Huckleberries Online

Posts tagged: U.S. Intelligence

Bad News: “A systemic failure has occurred”

Posted by Cindy

Dec. 30, 2009 11 a.m. • 30 comments

WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence agencies had enough “bits and pieces” of information to thwart the attempted Christmas Day airplane bombing, a senior administration official said Tuesday, but they failed to properly analyze and share it.

Instead, what President Barack Obama called a potentially catastrophic “mix of human and systemic failures” allowed the 23-year-old Nigerian suspect to board a U.S.-bound airliner, allegedly with an explosive device that could have killed nearly 300 people.

“A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable,” Obama told reporters near his vacation retreat in Hawaii. Full story.

Perhaps we should stop referring to them as “intelligence agencies.” Just a thought.

About this blog

D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.