

It “really does come down to what the analytic judgment was at More…

Blair Won’t Say Whether Abdulmutallab Should Be Tried in Civilian Court

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who thinks trying Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in civilian court is a “terrible, terrible mistake,” takes Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair’s earlier statements about the role of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Unit a step further. Does the director of national intelligence believe the More…

Yemen: Drawing U.S. Radicals, Too?

From the Washington Post:

An investigative report scheduled for release Wednesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee cites U.S. concern over as many as three dozen American citizens who converted to Islam in prison and moved to Yemen after their release in the past year. Some of them have

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Now This Looks Like an Intelligence Failure

Previous reporting has all indicated to me that the big systemic failure in the Northwest Airlines Flight 253 near-attack concerned the standards for moving someone onto specific terrorism lists like the no-fly list. President Obama has said the watchlisting standards are going to change, but he also said More…

Analysts Question Al-Qaeda Efforts at Counterterrorism Center

The National Counterterrorism Center is in for a brutal week. Its director, Michael Leiter, faces a battery of Capitol Hill hearings next week on what President Obama has described as a systemic intelligence failure ahead of the failed terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253. But if lawmakers look beyond More…