This Tuesday, President Obama made a speech regarding the lacking aspects of our national security system. The President said that although the actual security screening for the airplane carrying the bomb Christmas Day was done in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, US intelligence agencies had plenty of preexisting information about the threat. Several intelligence agencies had been informed months ago that a Nigerian was planning on attacking the US through the airways as a plot in connection to terrorist organizations. The father of the attacker also contacted several agencies to inform them of his son's radicalization. However, the US missed it. Obama says that it was the US intelligence community's responsibility to, "connect the dots," and that it failed to do so. Mr. Obama says he wants the exact reasons for the intelligence failure and corrective actions to be taken immediately, especially concerning the National Counterterrorism Center. The President feels that the intelligence sector has become lazy and that this performance will not be accepted.
I think it is understandable that the intelligence centers could overlook this information, but I also agree with the President that it is vital that they be resolved immediately. I think the best plan for the intelligence community would be to develop some type of system, probably a computer program of some kind that could be kept running constantly. It would not be that difficult to create a program that could scan through incoming information and match highlighted key terms with information already collected and being stored in the system. I think this would greatly help this particular situation from happening again and hopefully keep our country safer from possible terrorist threats.
Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/us/politics/06obama.html?pagewanted=2&ref=us
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-obama-0106jan06,0,676913.story
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