Obama Administration

Former Amb. John Bolton on growing terror threat in Yemen

White House: no ’smoking gun’ clue in Detroit airline plot

The White House said today there had been no “smoking gun” which should have alerted US intelligence agencies to the threat posed by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be suicide bomber who tried to bring down a jet over Detroit on Christmas Day.

The claim by John Brennan, Barack Obama’s top adviser on counterterrorism, came as the administration went into damage limitation mode in an attempt to deflect on-going Republican criticism over its record on combating al-Qaida.

Brennan said there had been “no single piece of intelligence — no smoking gun if you will — that said Mr Abdulmutallab was going to carry out this attack”.

Instead, there had been “little snippets” of information gathered from intelligence sources.

The challenge was to ensure all those “millions upon millions of bits of data that come into us” were shared to strengthen the security system, said Brennan, and ensure other potential bombers would not be allowed to board planes destined for the US.

Brennan acknowledged there had been “some human errors, some lapses”, in the Abdulmutallab case but on a day-to-day basis, the system was working. Brennan also criticised Dick Cheney, the former vice-president under George Bush, who has accused Obama of pretending that America is not at war.

(NOTE:  fark.com: Feds claim they couldn’t have known that a Nigerian on the watch list with no passport and no luggage who bought his one-way ticket with cash and whose father warned us, was a terrorist)…

Dozens of Names Shifted to No-Fly List

The Obama administration has transferred dozens of names from a broad terrorism database to watch lists that are more closely monitored in an effort to plug security holes revealed by the Christmas Day airline-bombing attempt.

President Barack Obama met Monday with White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan, National Security Adviser James Jones and Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon ahead of a broader security team meeting Tuesday.

At that meeting, White House officials said, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller is expected to detail the investigation into how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was able to allegedly smuggle explosives onto a Northwest Airlines flight, despite warnings about him and numerous signs a terrorism plot was in the works.

Attorney General Eric Holder will detail plans to prosecute Mr. Abdulmutallab in federal court, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will discuss detection capabilities that are being reviewed and bolstered. Mr. Brennan will lay out initial findings of a security review, and more than a half-dozen agency heads, from the Department of Energy to the Central Intelligence Agency, will present their internal reviews as well as changes they are implementing in the wake of the Christmas Day plot.

Mr. Obama has attributed the plot to the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, which also has claimed credit for sending Mr. Abdulmutallab on his alleged mission.

White House spokesman Bill Burton said counterterrorism officials have examined “thousands upon thousands” of names from the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list, to which Mr. Abdulmutallab was added in November. Dozens of names were shifted to the Transportation Security Administration’s no-fly list, or to the Secondary Security Screening Selection list, also known as the selectee list.

The Christmas Day bombing attempt and recriminations that followed have set in motion policy responses with global reverberations. Security forces in Yemen, following consultations with U.S. officials, killed two alleged al Qaeda militants Monday in a village outside the capital of San’a, where the U.S. and British embassies remained closed due to terrorism threats. France, Germany and Japan shuttered their embassies in San’a on Monday, citing similar threats.

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Freed Guantánamo inmates are heading for Yemen to join al-Qaeda fight

At least a dozen former Guantánamo Bay inmates have rejoined al-Qaeda to fight in Yemen, The Times has learnt, amid growing concern over the ability of the country’s Government to accept almost 100 more former inmates from the detention centre.

The Obama Administration promised to close the Guantánamo facility by January 22, a deadline that it will be unable to meet. The 91 Yemeni prisoners in Guantánamo make up the largest national contingent among the 198 being held.

Six prisoners were returned to Yemen last month. After the Christmas Day bomb plot in Detroit, US officials are increasingly concerned that the country is becoming a hot-bed of terrorism. Eleven of the former inmates known to have rejoined al-Qaeda in Yemen were born in Saudi Arabia. The organisation merged its Saudi and Yemeni offshoots last year.

The country’s mountainous terrain, poverty and lawless tribal society make it, in the opinion of many analysts, a close match for Afghanistan as a new terrorist haven.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, voiced concern about the growing strength of al-Qaeda in Yemen. “Obviously, we see global implications from the war in Yemen and the ongoing efforts by al-Qaeda in Yemen to use it as a base for terrorist attacks far beyond the region,” she said.

A Yemeni, Hani Abdo Shaalan, who was released from Guantánamo in 2007, was killed in an airstrike on December 17, the Yemeni Government reported last week. The deputy head of al-Qaeda in the country is Said Ali al-Shihri, 36, who was released in 2007. Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish, who was released in 2006, is a prominent ideologue featured on Yemeni al-Qaeda websites.

Geoff Morrell, the spokesman for the Pentagon, said: “This is a large question that goes beyond the issue of transferring detainees. The bulk of the remaining detainees are from Yemen and that has been the case for a long time. We are trying to work with the Yemeni Government on this.”

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The Other Terror War: Pentagon Eyes Foreign Aid to Fight Al Qaeda

The Obama administration, facing a growing terrorist threat out of Yemen, is turning to a counterterror tool that for the past four years has allowed the United States to battle extremism in dozens of countries outside the official war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan: cold, hard cash.

The Pentagon since 2006 has budgeted more than $1 billion to train and equip foreign militaries and security forces through a program known in Congress as “Section 1206.” Pakistan has absorbed more of that money than any other country, but other nations — most notably Yemen — are rising in prominence on the list of recipients.

Gen. David Petraeus, head of Central Command, announced on a surprise visit to Yemen over the weekend that the United States will more than double its counterterrorism funding — $67 million in fiscal 2009 — to the country.

Yemen received renewed attention after a terror attack on the U.S. Embassy there in 2008. The attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas has brought the country into focus once again as a staging ground for extremists. Aided by U.S. funds, the Yemeni government has stepped up attacks on terror targets inside its borders.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Monday that he couldn’t pinpoint exactly how high the funding would be for any country in the year ahead, but he said the Pentagon is working on a proposal with the State Department.

“We are working along with the Department of State to draft [Section] 1206 proposals that would help build Yemen’s counterterrorism capacity, as we are with many of our regional partners,” Whitman said.

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