The Prowler at the American Spectator has quotes from an anonymous State Department employee that sheds a little light on how Abulmutallab fell through the cracks:
When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was placed on the British government’s watch list in May 2009 and banned from entering the country, the U.S. embassy in London (and by extension the U.S. State Department), as well as U.S. intelligence agencies, were notified of this move as part of information-sharing agreements entered into by a number of Western governments after the September 11, 2001 attacks, says a U.S. State Department employee on the condition of anonymity because of concern that by speaking about the situation, their job could be endangered.
“We have agreements with a number of different countries that work with us cooperatively on intelligence matters,” says the State Department employee. “A number of the treaties work through our justice departments or foreign offices or intelligence and interior or homeland security agencies. Several departments here in Washington got the information from London and it didn’t trigger anything within our own system.
This employee says that despite statements from the Obama Administration, such information was flagged and given higher priority during the Bush Administration, but that since the changeover “we are encouraged to not create the appearance that we are profiling or targeting Muslims. I think career employees were uncomfortable with the Bush procedures and policies and were relieved to not have to live under them any longer.”
Awww. Poor babies. They didn’t like living under Bush’s tougher anti-terrorism rules. Well, boo freaking hoo. They may have liked Obama’s see no evil-appeasement-let’s all hold hands and sing kumbya approach to fighting terrorism, but hundreds of people were almost violently murdered because of it.
Hat tip: Hot Air headlines
Update: While Obama went easy on actively looking for potential jihadis, they haven’t been going easy on trying to successfully attack us. According to a report, they routinely practice to beat the full body scan machines.
Update II: Want to really feel good about our intelligence apparatus? The CIA was tracking someone known as the Nigerian as far back as August, but didn’t realize it was Abdulmutallab until after the Christmas Day attack.
I put the blame for this directly in the lap of Barack Obama and his minions who have done everything they can to hamstring the efforts of our intelligence officials.
