Terror Official Went Skiing After Attack?
As the U.S. intelligence community scrambled to piece together events related to the failed terrorist attack on Northwest Flight 253 Christmas day, the top official in charge of analyzing terror threats continued his ski vacation, the Daily News reported Thursday.
Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, didn't return to his agency's MacLean, Va., headquarters until several days following Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab's attempt to destroy the Detroit-bound flight using an explosives device hidden in his underpants, two officials told the News.
"People have been grumbling that he didn't let a little terrorism interrupt his vacation," one source said.
Following the attack, which was claimed by an al Qaeda branch operating in Yemen, President Barack Obama said the entire intelligence community "failed to connect the dots" on Abdulmutallab, whose presence on a government watch list didn't stop him from boarding Flight 253 in Amsterdam.
Special Report: The Christmas Day Terror Attack
NCTC was created in the wake of 9/11 as a clearinghouse for intelligence on terror threats. Leiter was appointed director in 2007 by then-President George W. Bush.
His alleged absence from NCTC headquarters follows a LA Times report that Detroit border officials were set to interrogate Abdulmutallab upon the flight's arrival based on new significant new intelligence regarding the 23-year-old Nigerian.
"The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection," a senior law enforcement official told the Times. "The decision had been made. The [database] had picked up the State Department concern about this guy - that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen."
But the White House strongly refuted the report, with one senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told CBS News "there was no new information that emerged when the plane was in the air."
"Customs and Border Protection followed its normal procedures and checks as it prepared for arriving passengers and by doing so they accessed the suspect's TIDE-based record which is why they were going to ask him a few additional questions after he landed before allowing him admission into the country and why they didn't stop him in Amsterdam first," the official said.
Abdulmutallab, who was
Read the indictment against Abdulmutallab
Subsequent reports indicate Abdulmutallab spent significant time in Yemen, where officials there said he may have met with imam Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric linked to alleged Fort Hood shooter Hasan Nidal.
U.S. Embassy officials in Nigeria were also approached by Abdulmutallab's father, who warned of his son's extremist religious views.
The failure to piece together intelligence on Abdulmutallab before the attack will be the subject of a declassified account of the event, which the White Hosue planned to make public Thursday.
"The information was there," CBS News security analyst Juan Zarate tells "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith. "The agencies can't simply dump the information into databases and expect someone to magically find it. They've got evaluate it, flag it. That goes for the State Department, the CIA, that's part of the problem here; This information wasn't flagged and then put together in a way that alerted officials in time to stop him from getting on the flight."
President Barack Obama is expected to address the nation about its findings and recommendations. Mr. Obama was also to reveal new steps intended to thwart terrorist attacks, as he promised earlier in the week.
The president - facing charges that he's been weak on security - will demand changes when he speaks Thursday - and is expected to set deadlines for these changes including more air marshalls, more analysts and better communication, reports CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante.
No firings over the December security debacle are expected - at least for now.