Patterico's Pontifications

1/8/2010

Intelligence Mistakes

Filed under: Government,Obama — DRJ @ 8:50 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

The buck may stop at President Obama’s desk but the typos just keep coming from the Obama Administration:

“On Thursday, President Obama presented his official White House review in a national address and said, “Ultimately, the buck stops with me.”

Presumably, however, Obama was not responsible for the review’s misstatement of the date on which Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father met with U.S. authorities to warn them of his son’s radicalism, or for Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair’s subsequent misidentification of the flight that Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to bomb.”

If you’re counting, the Administration’s report said Abdulmutallab “boarded Northwest Flight 153 for Detroit” instead of Flight 253. It also said Abdulmutallab’s father met with embassy officers in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 18. The actual date was November 19. A similar error pre-dated the terror attack:

“Prior to the attempted bombing, a misspelling of Abdulmutallab’s name was responsible for the State Department’s initial mistaken belief that he did not hold a valid U.S. visa.”

Mistakes happen and that’s part of the reason for redundant systems. But sometimes the answer is for people to work harder and more carefully at their jobs. It’s time everyone, including government workers, learned that simple fact.

— DRJ

23 Responses to “Intelligence Mistakes”

  1. How can the buck get to him?
    There’s nothing left after all the vig is paid.

    AD - RtR/OS! (946807)

  2. all i know is, once a buck gets to him, you’ll never see it again….

    redc1c4 (fb8750)

  3. Where do I apply for the job of list-checker? I’ve been doing mail merges for years and I always check the list with my eyeballs to find the duplicates and misspellings – i.e. Fred Smiht, or John Jones and John I. Jones, at the same address. I don’t care how many names are on the two lists, a person with an eye for detail could catch that kind of stuff. I certainly would ask for verification if I had Abdulmutallab on one list and Abdulmatulab on the other.

    Teri (0aa1ce)

  4. Painstaking detail, no tolerance for simple errors, and care. That’s obviously what it will take, at the data analysis stage, to protect this country.

    It’s a shame no one will be fired for this. But-for this visa error, apparently the authorities would have known to stop this man. Heads must roll for that. That’s a lot of pressure to put on analysts, and for good reason. The man made it to the point where he triggered his device over the plane’s fuel. Meanwhile, the authorities were saying they would talk to him whenever he landed.

    300 dead is approaching 9/11 levels of tragedy. Because of a spelling error.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  5. the little president man’s radio station says it’s stupid Congress’s fault so in you face

    happyfeet (e9e587)

  6. Don’t worry, Obama will fire people the
    next time.

    And could you please do something about
    the comment box? I am using Firefox 3.5.7
    and the comment box is covered by the
    right hand side gray column.

    Jack (e383ed)

  7. Unfortunately government jobs are rife with those with the attitude that it isn’t their job (duty) to be vigilent (much less extra vigilent. That their paycheck is owed them by virtue of them showing up. What? You going to fire them? Apparently not. At least not until their incompetance and complacency takes more than just a few American lives.

    PatriotRider (1729de)

  8. Did Carter, Clinton or Obama hire you?
    Keep your job.
    Did someone else hire you?
    You failed, you lost your job, it was your fault so no unemployment benefits.

    John Hitchcock (3fd153)

  9. It’s time everyone, including especially government workers, learned that simple fact.

    Fixed.

    Andy (84074b)

  10. Should have been a strike through “including.” I blame the Internet thingy on that one….

    Andy (84074b)

  11. I have a proposed solution to the problem of Islamic terrorism on airline travel.

    Announce that high ranking members of the Obama Administration will replace Air Marshals on random flights. Terrorists will then have no choice but to stop their attacks immediately for fear of hurting their allies and benefactors.

    ropelight (2f9be9)

  12. You’d think precision would be important, especially after 9/12.

    JRM (355c21)

  13. Back in the early years of the Reagan Administration, many of the new high-level appointees, including many in the East Wing, complained that the bureaucracy just didn’t want to change the way they were doing things, demonstrating that infuriating bureaucratic philosophy of “you’re just going to be here for a short time, but I’m going to be here forever”.
    George Will wrote a column (or two) on the subject and postulated that to institute discipline within the bureaucracy, the President should be given the authority to select one bureaucrat each year for summary execution by firing-squad on the lawn of the WH – George has a twisted sense of humor, but it would improve accountability (or not).

    AD - RtR/OS! (946807)

  14. It seems more and more that the ones who we have intrusted our security to can’t tell the difference between “dots” and “fly-specks”.

    AD - RtR/OS! (946807)

  15. > the President should be given the authority to

    The side benefit is that Dems don’t believe in capital punishment, so the only bureaucrats who would be shot are Democrats under GOP admins…

    OBloodyhell (7f9daa)

  16. “Prior to the attempted bombing, a misspelling of Abdulmutallab’s name was responsible for the State Department’s initial mistaken belief that he did not hold a valid U.S. visa.”

    I thought Obama was friends with the Google boys?

    Anyone who has ever used Google Search has run into the “Did you mean —-” search result when misspelling a search query. How hard is it to install that system on the government computers?

    Larry? Sergey? How about one for the team?

    What kind of computers are they using at the State Department — Atari’s?

    Jim (1b68f1)

  17. I don’t care what party they are registered with, someone defintely needs to be shot, especially at the State Dept.

    AD - RtR/OS! (946807)

  18. What kind of computers are they using at the State Department — Atari’s?
    Comment by Jim — 1/9/2010 @ 10:48 am

    Probably the TRS-80!

    AD - RtR/OS! (946807)

  19. Granted, Obama wasn’t responsible for the typo, but if the topic is Intelligence Mistakes, one question still open is about who put the the woman in charge of the CIA base in Afghanistan, and why basic tradecraft was ignored.

    All quotes are from WaPo’s 1/9/10 article, “CIA bomber struck moments before pat-down search” by staff writers, Smith, Warrick, and Nakashima.

    Little information has been forthcoming. We know she was 45 and had 3 children, a “Reports Officer” with 20 years at Langley who had been tracking al-Qaeda prior to 9/11 during her nearly 10 years at the agency’s counter-terrorism center. She’s been touted in the press by anonymous sources, as one of the CIA’s “world-class expert(s) on al-Qaeda and counter-terrorism operations…”

    Her field experience however was limited to “several brief tours in Afghanistan” before her assignment to command the forward operations base in Khost 6 months ago. A former senior intelligence officer with whom she discussed the assignment said she believed “People in the field are more engaged. She wanted to see the problems up close, and be on the cutting edge…”

    Why was an officer with no real field experience put in charge of such an important forward operations base? Why were basic security protocols ignored? Who was sophisticated enough to run a triple agent penetration operation against some of the best agents in CIA? How did Dr al-Balawi know to wear his assassin’s vest that day, he knew he was going to the CIA base, but how did he know in advance he was going to be chauffeured past the base perimeter security checkpoints?

    ropelight (2f9be9)

  20. Why was an officer with no real field experience put in charge of such an important forward operations base? Why were basic security protocols ignored? Who was sophisticated enough to run a triple agent penetration operation against some of the best agents in CIA? How did Dr al-Balawi know to wear his assassin’s vest that day, he knew he was going to the CIA base, but how did he know in advance he was going to be chauffeured past the base perimeter security checkpoints?

    One more question: Why was it harder for me to enter terminal A at Denver International Airport last month than it was for a suicide bomber to enter Forward Operating Base Chapman?

    Leon Panetta’s pathetic response of attacking critics instead of terrorists just means the lessons are not being learned. At least he didn’t say “the system worked”.

    harkin (f92f52)

  21. here’s a contest to redesign the TSA logo. May not be workplace safe:

    http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/tsa_logo_contes.html

    PCD (428eac)

  22. Experienced case officers in both CIA and Jordan’s Intelligence service were suspicious of al-Balawi’s too rapid access to al-Qaeda leaders. And, since al-Balawi had been blackmailed into spying on al-Qaeda, Jordanian Arabic speakers were warning that according to his beliefs and his writings, al-Balawi was a passionate follower of the most extremist form of Islam, and someone who would never betray al-Qaeda.

    However, unnamed high officials in the Obama Administration chose to ignore the clear warnings of experienced field officers and press for greater trust in al-Balawi. As yet we don’t know if instructions for softball handling al-Balawi came directly from top leaders in CIA and the National Security offices, however we do know that a CIA HQ officer was put in charge of the forward operations base in Afghanistan to prevent field agents from employing standard security proceedures.

    Following is from an article by Peter Flynn and Joby Warrick on World News/Wapo: ‘Desperation’ led CIA, Jordan to trust bomber; prospect of key strike against al-Qaeda overroad suspicions about informant.

    “Jordanian and U.S. officials have since concluded that Balawi was a committed extremist whose beliefs had deep intellectual and religious roots and who had never intended to cooperate with them. In hindsight, they said, the excitement generated by his ability to produce verifiable intelligence should have been tempered by the recognition that his penetration of al-Qaeda’s top echelon was too rapid to be true.

    Senior CIA and GID officials were so beguiled by the prospect of a strike against al-Qaeda’s inner sanctum that they discounted concerns raised by case officers in both services that Balawi might be a fraud, according to the former U.S. official and the Jordanian government official, who has an intelligence background.”

    ropelight (67ffc0)


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