Obama's New Year's Eve: Family and security reviews

OBAMA FOR USA

President Barack Obama’s New Year’s Eve involved a mix of family time and study of the preliminary findings of the government reviews he ordered earlier this week to determine how a 23-year-old Nigerian man with extremist ties got onto a Northwest Airlines flight with explosives.

After he received briefings Thursday morning from the administration officials leading the reviews, the president offered no details of what he learned but announced that he will hold meet with the heads of key agencies involved in national security in Washington on Tuesday.

“I anticipate receiving assessments from several agencies this evening and will review those tonight and over the course of the weekend,” Obama said in a statement. “On Tuesday, in Washington, I will meet personally with relevant agency heads to discuss our ongoing reviews as well as security enhancements and intelligence-sharing improvements in our homeland security and counterterrorism operations.”

The meeting is scheduled to be held in the Situation Room after Obama returns from his vacation in Hawaii early next week. In the meantime, a senior administration official traveling with the president in Hawaii said the preliminary findings of the review of the government’s terrorist watch-list system – headed by Obama’s counterterrorism adviser John Brennan – and the one of airport security procedures – led by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano – will continue to come in throughout the day and will be compiled into a report by Tuesday.

“We’ve gotten additional information since yesterday but not all of the agencies preliminary results are in,” the official told reporters. “They will be coming in through the course of the day and the evening today and tonight. … A number of agencies that are working on it will be working right up to 11:59.”

A final report is not due for several weeks.

Administration officials say the preliminary results of the reviews of the government’s terrorist watch list system and airport security screening procedures show that the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, would not have been permitted to board Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas Day if intelligence information about him had been properly shared between agencies, or if he had been screened more thoroughly at the airport.

The senior administration official would not discuss the human error that led to the attempted terrorist attack or when the president would move into the accountability phase of the reviews.

“We’re not going to prejudge the review as it relates to that but we obviously want the reforms that are put into place to be driven by fact and certainly have accountability measures driven by facts as well,” the official said.

Already some systemic changes have been adopted as the reviews’ results are coming in.



The Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday that officials there will review the security procedures for U.S.-bound flights with leaders from major international airports in foreign countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and South America. Steps have also been taken to make sure different intelligence databases are being “used in the most effective way to maximize the picture of any developing information” and that information is shared better between agencies. The State Department, for instance, said it will proactively search their visa database to coordinate better with the National Counterterrorism Center.

Over the weekend Obama will be discussing the findings with his top aides, including Brennan, National Security Council chief of staff Denis McDonough and National Security Advisor Gen. Jim Jones, the official said.

He’ll also continue vacationing. On Thursday after receiving an update about the reviews, Obama and his daughters went to see the hit movie “Avatar” at a theater in a mall near the vacation home where he and his family and some close friends are staying. He will have a private New Year’s Eve party with family and friends at their beachfront home.

Aides say he will also be working.

“Some of it he’s doing online, some of it he’s getting paper and sitting down at his desk and working it, and some of it’s through conference calls,” the senior administration official said.

The official told reporters that Tuesday’s meeting will at least include Napolitano, Brennan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CIA Director Leon Panetta, Attorney General Eric Holder, the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, as well as the heads of the National Counterterrorism Center, the Transportation Security Administration and the National Security Agency.

“I anticipate that this will be a meeting that the president will press very hard on and that the president will lead,” the official said. “As he gets the information over the course of either tonight or over the next several days, it wouldn’t surprise me if he wanted to reach out directly to any of these heads in preparation for Tuesday.”

The preliminary findings are coming in as the intelligence community is engaging in finger-pointing and Congress is making plans for hearings on the attempted Christmas Day attack.

Obama will not be getting in the middle of intelligence community spats, according to the administration official, who said: “His view is that we should take a look at everything. … I don’t think he needs to be a referee.”

As for Congress, the administration official continued to support the idea of hearings on the matter but also urged lawmakers to get Obama’s nominees to key positions in place and to quickly adopt the budgets needed to fund security measures.

“For the first time in I think almost five years the Homeland Security appropriations bill ended up being a partisan vote which strikes us as being unusual. But we hope that we don’t get stuck in those kinds of old typical Washington fights,” the official said.
(POLITICO - Eamon Javers )

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