Obama Was Warned About Holiday Terror Threats

[steelmania75]

From Newsweek,

President Barack Obama received a high-level briefing only three days before Christmas about possible holiday-period terrorist threats against the US, Newsweek has learned. The briefing was centered on a written report, produced by US intelligence agencies, entitled "Key Homeland Threats", a senior US official said.

The senior Administration official, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said that nowhere in this document was there any mention of Yemen, whose Al-Qaeda affiliate is now believed to have been behind the unsuccessful Christmas Day attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down a transatlantic airliner with a bomb hidden in his underpants. However, the official declined to disclose any other information about the substance of the briefing, including what kind of specific warnings, if any, the President was given about possibly holiday attacks and whether Yemen came up during oral discussions.

According to the senior official, the holiday threat briefing, one in a series of regularly-scheduled sessions with top counter-terrorism officials, was held in the White House Situation Room on December 22. Present were representatives of agencies involved in counter-terrorism policy and operations, including Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and FBI Director Robert Mueller. The CIA and National Intelligence Directors Office were represented by deputy agency heads: CIA deputy director Steven Kappes, and David Gompert, the principal deputy to National Intelligence Czar Dennis Blair. Also present was Michael Leiter, director of the National Counter-terrorism Center, a unit of the Intelligence Czar's office which was created after 9/11 to ensure that intelligence reporting about possible terrorist plots was shared quickly among all US agencies who might have some capability to do something about it.

The senior official said that beginning in early December, based on reports coming in from intelligence agencies, policy-makers had begun tracking a stream of information which alluded to a possible holiday-period plot against the US orchestrated from somewhere in Pakistan. However, the official said, this reporting later turned out to be "garbled" and it was determined that the threat probably was a washout. The official denied that the White House received any report, representing the concensus of US intelligence agencies, warning that a Holiday-period plot originating in Yemen and targeting the US homeland could be in the works.

Read more at:

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/01/01/exclusive-obama-got-pre-christmas-intelligence-briefing-about-terror-threats-to-homeland.aspx

[spanone]

1. duh

[johnaries]

2. "reporting later turned out to be "garbled" and it was determined that the threat probably was a

washout".

A big difference from the anti-terrorist director running around "with his hair on fire" trying to warn anyone who would listen.

This just says to me that Obama actually paid a lot more attention than Bushco.

[NYC_SKP]

3. Guess what. Every Christmas holiday has had warnings, no suprise here. n/t

[panader0]

4. The threat is omnipresent.so is the solution: Get out of the Middle East

It's oil/money.

[catnhatnh]

5. Something bad may happen somewhere,,,,

and even if it doesn't it's the black guys fault. Is that correct?

[kestrel91316]

6. Nothing the least bit new about holiday terrorism warnings.

Yawn.

Enjoy DU.

[KittyWampus]

7. what was that title that Bush ignored? "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In The US"?

[defendandprotect]

8. Let's see... given the hundreds of warnings to Bush wasn't the key spin "specifics" . . .

that there was supposedly no "specific" information -- which was a lie, of course --

Some of the info even had names of hijackers -- certainly info re skyscrapers being attacked!

Russia was so concerned about Bush and our intelligence agencies "Operation Ignore" that they

went to the United Nations Security Agency with their intelligence info ....

And in AUGUST just before the attack, United Nations Security Council sent its representatives

to the White House and to our intelligence agencies warning them --

MIHOP --

[Ikonoklast]

9. This is not news.

There were warnings printed in the press before the holiday season even started about heightened awareness of terrorist activity during the peak travel times.

Try harder. This isn't even close.