Intelligence Is a Terrible Thing to Waste. Obama doesn't need an investigation to figure out how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab got on a Detroit-bound plane.

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

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Intelligence about terror threats rarely comes on such a silver platter:
A Nigerian banker went to the U.S. Embassy in Lagos to warn that his son
had fallen under "the influence of religious extremists based in Yemen"
and was a security risk. This came after months of U.S. intelligence
intercepts about al Qaeda plans for an attack using a Nigerian man. Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab paid for his ticket with cash and didn't check any
luggage.

Yet a headline in the Washington Post summed up the current state of our
intelligence: "Uninvestigated Terrorism Warning About Detroit Suspect
Called Not Unusual."

President Obama promises to investigate what went wrong, but there's no
big mystery. He should simply review testimony put in the public record
in early December, before the Christmas Day incident. Sen. Joe
Lieberman's Homeland Security Committee heard an explanation of how U.S.
intelligence agencies decide when to put suspected terrorists on a watch
list or a no-fly list.

Timothy Healy, the head of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center,
explained the unit's "reasonable suspicion" standard like this:

"Reasonable suspicion requires 'articulable' facts which, taken together
with rational inferences, reasonably warrant a determination that an
individual is known or suspected to be or has been engaged in conduct
constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to, terrorism
and terrorist activities, and is based on the totality of the
circumstances. Mere guesses or inarticulate 'hunches' are not enough to
constitute reasonable suspicion."

If this sounds like legalistic language, it is. Indeed, a quick Web
search was a reminder that this language is adapted from Terry v. Ohio,
a landmark Supreme Court case in 1968 that determined when Fourth
Amendment protection against unreasonable searches allows the police to
frisk civilians or conduct traffic stops. In other words, foreign
terrorists have somehow now been granted Fourth Amendment reasonableness
rights that courts intended to protect Americans being searched by the
local police. Thus was Abdulmutallab allowed on the airplane with his
explosives.

The difference between law-enforcement procedures and preventing
terrorism could not be clearer. If a well-respected banker takes the
initiative to come to a U.S. embassy in Nigeria to report that he thinks
his son is a terrorist, we expect intelligence officers to make
"hunches," such as that this person should have his visa reviewed and be
searched before getting on a plane. Information is our defense against
terrorism, but evidence of terror plots is often incomplete, which is
why intelligence requires combining facts with hunches.

The result of prohibiting hunches was that Abdulmutallab was waved
through. Information about suspected terrorists flows into a central
Terrorist Screening Database, which is then analyzed by the Terrorist
Screening Center, where FBI agents apply the "reasonable suspicion"
standard to assign people to various watch lists including "selectee"
lists and the "no-fly" list. It's at this point where an approach based
on domestic law enforcement trump prevention, undermining the use of
information.

Aside from concluding that we are misapplying a reasonableness test, the
Abdulmutallab investigation likely will conclude that information in the
databases of the National Security Agency, CIA and State Department
weren't properly mined to connect dots. His name went onto the list of
400,000 people who might have links to terror, but not the list of
14,000 subject to multiple screenings before boarding an airplane or the
list of 3,400 people who are not permitted to fly.

The Obama administration has leaned toward treating terrorism as a
matter for domestic law enforcement, such as trying terrorists in
civilian courts instead of in military tribunals. But this legalistic
culture also undermined intelligence in the Fort Hood case in November.
The FBI knew that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had been exchanging emails with
a Yemen-based imam with ties to the 9/11 hijackers. The agency,
operating by the standards of domestic law enforcement instead of
applying information to prevention, surmised that the "content was
explainable by his research" and failed to warn the Army of its
potential risk.

In contrast, British authorities last May denied Abdulmutallab the right
to re-enter the United Kingdom, where he had been president of an
Islamic Society while in college. In Britain, domestic intelligence is
the job of M15, which unlike the FBI has no power to arrest or
responsibility for criminal prosecutions. Instead, it is free to focus
on gathering intelligence, making hunches and preventing wrongdoing. The
British ban on Abdulmutallab didn't require any FBI-like "reasonable
suspicion" test.

After 9/11, the key political issue that went unresolved was what
Americans expect from their intelligence agents. We send the mixed
message that we want them to prevent attacks, but only if they operate
under strict restrictions based on rules crafted for domestic law
enforcement.

We have a choice. We can limit how information is used or we can allow
smart use of information to prevent attacks. If we continue to choose to
limit how information can be used in our defense, we shouldn't be
surprised when our defenses fail.

[Paladin]

Post by Leroy N. Soetoro
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704065404574636130361837754
.html?mod=rss_Today's_Most_Popular
A Nigerian banker went to the U.S. Embassy in Lagos to warn that his son
had fallen under "the influence of religious extremists based in Yemen"
and was a security risk. This came after months of U.S. intelligence
intercepts about al Qaeda plans for an attack using a Nigerian man. Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab paid for his ticket with cash and didn't check any
luggage.
Yet a headline in the Washington Post summed up the current state of our
intelligence: "Uninvestigated Terrorism Warning About Detroit Suspect
Called Not Unusual."
President Obama promises to investigate what went wrong, but there's no
big mystery. He should simply review testimony put in the public record
in early December, before the Christmas Day incident. Sen. Joe
Lieberman's Homeland Security Committee heard an explanation of how U.S.
intelligence agencies decide when to put suspected terrorists on a watch
list or a no-fly list.
Timothy Healy, the head of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center,
"Reasonable suspicion requires 'articulable' facts which, taken together
with rational inferences, reasonably warrant a determination that an
individual is known or suspected to be or has been engaged in conduct
constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to, terrorism
and terrorist activities, and is based on the totality of the
circumstances. Mere guesses or inarticulate 'hunches' are not enough to
constitute reasonable suspicion."
If this sounds like legalistic language, it is. Indeed, a quick Web
search was a reminder that this language is adapted from Terry v. Ohio,
a landmark Supreme Court case in 1968 that determined when Fourth
Amendment protection against unreasonable searches allows the police to
frisk civilians or conduct traffic stops. In other words, foreign
terrorists have somehow now been granted Fourth Amendment reasonableness
rights that courts intended to protect Americans being searched by the
local police. Thus was Abdulmutallab allowed on the airplane with his
explosives.
The difference between law-enforcement procedures and preventing
terrorism could not be clearer. If a well-respected banker takes the
initiative to come to a U.S. embassy in Nigeria to report that he thinks
his son is a terrorist, we expect intelligence officers to make
"hunches," such as that this person should have his visa reviewed and be
searched before getting on a plane. Information is our defense against
terrorism, but evidence of terror plots is often incomplete, which is
why intelligence requires combining facts with hunches.
The result of prohibiting hunches was that Abdulmutallab was waved
through. Information about suspected terrorists flows into a central
Terrorist Screening Database, which is then analyzed by the Terrorist
Screening Center, where FBI agents apply the "reasonable suspicion"
standard to assign people to various watch lists including "selectee"
lists and the "no-fly" list. It's at this point where an approach based
on domestic law enforcement trump prevention, undermining the use of
information.
Aside from concluding that we are misapplying a reasonableness test, the
Abdulmutallab investigation likely will conclude that information in the
databases of the National Security Agency, CIA and State Department
weren't properly mined to connect dots. His name went onto the list of
400,000 people who might have links to terror, but not the list of
14,000 subject to multiple screenings before boarding an airplane or the
list of 3,400 people who are not permitted to fly.
The Obama administration has leaned toward treating terrorism as a
matter for domestic law enforcement, such as trying terrorists in
civilian courts instead of in military tribunals. But this legalistic
culture also undermined intelligence in the Fort Hood case in November.
The FBI knew that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had been exchanging emails with
a Yemen-based imam with ties to the 9/11 hijackers. The agency,
operating by the standards of domestic law enforcement instead of
applying information to prevention, surmised that the "content was
explainable by his research" and failed to warn the Army of its
potential risk.
In contrast, British authorities last May denied Abdulmutallab the right
to re-enter the United Kingdom, where he had been president of an
Islamic Society while in college. In Britain, domestic intelligence is
the job of M15, which unlike the FBI has no power to arrest or
responsibility for criminal prosecutions. Instead, it is free to focus
on gathering intelligence, making hunches and preventing wrongdoing. The
British ban on Abdulmutallab didn't require any FBI-like "reasonable
suspicion" test.
After 9/11, the key political issue that went unresolved was what
Americans expect from their intelligence agents. We send the mixed
message that we want them to prevent attacks, but only if they operate
under strict restrictions based on rules crafted for domestic law
enforcement.
We have a choice. We can limit how information is used or we can allow
smart use of information to prevent attacks. If we continue to choose to
limit how information can be used in our defense, we shouldn't be
surprised when our defenses fail.

It wasn't limits on information, it was lack of
coordination between agencies--probably in order to
embarrass Obama administration. For it is a fact that
Reagan and the two bushes padded the civil service
positions of all federal agencies during their long
reigns of evil.