Former CBP Commissioner and HSPI Staff Release Commentary Regarding Attempted Christmas Bombing

Jan. 8, 2010 - PRLog -- NO LONGER ON AUTO-PILOT:
AVIATION SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE REFORM

By W. Ralph Basham, Sharon L. Cardash, Frank J. Cilluffo, and Daniel J. Kaniewski

Yesterday afternoon, President Obama made the latest in a series of statements regarding the attempted Christmas Day bombing.  Taking personal responsibility, he set out three broad categories of error which compounded one another.  Further, he identified four areas for additional steps, with the ultimate objective of better collecting, sharing, integrating, and analyzing intelligence.

Over time more details will undoubtedly become available as investigations continue and efforts to remedy the defects in this case unfold.  What is clear, however, is that there was a multilevel systemic failure, in terms of both aviation security and our intelligence architecture.  

The airport and the aircraft are, and should be, our last line of defense.  Earlier links in the chain offered additional opportunities to stop Abdulmutallab in his tracks.  The first fundamental failure was not taking the prudential step of revoking the suspect's visa; this was the easiest step to take, and for which sufficient hard intelligence from the suspect's own father was in the possession of the Department of State and the intelligence community.  Had this been done, the question of watch-listing would have been moot.

Read the full text at: http://www.gwumc.edu/hspi/policy/Commentary08_AviationSec...

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The George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) is a nonpartisan “think and do” tank whose mission is to build bridges between theory and practice to advance homeland security through an interdisciplinary approach.