In the days since passengers overpowered Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab aboard the Detroit-bound jet he tried to blow up on Christmas Day, almost every aspect of the case – from his absence on no-fly lists to the handling of intelligence from Nigeria – has been the focus of fierce criticism of the Obama administration. U.S. officials have been trying to figure out what went wrong: Why was Abdulmutallab able to slip through the cracks?

The attacks became more worrisome when Obama publicly acknowledged information the White House and the intelligence community already knew.

‘The U.S. government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots, which would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list,’ Obama said to the nation Jan. 5 after a 90-minute review with his national security team.

In his Jan. 7 speech on intelligence and aviation security, Obama said, ‘When our government has information on a known extremist and that information is not shared and acted on as it should have been, so that this extremist boards a plane with dangerous explosives that could cost nearly 300 lives, a systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that unacceptable.’

The Daily Orange asks the experts: How can similar failures in intelligence analysis be avoided in the future?

Meet the expert: Michael Barkun, a professor of political science

‘It’s clear that many of the post-9/11 intelligence reforms were either cosmetic or inadequate and that they did not eliminate turf wars and compartmentalization. In addition, despite immense information processing capabilities, the government has still not learned how to effectively deal with very large quantities of data.’

Meet the expert: William Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism

‘No security system can be made perfect, and terrorists will continue to attempt to attack the United States. By taking responsibility for the security lapses and ordering changes to correct those flaws, the president did what he can do to assure Americans that government is doing what it can. I do not believe that Americans will have a long-lasting fear of terrorist attacks based on the Detroit incident. What could have been a terrible tragedy was averted, and I believe that we will soon forget that this episode occurred.’

Meet the expert: Donald Planty, chair of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs’ international relations program

‘Apart from the need to use intelligence better, the U.S. needs to change its transportation security policy, particularly on airport screenings. The ‘needle in the haystack’ approach is doomed to failure – it is too easy to foil – and needs to be abandoned in favor of a targeted policy. U.S. national security is at stake, so targeting or profiling needs to be introduced for airport screening. It is a waste of resources – money and manpower – to search low-risk passengers, like our grandparents or members of Congress. We need to

concentrate our resources on high-risk passengers such as Abdulmutallab and others who pose potential threats. We have the technology to determine who’s who, and it’s time we used it to improve our chances of thwarting the terrorists at airports.’

hddubans@syr.edu

Published on January 19, 2010 at 12:00 pm