White House national security adviser James Jones says Americans will feel "a certain shock" when they read an account being released Thursday of the missed clues that could have prevented the alleged Christmas Day bomber from ever boarding the plane.Here's the interview video from USA Today:
President Obama "is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on," Jones said in an interview Wednesday with USA TODAY.
"That's two strikes," Obama's top White House aide on defense and foreign policy issues said, referring to the foiled bombing of the Detroit-bound airliner and the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, in November. In that case, too, officials failed to act when red flags were raised about an Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Hasan. He has been charged with killing 13 people.
Jones said Obama "certainly doesn't want that third strike, and neither does anybody else."
We already know that the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was on a terrorist watch list and successfully boarded Northwest Airlines flight 253 at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam with no checked luggage on a one-way ticket paid for in cash. We also know that back in November, his father had reported to the American Embassy in Nigeria and the CIA, his fears that his son had become radicalized and may be dangerous. We know that he had an American Visa. And today, we learn from the L.A. Times that border security officials learned of Abdulmutallab's terrorist ties after flight 453 was airborne, and decided to question him when he got here.
I am at a loss to imagine what we could find out today that will shock me.
Yeah, let's pounce on the cows and interrogate them after we close the barn door.
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