31st Dec 09
Father of bomb plot accused warned CIA
by Sally Davies
The father of the alleged attempted Christmas Day airline bomb plot suspect spoke to a CIA agent about his son’s extremist opinions, but the agent’s report on the meeting was sent to the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, it was not carried any further.
If the information had been passed on between other agencies, Umar Farouk Adulmutallab could have been banned from getting on the NorthWest Airlines flight to Detroit.
Taking a break from his Hawaiian holiday for the second day in a row, US President Barack Obama pointed out that Dr Mutallab had warned US officials in Africa about his son’s extremism.
He said that it now appeared that weeks ago this information had been passed to a component in the US intelligence community, but not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect’s name on a no-fly list.
It was reported on TV that its source said the president was referring to the CIA, raising new concerns that US intelligence agencies have failed to improve coordination, in spite of massive pressure to do so since the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the US.
It has been reported that Dr Mutallab met with the CIA at the US Embassy in Abuja on the 19th of November, but added that the meeting prompted an inter-agency gathering the following day.
Representatives from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, the State Department and the CIA attended the meeting, the newspaper said. However, it added, the information shared at the meeting may not have been effectively collected and passed on to the United States.
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