No Smoking Gun In Airline Plot: U.S. Terrorism Advisor
One White House adviser on counter-terrorism said Sunday there was no “smoking gun” that would have alerted authorities to the plot to blow up a U.S. international flight on Christmas Day, but admitted “human error” and “system lapses,” rather than deliberate concealing of information, enabled a terror suspect with explosives strapped to his body to board the aircraft.
“There is no smoking gun,” said John Brennan, the assistant to the President for homeland security and counter-terrorism, in a CNN program, adding: “There was no single piece of intelligence that said, ‘this guy is going to get on a plane.’”
He said that the security breakdown in the failed bombing of the Northwest Airlines flight last month was different from the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States.
“It’s not like 9/11,” Brennan said, adding that the “system didn’t work as it should have”. There were some “human errors.” There were some “lapses” that should be corrected. “But day in and day out, the successes are there,” he said.
The Obama administration is under fire after a 23-year-old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab–who U.S. authorities say was linked to al Qaeda–was able to board the Delta/Northwest flight from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to Detroit, with explosives tucked in his underwear.
Brennan, who is currently heading a government investigation into the case, also clarified that the United States was not opening a new front against al-Qaeda in Yemen–where the al-Qaeda branch in the Arabian Peninsula that claims to have trained and equipped the Nigerian bomber is based–and had no plans to send troops there either.
“I wouldn’t say we’re opening a second front. This is a continuation of an effort that we had underway, as I said, since the beginning of the (Obama) administration,” he reportedly told another TV program on Fox News.
He said the U.S. was not going to let al-Qaeda continue to gain in Yemen, but would take necessary steps to protect Americans there as well as elsewhere abroad.
Brennan also said that U.S.-born Yemeni cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, was trying to incite terrorism and that he was linked to both the shoot-out at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas November 5, and the December 25 plot.
“Awlaki is a problem. He’s clearly a part of Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. He’s not just a cleric. He is, in fact, trying to instigate terrorism,” he said.
The U.S. official said there were indications that Awlaki had direct contact with Abdulmutallab and that he was also in touch with U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused gunman in the November 5 mass-shooting at the Fort Hood base.
